Chapter Five: A Grand Army

It's the hand of God.

That was the thought that had coursed through Bail Organa's head when he glimpsed the Charybdis shrieking across the Coruscant sky—before he'd known it was the Charybdis. The size and speed of it had been too much for his naked eye to process; as the burning hulk roared through the atmosphere, shattering windows in its wake, all he'd known was that it was an angel of death, headed for the heart of Coruscant. The heart of the Republic.

The Senate building.

After that one sentence had uttered itself in his head, all coherent thought had vanished. His body had vibrated with the animal urge to flee, to hide himself under the nearest desk, but he'd been paralyzed, his legs refusing to run and his eyes refusing to turn themselves from the window of the Senatorial Apartments where the politicians and their staffs had barricaded themselves when the shooting started. He'd watched the whole thing. He'd watched as the Charybdis clipped a building, then another, its blazing hull tearing a ragged trench through Capitol Plaza as it headed toward its ultimate target. There had been a terrible grinding of metal on stone, one he still wasn't sure had been real—surely he couldn't have heard it from miles away, surely it must have been in his imagination. It had sounded as though the ship were crying out its own death scream.

And then it had plowed into the side of the Senate dome, buckling it like so much cardboard, and Bail had breathed again.

He'd only noticed the cuts hours later, after the adrenaline in his system had finally begun to dissipate—lacerations from transparisteel shards that had peppered him after the window he'd watched the whole thing through exploded. In the moment, he'd felt no pain, simply an overwhelming, apocalyptic certainty that he was going to die.

He still saw it when he closed his eyes—nights were worst of all, but it happened during the day too. He'd blink, and the empty hull of the Charybdis would sear across the backs of his eyelids—

"Bail?"

Hastily, he wrenched himself back to the present moment, turning to his head of security. "Sorry, what?"

"I was just saying at least there's some fresh air in here now," said Padmé, gesturing to encompass the whole of their surroundings.

Before Bail could stop himself, a choked laugh escaped his throat. Padmé had a point—the vast shaft of actual sunlight pouring in through the missing wall was almost too perfect, and even though a protective shield had hastily been generated across the gap in the building, he could almost swear he felt a breeze waft through the chamber every now and then. "Maybe Valis missed her calling as an architect."

Excavation of the Charybdis had begun almost immediately after the shock of watching the capital ship rip a wound through Capitol Plaza. Starships were not stable at the best of times—besides weapon systems and shield generators and any number of other delicate components, they were also laden with hyperfuel, one of the most unstable substances in existence. Take all that and throw it at a planet's crust at ramming speed, and you'd basically created a bomb that could go off at any time. It was a miracle that the cruiser hadn't detonated the instant it plowed into the Senate dome—leaving it there was simply asking for trouble.

And, Bail Organa had to admit, the excavation crews had done an admirably speedy job. Where just five days ago a dagger a kilometer long had been embedded in the Senate's side, now there was simply a gaping hole opening onto the wrecked plaza, its edges charred but no longer burning. He'd watched the construction droids and manned vehicles from the same window he'd watched the ship crash, slicing apart the corpse piece by piece and carrying it away.

Under the circumstances, it was ludicrous for a special session of the Senate to be taking place in the dome. It was a good thing they had the sunlight, because one thing the engineers had not been punctual about was restoring power to the building. The rotunda's already dim atmosphere would have been complete blackness without the daylight streaming in, forming a natural spotlight of sorts across the center of the chamber. Had it been an evening session, no one would have been able to find their pod. Any reasonable person would have ordered all senators home to conduct governing remotely.

Chancellor Palpatine's concerns, Bail supposed, extended beyond the reasonable.

"This is exactly what he wants, of course," he muttered to Padmé, taking care that there were no dronecams passing by to record the conversation. "The Senate putting ourselves in danger as guardians of the Republic, him in the lead as our Courageous Commander-in-Chief. Optics couldn't be more perfect. He's even got his own natural spotlight."

"Anakin would say it's a brave gesture," she replied—Bail didn't think she quite realized the level of sarcasm she'd allowed to leak into her voice. "Putting himself in harm's way to show he's not above us common folk."

