Republic Archives: Emergency Senate Session Summons
Attention Senator [name] of [planet, moon, or outlying territory].
You are hereby summoned immediately for an emergency session of the Galactic Senate. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine of Naboo and Speaker of the Senate Mas Amedda will be presiding, as Chancellor Palpatine delivers a critical address regarding the state of our nation.
Due to the sensitive and urgent nature of the subject matter at hand, typical Senate nonattendance protocol does not apply. The session will begin promptly at 0600 hours (local Coruscant district time) regardless of whether a quorum has been reached.
Thank you for your service to the Republic.
Chapter Eighty-Two: Most Extreme Solution
A chorus of a thousand voices droned in Bail's ears—the individual speakers lost, smeared together, blurred by the cavernous echo that swelled throughout the Senate chamber. Most pods lining the walls of the legislative hive were occupied—clusters of two or three senators engaged in muted conversation, biding time until business could begin.
Beneath it all, a sharp whine underscored the cacophony. This, Bail knew, was a sound of his mind's own making, a ringing tinnitus to accompany the nausea. The blurred vision. The headaches. He was at once grateful and utterly terrified to be sitting in his own Senate pod alone.
It was early—far earlier than the Senate would typically convene. Coruscant's sun had yet to crest above the towers on the horizon—sharp shafts of orange light filtered through the cracks between the skyscrapers; the ornamental crystal scar in the ceiling of the Senate dome had just begun to glow with the sunrise. It was the only hint of natural light that pierced the congressional headquarters—the windows in the Senate foyer were long gone, barricaded over by hefty plates of durasteel. A temporary security measure in the wake of the attack on the Republic capital, Palpatine had called it almost a year ago.
One of many temporary measures that had simply never been reversed, Bail realized as he scanned the faces dotting the chamber. Soldiers clad in polished plastoid took up a handful of the otherwise empty pods set into the wall—pods meant for senators who had yet to arrive, or who perhaps never would.
As his gaze swept across the full circumference of the chamber, Bail's eyes fell on a familiar face. Mon Mothma lacked the entourage that most of the other senators had surrounded themselves with that morning—like Bail, she was alone. Despite the early hour, her appearance was impeccable—not a hair out of place, not a single wrinkle cut across the overlapping fabric layers of her dress. But as Bail's eyes caught hers, he could see the unmistakable fatigue behind them.
She seemed, at first, to flinch—to instinctively direct her eyes toward the floor, as if pretending not to see him. This passed after a moment, and when her eyes returned to meet his they were frighteningly wide. Shock was painted across her face; even from afar Bail could see his fellow senator go a touch pale as her gaze shifted slightly, to stare just beyond him.
He turned his head, glancing over his shoulder to see what Mon was looking at—and fought to keep a startled convulsion from his face as he was greeted with an answer.
"Sapir?" Bail whispered—the words were dry and raspy, barely audible above the din of conversation that still bloomed throughout the Senate chamber. His eyes flitted up and down, sizing up the Fosh who stood before him. She was adorned in a flowing formal robe which extended to the floor—oversized sleeves, their edges tailored into jagged points, seemed to swallow up the length of her arms.
The crest of feathers above the avian's forehead was what drew Bail's eyes the most. This, after all, was how he would know which Sapir had come to see him. Was she here as Vice Chair of the Republic, second in command to Palpatine himself? Was she here to further the interests of her own Kuati constituents?
Or was she here as just Sapir, former colleague in Bail's own administration?
The Fosh's own words did little to provide an answer. They were short, pointed. She was testing the waters too. "Good to see you, Bail."
He nodded slowly, fighting the urge to glance around the room and see if anyone was watching them. "Likewise. I must say, I'm a bit surprised. I thought you'd be with the chancellor."
Her headcrest flared outward, deep purple tones waving their way across each feather as Sapir shook her head. "I'll be taking my own seat today. There's no need for me to share the spotlight—this is Palpatine's announcement."
"But you know what it's about?"
At this, her feathers froze in place, their color shifting toward a pale blue. She lifted her shoulders upward in an awkward approximation of a human shrug. "As much as anyone in my position can know."
Bail gritted his teeth, breaking his gaze away from Sapir to scan the room again. The jagged crystal in the ceiling, the memorial of the damage done to the Senate dome by the crash of the Charybdis, was glowing brighter now.
He turned to face her again. "What are you doing here, Sapir?"
A low whistle emerged from the Fosh's nostrils as she exhaled slowly, keeping her beak tightly clenched. The avian's glassy black eyes flitted from one side to the other; the light reflecting in them shifted with her glance.
