Lemmite ore runs from Eriadu to Kuat bored the hell out of Trade Federation Captain Blova Keet. She had made the run so often she could do it in her sleep. These days, a little hit of glimmerstim did wonders to keep her awake and alert. Gone were the starry-eyed days when she had crewed and dreamed of driving ships. Now she paid her taxes, saved almost all of her trip fees for the day she could retire to Ord Mantell, and slept aboard ship even in port.

She had been running this same route for the Trade Federation for too many years. Male captains made more money and were allowed to carry more droids. Male captains were allowed to bring spouses aboard. Driving this run, Keet would end up being single for life. Her only diversions were the holovid and the three-star chef she hired for the galley. She was now about the only fat female Nemoidian she knew of.

These thoughts ran around and around her head as she took her place on the bridge of the Quarter Moon, the freighter to which she was most often assigned, for so long her feet had worn two imprints in front of the captain's chair and the chair itself had formed to her body.

She settled her morning caffe in the arm of her chair and pulled her tiny vial of glitterstim from her sleeve to add just a tad more to her cup.

No one would notice.

The shout knocked the glitterstim from her hand. "Captain!"

Her navigator: "Action III freighter approaching at top speed! Are those … It's got laser cannons! Powering up!"

A most un-leader-like, "What!" was all Keet could manage. Bann displayed the ship on his screen, together with the graphics that indicated weapons.

He wasn't kidding.

Tension ratcheted up a kilo high. "They're targeting our hyperdrive!"

Keet shouted, "Evasive maneuv—"

Too late. An enormous explosion rocked the ship. All Keet could think was how much Trade Federation Shipping Division was going to dock her pay for this.

Her engineering officer: "Hyperdrive is nonoperational, sir. Fires on decks seven, eight, and nine!"

"Seal off the affected parts of those decks! Damage control!" shouted Keet, her mind racing. "Hail them!"

"Not answering hails, Captain!"

"Why are they still moving towards us?"

The answer came with a terrible metallic clang as the two hulls collided.

"Impulse engines!" Keet called out.

"We're caught in a tractor beam!"

"Power those engines up and break free!"

"Hull breach! We're being? … Sir, we're being boarded."

"Activate the droids!"

Keet and her bridge officers watched the security screens as four beings in armor that looked suspiciously Mandalorian wiped out their entire contingent of B1's. A metallic creak and groan arose from the unfortified door to the bridge.

"Sir, they're forcing the door!"

The doors opened with a shudder, just enough to allow two blaster barrels, and two armored figures stepped through.
"Crew of the Quarter Moon! You have just been hijacked."

Due to dock on Coruscant in about six hours, Sheev snuggled lazily next to Sereine in bed, floating in the warmth of post-orgasmic bliss. Normally this level of indulgence felt very taboo to him, and unless she'd been gone for six months and they'd cleared themselves a reunion weekend, it made him feel indulgent and weak to do this. But, they were trapped on a transport, there was little else to do, and she would be gone in two weeks for yet another six months.

When he allowed himself the indulgence, he made sure to enjoy it fully.

She trailed kisses up his jawline and cheek to whisper in his ear. "Thank you." Her hand played in the curls below his navel.

Sidious found himself laughing into the dark. "I must confess, I haven't had a woman thank me for a carnal interlude before."

Sereine left two more kisses beneath his ear. "That's a shame." Her arm pressed him closer, and her hand reached lower. "I love this," she whispered, closing her fingers around him. "I love being with you."

Sidious remained silent. She was trying any way she could to work in that word he had forbidden, and he resented it.

She toyed with him gently and whispered, "Do you know the one part of the Human male anatomy that's been scientifically shown to correlate with the, um, size, of this part?"

Curiosity stirred him from the brief flame of his anger. "No, I must confess that I don't. I've heard hands. Feet."

"Nope," she said brightly, and then she rose over him and nuzzled his nose with hers.

It took him a second to understand his nose was the body part she was indicating. "Really? You don't say."