"And what do you say?" he asked.

A cloud passed over her face. Before she could reply, however, a new voice sounded behind him. "Mind if I join you? It seems Chandrila's pod was . . . well, caught in the crossfire, as they say."

Mon Mothma sounded vaguely ill as she said it, but Bail chuckled anyway, turning and rising to shake her hand. "Plenty of room, and we could use a third to get us through . . . well, whatever's about to happen."

Secretly, he found himself a bit relieved that Padmé wouldn't have to answer his question. She and Anakin were . . . not his business, and lord knew he himself wasn't an ideal husband at the best of times. Even before the attack had trapped him and every other senator on the planet—stranded them beneath the planetary shield, then holed them up with their security teams in their improvised fortress—he hadn't seen Breha in months, and had only called sporadically. Their conversations during the siege had been unbearable, each of them alternating between trying to keep up a normal front and telling the other how much they wished they could do something. Holocall after holocall had danced around the thought coursing through Bail's mind: If we lose, I'll die here on this planet without ever seeing her again.

Much of the siege had already faded into a dissociative blur for him—endless days of pacing his apartment, trying to keep distracted, ducking away from windows whenever a suspicious shadow passed by. Padmé popping out to go home and try to see her husband, then returning a few hours later looking just as dejected as he felt. Endless, awful ration meals after the blackouts started rolling through the upper districts. And the calls to Breha, multiple a day at first but gradually thinning. As if she was scared to call me, he thought to himself, not for the first time. That I wouldn't pick up and she'd know I was dead. He'd had the thought, after a few days of this, that it wasn't all that different from how things had been before the siege, and hated himself for it.

After the crash, he'd spent hours trying to contact Breha, dialing over and over to no avail—every single inhabitant of Coruscant had been trying to reach their own loved ones, and succeeded only in crashing the network. It had been nearly a full day before he was able to get a brief message through to her—I'm okay, he'd sobbed into the microphone, it's all right, I'm okay, the signal cutting out before she could reply.

And now here he was, unable to go home to see her before one last meeting of Congress was over. Bail knew it was childish to feel personally affronted—Palpatine hadn't scheduled a special session of the Senate on Coruscant just to delay his heading home—but he still felt an urge to work his way close to the man and grab him by the neck.

Again he pulled himself back to the present, where Mon was expressing her polite relief that no one Padmé knew had been hurt in the attacks. Bail winced inwardly—there was no way to explain to her that Liz had been more than just a droid to his friend—but for once Padmé seemed to be sidestepping confrontation, simply nodding and turning her attention to the central podium. "You'd think he'd be able to show up to his own speech on time," she said. "He's two minutes late."

Mon nodded, her coppery hair gleaming as a passing dronecam caught it. "He does appreciate the importance of a good entrance. Keep us waiting just enough for us to notice, and then—"

As if on cue, a sudden swell of applause sounded from across the chamber, then fanned out to encompass the whole rotunda. Bail found himself putting his own hands together out of reflex, then shoved them down at his sides with a grimace as he saw what had elicited the noise.

Palpatine rose into view, a small hover platform beneath his feet. When the platform was level with the central podium, the chancellor released the railing and gingerly stepped onto his usual position, the shaft of sunlight from outside catching his face perfectly. The applause rose louder at the image; Palpatine raised a hand in half-hearted protest, but did nothing further to quell clapping from all sides of the rotunda. At Bail's right, Padmé rolled her eyes; at his left, Mon simply gnawed delicately at her lower lip.

Bail himself, for a moment, felt a curious sensation watching the chancellor stand there at the center of the chamber, bathed in the light that pierced the Senate the way the Charybdis had days earlier. Alone in that spotlight, a charred, gaping hole yawning to his right, Palpatine looked . . . small. Vulnerable.

For an absurd instant, Bail remembered what he had felt when a war had landed in his lap. When Obi-Wan had gone missing, and he'd had no one to turn to. For the briefest moment, he felt an involuntary stirring of sympathy beneath his breast. He felt . . . sorry for Palpatine.