Then she leaned in toward Bail and whispered. "I need you to vote no."
Bail's first instinct was to angle his head sideways. To paint confusion on his face. To play dumb. "Vote?" he echoed, keeping his voice as low as hers. "There's no legislation on the docket. Palpatine is giving an address."
Silence hung between them as Sapir tilted her head downward—a slow and solitary nod, as if to signal that they both knew better than that.
Fear clenched its fist around Bail's heart again, just as it had when he'd seen the Classical District curfew order. When he'd heard about the transit station closures, the blaster fire and explosions. As it had when he'd received a summons to convene for an emergency session of the Senate.
"Please," Sapir said. "Just do it."
Bail tried to swallow the rising lump in his throat. "You know what he's planning."
It hadn't been a question—but in response Sapir shook her head. "Not enough. He's kept me out of almost all of it. My staff, my security detail—all of them report to Palpatine now. He sends me on these planetary speaking circuits so I can't attend meetings. He intercepts my mail and reads it before I can. Sometimes messages are missing. Gone, just . . . erased. I have no idea what he's planning, but I know this:
"Whatever it is, he needs the Senate for it. He needs the illusion of a democratic process. Right here, right now, is our chance to speak up. To stake our claim, establish some sort of opposition party—"
Bail held up a hand to stop her. His mind raced, and his heart along with it. He drew a ragged breath.
"Who else have you spoken to about this?" It was, he realized, the only question that mattered now—how much danger had she put them both in?
Once again, she shook her head—her headcrest feathers seemed to shrink back, their color flattening into a dull, almost sickly green.
"No one," she said. "I couldn't take the risk."
Relief washed over Bail—and evaporated again in an instant as she continued.
"You and I will be enough. We have to be enough. The current Vice Chair? The previous Chancellor? If we take this chance now to speak up against him, others will follow." She was frantic now, eyes wide and manic desperation seeping into her voice.
Bail fought to stay composed, to keep his voice from cracking as another panicked question bubbled to the surface. "And if they don't?"
Sapir never got a chance to answer. The sound of reckoning—the harsh mechanical grind of an iris shifting open—rang out from the center of the Senate chamber. Light shone upward from below as the chancellor's grand podium began to rise into place—and the din of conversation faded as every senator in the room broke into a chorus of applause.
Every senator but two.
"You need to leave," Bail hissed, his eyes darting from the rising podium back to Sapir. "He can't see us together, he can't know we spoke."
Her headcrest feathers rippled again, turning the color of the sunrise as a singsong whistle escaped the tip of Sapir's beak. "You'll do it, then?" she asked.
Bail squeezed his eyes shut. Offered a nod of silent—panicked, utterly terrified—confirmation. "Go."
Folds of fabric rippled as if caught in an afternoon breeze. Feathers turned grey—blank and lifeless—as Sapir whisked herself away, disappearing back into the foyer that encircled this level of the Senate chamber.
Bail still faced away from the rising podium at the chamber's center, but forced his hands to come together nonetheless. And as he turned away from where Sapir once stood, he could just make out the motion of two plastoid-clad soldiers wandering by the entrance to his Senate pod. As they passed, their steps slowed. Their heads shifted, angling the frozen expressions of their helmets toward him. Each adjusted their grip on a blaster rifle as they came to a stop.
Then, as silence swept across the Senate chamber, the soldiers moved on.
The executive podium had finished its upward journey. Palpatine stood at its center, one hand aloft as if to greet the crowd. Beside him, the hulking figure of Mas Amedda clenched a ceremonial staff—as the applause in the room waned, the Chagrian jabbed the object into the platform beneath his feet. Bail felt the impact in his chest—the call to order.
Then Palpatine began to speak.
"My friends," he said, "my fellow citizens and senators. Thank you all for joining me on such short notice." There was a gravelly undercurrent to the chancellor's voice, and his posture betrayed the exhaustion of a sleepless night.
"No one wishes their time in public office to be defined by war. Cast in the shadow of so much conflict. But that is where we find ourselves. Now our legacy, and the fate of our great nation, will be determined by our actions in this time of crisis."
Bail felt his pulse quicken as he fought to keep his eyes locked forward. He couldn't dare risk another glance at Mon, nor any of the other senators he'd once conspired with. Yet he found himself equally unable to stare at Palpatine, lest the chancellor's gaze meet his own.
