Precipice by shadowsong26
Captain: Chapter 6
Specter had delivered concrete evidence, in the form of a poor-quality surveillance video, that Skywalker had survived the attack on the Temple. He had presented this to Sidious in much the same way a pet feline might provide its owner with a dead rodent-full of smug satisfaction for a gesture that was neither necessary nor particularly wanted.
Particularly since Sidious, of course, had already known . He had suspected from the beginning, of course; he had never sensed Skywalker's death. Besides, he knew rather intimately how the young man operated, and certain acts of rebellious sabotage over the last year and a half were clearly the work of his erstwhile protege. It was vexing to think that his current apprentice thought he needed further proof than that.
The boy was chomping at the bit now, all too eager to hunt down and kill his rival. Sidious, however, did not consider Skywalker's removal a priority at this time. So he had sent Specter off to accomplish more productive tasks, and set himself to re-examining his candidate list. Sooner or later, after all, the confrontation that Specter so craved would happen. And, at present, it was unlikely to end in the boy's favor.
Well, Sidious had learned the value of backup plans. The next time, though, he thought he would perhaps start with a more mature candidate. Children were easier to manipulate, to mold; but often proved volatile and irritatingly undisciplined.
Still, he did not intend-yet-to replace Specter as a response to his performance, simply to be prepared for the increasingly-likely necessity of doing so. The boy's excess of enthusiasm would be curbed, and had not caused any difficulties or failures. Merely annoyance. As did his attitude towards the tape and all it represented.
Sidious paused for a moment, picking up the datastick and turning it over in his hands as a thought occurred.
Perhaps there was a use for the dead-rodent recording after all.
He had known for some time that Skywalker still lived. The question was-had certain other interested parties been aware?
Yes, he would keep Specter a while longer, despite his adolescent exuberance. The boy had potential, and had, if unwittingly, provided his master with an interesting opportunity.
He summoned Senator Amidala to his presence and set the grainy recording playing on a loop in the center of the audience chamber.
When she arrived moments later, and saw what he had laid out for her, her outward behavior was almost entirely perfect. Nothing in her expression showed her response to the security footage of her presumed-dead lover; she didn't miss a step. Then again, she had been performing politics since she was a child, and he had expected no less. But that didn't mean there was no reaction; her breath caught very slightly in her throat, and she carefully avoided looking at the hologram, even as she knelt less than a meter away from it.
Internally, of course, she was a storm. Her thoughts flickered madly between the boy she had adopted and her daughter's grave. There was a deep well of mingled terror and grief and defiance backing it up.
...hm.
Uninformed, non-sensitive imbeciles tended to assume the Force bestowed the ability to read minds, as clearly and accurately as reading text on a screen. This was, at best, a vast oversimplification. He could see Amidala's thoughts and feelings, of course, as plainly as if she were projecting them right alongside the security footage. The trouble was that specific words were rare, unless deliberately projected. Which left what he saw open to a certain amount of interpretation.
She was surprised by the footage. That much he knew for certain. She had covered quickly, but not quite quickly enough. And, while that could have been because she was unaware that Skywalker lived, it could have been only that she was unaware such recent images existed, and had been caught off guard.
And while she was not sensitive and so could not shield, as such, she was all too aware of how she presented herself to him, so apart from that first ambiguous, tangled flash of raw feeling, her reaction was overshadowed by how she felt about Sidious.
This was not the first time such a thing had happened. True, he continued to conceal his true identity as a Sith Lord from all but a select few, but he had abandoned the kindly, avuncular mask he had worn for so long as no longer necessary.
And, for the most part, it wasn't. But when it was, he could no longer assume the pretense as he once had. Scars aside, some masks simply could not be replaced with any sort of credibility.
"You sent for me, Majesty?" Amidala asked softly, breaking the silence after nearly a full minute. She kept her eyes lowered, her shoulders deceptively relaxed, but he could practically taste her desperate defiance in the air; a blunt, stubborn refusal to give him the satisfaction of seeing her pain.
But whether her grief was at the sudden reminder of a long separation, or at a perceived betrayal, at having been deceived by the father of her dead child...
"Yes," he said, sinking back into his throne. Another test, then, was in order. She had made no suspect communications, with Skywalker or any other undesirables. But, then again, he hadn't really given her much of an opportunity to do so, as he had with certain other Senators and officials he suspected. And Padmẻ Amidala had never been particularly good at restraining herself. If he gave her an opening, she was bound to leap through it. "Recently, as you can see, there was a traitorous act of sabotage at a mining facility."