At last the applause stilled. Palpatine raised his head, and looked around the chamber in a slow, continuous movement. "My friends," he said aloud, the words a murmur that nevertheless rang across the rotunda with the aid of an invisible microphone. "First of all—it is a relief to see all of you here, safe and sound.

"I am sure all of you are wondering why I've requested your presence here, of all places, for this special session before officially opening up shield passage once more and allowing you all to return to your homes." A distant smile passed across his face, like that of a man seeing a cherished memory pass before his eyes. "I myself have not been to Naboo in some time. Now more than ever, it would be a comfort to me to return there."

The smile passed, the tender note falling once more into solemnity. "But we must all remind ourselves that home is more than the planet on which we were born. Home is not the system, the sector, the rim which we call our own. All of us—regardless of species or strata—call this Republic our home. The attack that struck at this world—at this Senate"—here he paused to look significantly at the breach in the dome's wall—"was a violation of our home. And while we here were privileged to survive it, many citizens of Coruscant were not so lucky." To his right, Bail heard Padmé's breathing grow a touch faster.

Raising his hand once more, Palpatine asked, "If you would, my friends and colleagues—a moment of silence for those who paid the ultimate price against tyranny."

The resulting quiet was indeed a true silence—in the absence of power, the only ambient noise Bail could hear was his fellow senators breathing, or the occasional cough. He closed his eyes, and once again images of the crash's aftermath flashed before them—now, he remembered the numbness that had come over him as he watched the Senate burn, the faint ringing that had pulsed through his ears and dulled other sounds as though they were being muffled by cotton. It was funny, really—he'd spent so long trying to call Breha, and when he'd finally gotten through it had taken him a moment to notice because her voice had struggled to pierce the buffer and reach his ears. He'd worried about hearing damage, but the med droid who'd bandaged his cuts had assured him there was nothing wrong with his ears. The dull tinnitus ring had faded, but he found himself worrying that, like the afterimages of the crash, it would come back whether he wanted it to or not.

When Palpatine spoke again it sliced through the silence like a blade—Mon actually jumped a little. "It is to that end," he said, "that I have called this special session of Congress."

There was a sudden hardness to his voice that immediately dispelled the sympathy Bail had felt for him just minutes earlier. It reminded him of when the the two of them had met just before the emergency election that had put Palpatine at this podium—of the way the other man had gone from smug to quietly dangerous within a sentence.

I don't want to know where this goes, he thought, and listened anyway.

"Our response to this attack on our democracy—on our very existence—was neither efficient nor effective," said Palpatine. His tone had gone clinical—there was no anger there, but the lack of his usual affectation of fatherly warmth was almost alarming to those who were used to it. "Coruscant's intelligence did not detect the ships and personnel that the Confederacy smuggled into the atmosphere for months prior to the attack, person by person, unit by unit. Nor were its orbital defenses able to repel the unexpected force thrown at them. When reinforcements were called, they were scattered and uncoordinated in their response. While the Defense Force beat back the Confederacy, it did so at a cost that was unacceptably high."

And then all at once it was the Palpatine everyone knew once more—his voice weary, exhausted, grieved, as he relayed that cost. "It was not only civilians who suffered in this attack. There are many heroes of the Defense Force we can now honor only in death. And of those who survive, too few do so unscathed."

Again Bail found his thoughts flitting away, not to the crash this time but to several days later—to a bed in one of the central district hospitals that were crowded to overflowing. At his side had been faces he knew only distantly—Karin Janzen and Sam Reyes, grasping each other's hands and swaying slightly back and forth—and one he'd not seen in far too long—Obi-Wan Kenobi, himself looking rather shell-shocked.

On the bed itself lay Temeura Cody, commander of Typhoon Division, his body broken.

"I don't remember it happening," Reyes had said in a distant voice; she herself was still recovering from a concussion, she'd explained to Bail when he'd arrived at the hospital room and asked the others if they were all right. "We were fighting it out with the Charybdis and there was a collision alert and then . . . it all just went black. And when I woke up . . . he was lying there on the deck."