Instead he let his eyes settle upon the one vacant seat in the podium—the one to Palpatine's left, meant for the vice chair. He wondered what the other senators would make of her absence. Whether they would notice, or even care.
As Palpatine continued, his fatigue seemed to melt away. Each new word brought with it a renewed energy, a rising volume that echoed throughout the chamber. "The warlords, Maul and Valis, are dead. The Confederacy is dissolved, its board destroyed, its clone army scattered, its officers desperately grasping for power as they retreat into the Outer Rim.
"And the Jedi . . ."
Palpatine trailed off for a moment, seemingly allowing his latest words to linger in the air. The sensation of everyone in the room leaning forward at once was almost palpable—and finally, Bail risked a glance away from the podium. Upward, away from most of the other senate pods, to one set high above the rest—one meant for members of the executive office to observe senate proceedings. Gilded flags adorned it; armed Red Guards stood at attention on either side of its entrance.
And in its center stood a cloaked figure. From afar, one would be forgiven for not recognizing the face that just barely protruded from beneath the cloak's raised hood. But there was a way the figure stood—how he carried himself, how he recoiled when the word Jedi twisted its way off Palpatine's tongue—that betrayed his true identity, should one bother to look closely enough.
Anakin Skywalker.
"I can now share with you that in the early hours of this morning, a joint law enforcement and military team breached the walls of a Jedi stronghold here on Coruscant. Their mission was to peacefully apprehend the individuals responsible for planning the attack which nearly ended my life."
Palpatine paused—as the holocamera drone orbiting his podium came to a standstill, the chancellor's face fell toward the floor. "The Jedi were violently uncooperative."
"In the battle that ensued within the confines of their so-called Temple, many brave and loyal soldiers of the Republic were lost." The chancellor raised his eyes once again, gazing ever higher as his speech grew into a fiery shout. "But their sacrifice has brought us a critical victory. As of today, the Jedi presence on Coruscant has been totally eradicated!"
Sickness gripped Bail's stomach, and the room erupted into cheers. He swept his eyes around the chamber—even Mon, to her credit, was managing to feign polite applause. Skywalker stood quietly, seemingly unmoved by the revelation.
"And so," Palpatine continued, motioning for the crowd to settle, "we arrive at a crossroads."
Bail turned to glance at the Kuati senate pod, hoping to catch Sapir's eye. To see if this was their moment, the thing she was so desperate to stop Palpatine from doing.
The senator was nowhere to be found. Her pod stood empty—no staff or aides, no soldiers or security. Its seats were vacant, the lights of its built-in data terminal totally dark.
"Our enemies have been driven back—and it is here that they are perhaps at their most dangerous. The clones and criminals, secessionists and Jedi who fought to topple what we have built now grow desperate. I fear they will turn their tactics inward, working to sow discord among our ranks and tear this nation apart from the inside.
"We cannot allow that to happen."
Bail felt as though he could sense the room around him—could feel the mind of each senator who sat at their seat's edge, positively enraptured by Palpatine's every word. His eyes wandered up to Skywalker once again—the one person in the room who could feel it all. He was a statue.
"We must be swift to respond to threats. Vigilant in the maintenance of security. United—every system, every citizen, every soldier, every senator."
Not every senator, Bail thought, risking yet another panicked glance at Sapir's pod. It was still dark, still vacant. Whatever happened next, he would have to face it on his own.
Palpatine's speech grew louder. He was shouting now, spitting forth every word with righteous fury. "Petty interplanetary squabbles cannot divide us. The executive and legislative branches of this nation cannot be misaligned, lest we once again plunge ourselves into crisis."
Bail felt himself shrink backward at the obvious jab, an instant jolt of fear rushing up his spine as he scanned the room to see whose eyes had fallen upon him. None had. The room was caught up in a growing chorus of applause—and Palpatine was riding the wave of overwhelming approval, the Senate chamber's energy propelling him forward.
"Our armies and navies cannot be fractured among the command of a thousand worlds. Our people cannot be swayed by separatists to turn against this great nation. I come before you today with a series of legislative proposals that will empower us to act quickly in times of crisis, establish new agencies to maintain internal security, and unite every system under one flag as we work to reshape the Old Republic into a new Galactic Empire!"
Thunder shook the Senate chamber—a great roar of cheers, the sound of a thousand pairs of hands slamming together as senators leapt to their feet in adulation. Bail forced himself to stand along with them, though he refrained from clapping. Skywalker, he noticed, remained still as well, arms crossed in front of his chest.