"I condemn such acts when I learn of them," she said quickly-a hair too quickly, but that was due to simple fear, mere desperation to keep her head on her shoulders. She camouflaged it better than most, but it still shone through.
"Yes," he said. "I am sending you to oversee a portion of the reconstruction. Several of the miners lost their homes, among other assets. You are, I believe, no stranger to such mercy missions?"
Her eyes flicked up to the recording, just for an instant, and she knew it was a trap.
But knowing and avoiding are not, in fact, the same thing, he thought, amused by the wild patterns her thoughts carved under her skin. Whether or not you manage to sidestep now, when the time is right, my dear, you will make extremely effective bait.
"No, Majesty, I am not," she said quietly.
"You may go and prepare," he said. "I expect a report on your progress within three days."
She bowed, then rose and left the room, again studiously avoiding looking at the hologram still flickering between them.
Sidious deactivated it with an impatient wave of his hand. That had been a reasonably productive interview, though he hadn't quite gotten what he wanted out of Amidala. He had set her on a path that would likely lead there, at least. And there would, he was certain, be further opportunities in the future.
More importantly, it had solidified his understanding of a weak point in his regime. He no longer had the access he once did to unguarded thoughts, unguarded reactions. Oh, professional politicians were always careful about such things, but not to this extent.
What he had gained in exchange for that camouflage, of course, was worth the price and more, but the simple fact was that he might be missing key details. This placed certain... limitations ...on his ability to manipulate the beings in his domain; and it made it marginally likelier that a traitor might actually cause some damage before they were detected and brought down.
He could not regain what he had lost-so, much as he had had to substitute the lesser talents of Specter for all he had cultivated in Anakin Skywalker, he would need an alternative. A proxy. One who could observe and wrangle the Senators, the Moffs, the High Command, as he had five years ago.
And, naturally, one over whom he had absolute control.
Specter, of course, would never function in that capacity. The boy was a thief in the night, an assassin; not the kind of person people ignored. Not the way Sidious needed his proxy to be ignored. Besides, he had no intention of putting that much authority in a single person's hands.
As for Tarkin and the rest, even if he were willing to invest that much influence in any one of them, those he had elevated had been promoted for other talents. Ones incompatible with what he needed now.
There was a possibility-one of the potential candidates for Specter's successor; a woman named Daya. She could be trained and presented as someone merely ornamental. Decorative. She lacked the raw power he wanted in an apprentice, but had enough strength to learn a few subtle tricks.
On the other hand, she had already committed at least three murders that he knew of, though none could be tied to her legally. She might, like Specter, have too much of an independently violent streak to play the role he needed. At least not without significant time and effort spent breaking her. And such operations were delicate; all too easy to go too far and render her useless. No, Daya would not serve him in this way.
He started to move on, then paused.
Daya would not serve him directly in this way.
But she could still provide him the asset he sought. She could have a child.
Sidious had considered taking such a step in the past-there had been a point in particular, a little over half a decade before he had at last become Chancellor, when the political expedience had almost- almost- outweighed the risks. But Plagueis had advised against it, and he had found another way to solve the problem of the moment, and let the notion fade away.
But not, apparently, die entirely.
It was still a risk, of course. Not for the same reasons it had been twenty years ago, necessarily, but still a risk. This would put a considerable amount of potential power in another person's hands. And training an asset from infancy was, as he had learned with Maul, sometimes a tricky business. To say nothing of the delay in actually being able to use said asset.
Still, there were significant advantages as well. While everyone would know the child was a spy-or, if they didn't, they wouldn't be worth spying on in the first place-most sentients had a peculiar blind spot where younglings were concerned. And it would be remarkably effective bait; for ambitious subordinates seeking to rise, and for bleeding-heart traitors seeking to 'rescue'. It would serve as a deterrent, too, to Specter and any who followed him. A constant, living, breathing reminder of how easily he could be replaced.
The risk it presented-Sidious could mitigate that, he was certain, with the right sort of training. Assuming it had any intelligence at all; which, as his child, it certainly would. The delay, on the other hand, unfortunately could not be helped, but did he really lose anything in the meantime? It wasn't as though he couldn't keep an eye out for extant candidates as well.
He smiled to himself. A child would not solve his current dilemma, but in the future, would be worth the wait. And if it was not, he was not so arrogant as to be unable to recognize when his experiment had failed and dispose of the results.
Sidious pulled up Daya's file again, searching for anything in her records that might make her a poor candidate for the endeavor. If nothing else, simply the attempt would certainly draw a reaction from his enemies.
And once they were reacting to him, moving down the paths he laid out for them…
This trap might be decades in the making, but it would, he thought, be well worth the wait.