Underneath bedsheets and bandages it had been hard to see the extent of the damage Cody had taken, but Bail had been informed of it in detail when Typhoon Division contacted him, just a few hours before the Charybdis had turned itself into a missile. Shrapnel had pierced most of his lower body, including the base of his spine. Odds were he'd live—med droids were only getting better as the war dragged on and more and more injured troops poured into triage centers—but he wouldn't walk. "Not unless there's a miracle," said Karin, as she relayed to Bail the trauma report he'd already heard days ago. He hadn't interrupted; he'd simply nodded, and looked down at the commander's motionless body.

"I'm so sorry," Obi-Wan had said—perhaps to Karin and Reyes, perhaps to Cody. He'd been staring at the latter, hands clasped tightly behind his back, fingers twitching every few seconds. "I should have . . . I'm so sorry."

"Don't say that, General Kenobi," Reyes had said, shaking her head and then wincing at the motion. Raising a hand to her forehead, she'd exhaled slowly and added, "He'd be glad that you're safe. We all are."

The Jedi had met Reyes's eyes and given a sad smile. "Just Obi-Wan, please, Sam. I haven't been a general in a long time now."

Padmé swore softly under her breath, drawing a look of mild consternation from Mon Mothma—Bail, conscious of the fact that he'd missed something, hastily leaned over to her and whispered, "What?"

"Oh, just wait," she hissed back, her eyes stonily fixed on the central podium.

Palpatine was continuing off a point Bail had missed. ". . . clearly shows that Coruscant was not a unique failure, but rather the culmination of weaknesses inherent to our defenses. For too long the Defense Force has been forced to serve not as a unit, but as a patchwork. As I have argued to this august body time and again, we do not have a Republic Defense Force in anything but name. We have untold hundreds of systems who arm and command their own troops and fleets, who fly under the banner of the republic but carry their homeworlds first in their hearts. My friends—this. Cannot. Continue."

Oh. Bail felt a sudden tightness in his chest. This is not going anywhere good.

Palpatine's voice rang out now, filling the rotunda. "As long as we see ourselves as many and not one—as long as we continue to view other systems as neighbors rather than brothers and sisters—we will never truly be a Republic. As long as the needs of the many are subject to the whims and prejudices of the few, we will never truly be a Republic."

Dead quiet once more filled the dome, but it was not the reverent silence of a few minutes before. It was hushed anticipation, as though everyone were nervous to breathe and derail wherever the chancellor was heading next. To Bail's right, Padmé gripped the railing of their Senate pod; Mon Mothma was pale and motionless.

"We must put aside our regional interests, our infighting, our petty squabbles," said Palpatine, turning slowly to address the entire chamber in turn. "When the Confederacy strikes at a Republic world, they strike at all of us. When the Confederacy attacks us at the very heart of our civilization"—and here he thrust an arm at the gaping hole in the side of the dome, at the view of Capitol Plaza and its wreckage beyond—"they have attacked us to the furthest reaches of our space. And when they attack our territories in the Outer Rim, it is no different than when they drive a stake into the heart of this Senate."

It was as though a dam had burst. A torrent of applause swept through the rotunda, and again Bail felt a reflexive pull to join in. Willing his hands to stay down, he narrowed his eyes to get a better look at the chancellor's face.

It was his imagination, of course. He was too far away to see anything clearly. But beneath the surface resolve, he could swear Palpatine looked smug.

As the roar of claps quieted, the chancellor stayed silent for a moment. Then, looking upward, he said:

"This body must do all it can to project its citizens. We must all put planetary loyalties aside and act as one. It is in the interest of this that I will be using the authority invested in my office by wartime powers to dissolve the Republic Defense Force. In its place we shall create a Grand Army of the Republic.

"All member worlds shall contribute to this Grand Army according to their ability, and will be aided according to their need. The forces they contribute to the Republic will not be theirs—they will answer not to regional authorities but to this government. But neither will our member worlds be without defenses. This motion ensures a military that is unified, of one purpose, that will be able to act swiftly and effectively. When one member world is threatened, it will be as if Coruscant herself were threatened. And we shall deal with that threat accordingly.