Just as he had before the speech began, Mas Amedda hoisted his ceremonial staff into the air and slammed it downward. The sharp crack echoed outward, slicing through the cacophony. "Order!" the Chagrian boomed. "Senators, we shall have order!"
Though the applause subsided with relative haste, no senator returned to their seat—but Palpatine, seemingly satisfied with the state of things, pressed on.
"This legislation, drafted by my office, will be forwarded to your staff at once. I urge the Senate to work swiftly to bring these matters to a vote, and should they come to pass, I—"
"Vote now!"
An involuntary gasp escaped Bail's mouth. Other senators followed suit, as scattered whispers sounded throughout the senate chamber. Though it was the breach of decorum that had first startled him, it was the dawning realization that caused Bail's pulse to hasten.
This is it. This was what Sapir had come to warn him about—and now he was perhaps the only one poised to stop it. His eyes darted from one pod to the next, desperation gnawing at his brain as he fought to pinpoint the delegate who had first interrupted Palpatine.
The task soon became impossible. One voice became ten, then several dozen, then too many to count. A growing chant that filled him with unprecedented dread. Whether Palpatine had planned the interruption was irrelevant. It had grown into a genuine movement, a wave of energy coursing throughout the Senate chamber.
"Vote now! Vote now! Vote now!"
One. Two. Three more raps of the Speaker's staff against the deck of the podium platform. "Order!" Mas Amedda shouted yet again. Then he raised the staff once more—and held it there. "I call to order a voice vote of the Galactic Senate. All in favor of holding an immediate vote on the chancellor's legislative proposals?"
"AYE!"
The sound was enormous—positively deafening, a chorus plausibly composed of every senator in the room save one. Bail Organa had held his tongue.
"All opposed?"
An equally deafening silence. Time stood still as Bail felt his senses shrink inward. Waited for Mon, Garm, anyone to say something.
Realized he had only moments left to raise his own voice.
Right here, right now, Sapir's voice echoed inside his skull—and yet, she had vanished. Whisked away by Palpatine's soldiers, perhaps—or just unable to bear the crushing weight of the present moment.
"The ayes have it," said Mas Amedda.
The window closed, the opportunity vanished, Alderaan's senator collapsed backward into his chair and let out a ragged sigh. As they had so many times this morning, his eyes swept the room—but this time, a fiery rage burned behind them.
As Mas Amedda's voice droned on, reciting the script of ceremonial Senate procedure, Bail's gaze fell briefly upon each of his Senate colleagues. Nearly every one was electric with excitement, their expressions betraying a genuine enthusiasm at the day's turn of events.
How had it come to this? How had they allowed it to? Soon, his sweep of the chamber brought an answer to the center of his vision. An obvious answer—the only answer.
Palpatine.
Bail's jaw clenched tight as a memory clawed its way to the surface. A meeting in the Executive Office all those years ago—back when he had sat in the seat of power, and Palpatine was only there as a visitor. They'd spoken of many things—of Bail's failures as chancellor. The impending war.
The Jedi, meddling in the affairs of the Republic.
In Bail's mind, Palpatine's words echoed louder than they ever had before, infused with new meaning. The future chancellor had been so concerned about extralegal conspiracy. About Jedi interference.
And if agents of that group are uncovered, they will be met with the most extreme solution.
He'd been warned. Years ago, Palpatine had let the mask slip for but a moment—shown Bail exactly who he was, what he'd planned to do. Bail had brushed it aside. Tried to defeat Palpatine in a game of politics, undo him at the ballot box. And it had gotten them here.
Sickness churned within his stomach as he imagined that meeting—imagined how it might have gone differently. Imagined how history might have played out if he'd leapt across the desk then and there and wrapped his bare hands around Palpatine's throat . . .
A sudden chill shot up Bail's spine—he jolted upright in his seat, as if waking from a horrid dream. No, he thought, purging the image from his mind. Right now it wasn't safe to want those things—wasn't safe to even think them. Rising to his feet again, he risked yet another glance at the executive observation pod. At Skywalker.
The man was gone, the pod vacant.
Bail's brow furrowed. Had Skywalker been called elsewhere? Here and now, during Palpatine's triumphant moment—pulled away on some assignment in service of the new Empire?
Or had he simply not wanted to watch what was about to happen?
In the center of the Senate chamber, Mas Amedda raised his staff aloft once again. Called a vote to order—invited the members of the Senate to appoint Palpatine of Naboo as the nation's First Emperor.
Before a single vote could be cast, Bail Organa turned and left the room.