"It's true." She gave his nose, that most unattractive part of him, another gentle bump with hers, and settled against his chest with a laugh.

Sidious put an arm around her and she fell silent. He suspected she had fallen asleep, leaving him alone in the dark to meander and muse on the nature of all couplings.

He had been thinking a lot on that lately; it was yet another troubling dialectic in the Force. He hadn't written about it yet, for as usual he had no answers, only questions. Coupling ran all through Sith literature, in the holocrons, scrolls, and books. The Force Dyad. The Power of Two.

And yet, in the end, there could be only one. This made little sense to him.

Sidious was beginning to doubt the prophecy of the Dyad. It hadn't happened in a thousand years. Perhaps the teaching was a perversion of the basest inclination to pair, the visceral drivings of nature. Even he hadn't been able to overcome that as of yet. The coupling was passionate, yes, and that sang with the power of the dark side; but this unaccustomed weakness after. He disliked it even as it suffused him with pleasure.

And why this woman? She was beautiful and bewitching, but he sensed she was nearing the end of her usefulness to him.

During that infernal first Senatorial campaign, yes, he had needed her. He had been caught off guard in a way he never would were it Sith instincts and his life at stake; he had made a horrible mistake he had not known how to get himself out of.

But she had, and he had learned from that. His emancipation speeches presented a hurdle, at first. But the techniques she had drawn out of him, in the control of his voice and his demeanor, in what sartorial choices could do in the promotion of an agenda, he had incorporated now as his own.

He had progressed from having her write or at least read any remarks he was preparing on the subject of emancipation and asking her to evaluate at least one run-through, to nearly being able to perform the shtick in his sleep.

He hadn't asked her for an emancipation run-through in weeks, though requests for him to speak continued to trickle in. He was sure she had noticed.

There was only this last. Once he had mastered what he needed to flawlessly perform a Tonight Show segment, he sensed he would no longer need her. Not the way he had in the past. She would be useful to organize his career, of course, and he wouldn't jettison her services as he approached the Box—there was no need to jinx a winning combination, after all—but he sensed his awful dependence on her was almost over, just as he had outgrown Lord Plagueis once, and all the Fallen Masters of Korriban.

In a sense, she had been his last teacher, and now he was about through. About to take full possession of all his gifts, not simply those he possessed in the Force, and guide his own destiny from here into the future.

And that would change this. He did not need it anymore.

So, why cling? To need any personal relationship was a weakness for any Sith.

The memories of this trip, especially, when he had been able to forget himself, disturbed him. Moments: Sereine on his arm at the Crevasse City Opera. It wasn't the Queen of Alderaan everyone was staring at. Sereine put Queen Breha quite in the shade, and Palpatine had experienced pride in that.

Sidious had experienced pride in that.

All these moments alone. Just man and woman, pure in delight in one another. Sidious had heard enough rueful comments from colleagues, married for many years.

Rarely did this kind of relationship last; yet he and Sereine had enjoyed this almost perfect balance of desire and fulfillment for nearly five years. Probably because of the long separations, he realized, and the fact that they weren't married, and neither would ever consider it.

A memory arose unbidden: His distress over his ungainly face as a teenager. It was his cocksure attitude and his subtle skill in the Force that snared him any conquests he cared to make then—before the Vow, that is—and not what Sereine seemed to find in him.

Whatever she saw, it was not the Force, not dominion, not power. Whatever she saw in this bed, alone, naked, it was not those things; and their victories in the political arena were completely apart from those things. Whatever she drew out of him, and adored in these interludes together …

Sidious turned over suddenly, away from her, retreating from her arms. What had just entered his mind was too intimate for her embrace.

All this time he had been telling himself that she could never love him the way he truly was. That Sith were to rise above any aching male need. And she didn't see him the way he truly was, no, not in one sense. Yet, in another ...

She stirred beside him, the puny thing, not even present in the Force. "Going to sleep, Eder?" she whispered.

He managed one word: "Exhausted."

She whispered, "Good," and snuggled up behind him.