"Together," he said, raising his voice to a sonorous height, "this new Grand Army of the Republic will work hand in hand with this Senate to ensure Safety!

"Security!

"Justice!

"And Peace!"

There was a split second of indecision. A moment where Bail thought wildly that things might go another way—that there would be jeers, protests, cries that the executive had overstepped his authority.

And then the room exploded.

Applause crested as though it were a wave hundreds of feet high. It sounded as though it were right beside Bail—and then he looked to his left and saw that Mon was clapping with the rest.

"Mon," he shouted over the din, "what are you doing—"

"Clap, both of you," she shouted back, throwing a glance at Padmé as well. "The cameras are watching."

And indeed, dronecams were darting back and forth across the chamber, swooping up to individual pods to capture reactions. Bail felt himself begin to put his hands together, raising them just high enough above the pod railing that they could be seen. Padmé, whose own hands had been resting in her lap, shot him and Mon both a glare and then crossed her arms.

Later—when he'd clapped long enough and with enough fervor that his palms were sore—Bail watched Palpatine give a tired smile, then sigh, face sobering. A dronecam swept downward til it was hovering only a couple of meters from the chancellor's face; looking into its lens, Palpatine said:

"Lastly, I speak to the brave beings of the Defense Force. Know that I am not asking you to abandon your worlds, your loved ones, your homes. I would no more ask that of you than I would ask myself to forget Naboo. This is not the rejection of one home, but the embrace of another—one that will be with you wherever you go across the galaxy. The Republic owes you a debt we can never repay—but I hope that we can start here, by making the galaxy a safer place for its citizens and for you to do your work."

Bail thought of Cody, waking up in a hospital bed to find his legs couldn't move, then looking up and watching this address on a holoscreen. He clenched his fists hard enough for his nails to bite into his palms.

"And with that, my friends and colleagues," said Palpatine, his voice no longer ringing outward but forming the fatherly tones the galaxy knew so well, "we take our leave of each other. Some of us, to return to our constituencies; others of us, to remain here and rebuild. May we next meet in a restored Senate, on a restored Coruscant, to bring peace to a restored Republic—and to the galaxy.

"I bid you all a very fond farewell."

Bail didn't wait for the farewell applause to finish. Turning to Mon, he leaned close enough for her to hear his whisper. "Don't go to Chandrila. Come to Alderaan."

"What?" she asked, her voice startled to a volume much higher than his own.

Pulling back, Bail fixed his eyes on hers. "Breha," he said slowly, "would love to finally meet you."

After a moment, she nodded, understanding crystallizing in her eyes.

He pivoted to his head of security. "Padmé," he said, "lock up the office for me, would you? And then take a few days off. Be with Anakin. I'll let you know when I need you."

Padmé's inherent irritation at being told what to do seemed to be blunted by confusion. "Wait, where are you going?"

"I'm letting Raymus know to get the Sundered Heart ready for takeoff," he told her, casting one last look at the central podium—where Palpatine stood, basking in his reception. "I'm not staying here a second longer."

As he turned and swept out of the rotunda, echoing claps followed him.

Republic Archives: Regarding the Structural Integrity of the Senate Rotunda

[excerpt from a memorandum sent to the Office of the Supreme Chancellor, from the desk of the Architect of the Capitol Complex]

Unlike the secure shelter connected to the Executive Residence, the Senate Rotunda was never designed to survive a direct orbital strike. The use of a capital ship as a projectile, though highly unusual and rather barbaric, undoubtedly places a similar amount of stress on the building's structure.

Frankly, we are shocked the "Dome," as it is often called, withstood the impact as well as it did. Nevertheless, the impact of the Charybdis caused untold structural damage. The fires that burned in the wake of the crash were not extinguished for several hours, weakening critical support latticework that keeps the Dome aloft.

A proper safety evaluation would take a team of advisors several days to complete. The needed repairs to make the Senate Rotunda structurally sound may require months of work. The timeline you have put forth for this special session is simply too hurried. We cannot in good conscience condone an onsite convening of the Galactic Senate, and strongly urge you to consider an alternate location or a virtual gathering.