Attack of the Clones (6 page)

The female fighter pilot arrived first, dropping to one knee beside the fallen woman. She pulled the helmet from her head and quickly shook her brown tresses free.

“Senator!” Typho yelled. It was indeed Padmé Amidala kneeling beside the dying woman, her decoy. “Come, the danger has not passed!”

But Padmé waved the captain back furiously, then bent low to her fallen friend.

“Cordé,” she said quietly, her voice breaking. Cordé was one of her beloved bodyguards, a woman who had been with her, serving her and serving Naboo, for many years. Padmé gathered Cordé up in her arms, hugging her gently.

Cordé opened her eyes, rich brown orbs so similar to Padmé’s own. “I’m sorry, m’Lady,” she gasped, struggling for breath with every word. “I’m … not sure I …” She paused and lay there, staring at Padmé. “I’ve failed you.”

“No!” Padmé insisted, arguing the bodyguard’s reasoning, arguing against all of this insanity. “No, no, no!”

Cordé continued to stare at her, or stare past her, it seemed to the grief-stricken young Senator. Looking past her and past everything, Cordé’s eyes stared into a far different place.

Padmé felt her relax suddenly, as if her spirit simply leapt from her corporeal form.

“Cordé!” the Senator cried, and she hugged her friend close, rocking back and forth, denying this awful reality.

“M’Lady, you are still in danger!” Typho declared, trying to sound sympathetic, but with a clear sense of urgency in his voice.

Padmé lifted her head from the side of Cordé’s face, and took a deep and steadying breath. Looking upon
her dead friend, remembering all at once the many times they had spent together, she gently lowered Cordé to the ground. “I shouldn’t have come back,” she said as she stood up beside the wary Typho, tears streaking her cheeks.

Captain Typho came up out of his ready stance long enough to lock stares with his Senator. “This vote is very important,” he reminded her, his tone uncompromising, the voice of a man sworn to duty above all else. So much like his uncle. “You did your duty, Senator, and Cordé did hers. Now come.”

He started away, grabbing Padmé’s arm, but she shrugged off his grasp and stood there, staring down at her lost friend.

“Senator Amidala! Please!”

Padmé looked over at the man.

“Would you so diminish Cordé’s death as to stand here and risk your own life?” Typho bluntly stated. “What good will her sacrifice be if—”

“Enough, Captain,” Padmé interrupted.

Typho motioned for Dolphe to run a defensive perimeter behind them, then he led the stricken Padmé away.

Back over at Padmé’s Naboo fighter, R2-D2 beeped and squealed and fell into line behind them.

T
he Senate Building on Coruscant wasn’t one of the tallest buildings in the city. Dome-shaped and relatively low, it did not soar up to the clouds, catching the afternoon sun as the others did in a brilliant display of shining amber. And yet the magnificent structure was not dwarfed by those towering skyscrapers about it, including the various Senate apartment complexes. Centrally located in the complex, and with a design very different from the typical squared skyscraper, the bluish smooth dome provided a welcome relief to the eye of the beholder, a piece of art within a community of simple efficiency.

The interior of the building was no less vast and impressive, its gigantic rotunda encircled, row upon row, by the floating platforms of the many Senators of the Republic, representing the great majority of the galaxy’s inhabitable worlds. A significant number of those platforms stood empty now, because of the separatist movement. Several thousand systems had joined in with Count Dooku over the last couple of years to secede
from a Republic that had, in their eyes, grown too ponderous to be effective, a claim that even the staunchest supporters of the Republic could not completely dispute.

Still, with this most important vote scheduled, the walls of the circular room echoed, hundreds and hundreds of voices chattering all at once, expressing emotions from anger to regret to determination.

In the middle of the main floor, standing at the stationary dais, the one unmoving speaking platform in the entire building, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine watched and listened, taking in the tumult and wearing an expression that showed deep concern. He was past middle age now, with silver hair and a face creased by deep lines of experience. His term limit had ended several years ago, but a series of crises had allowed him to stay in office well beyond the legal limit. From a distance, one might have thought him frail, but up close there could be no doubt of the strength and fortitude of this accomplished man.

“They are afraid, Supreme Chancellor,” Palpatine’s aide, Uv Gizen, remarked to him. “Many have heard reports of the demonstrations, even violent activity near this very building. The separatists—”

Palpatine held up his hand to quiet the nervous aide. “They are a troublesome group,” he replied. “It would seem that Count Dooku has whipped them into murderous frenzy. Or perhaps,” he said with apparent reflection, “their frustrations are mounting despite the effort of that estimable former Jedi to calm them. Either way, the separatists must be taken seriously.”

Uv Gizen started to respond again, but Palpatine put a finger to pursed lips to silence him, then nodded to the main podium, where his majordomo, Mas Amedda, was calling for order.

“Order! We shall have order!” the majordomo cried,
his bluish skin brightening with agitation. His lethorn head tentacles, protruding from the back side of his skull and wrapping down over his collar to frame his head like a cowl, twitched anxiously, their brownish-tipped horns bobbing on his chest. And as he turned side to side, his primary horns, standing straight for almost half a meter above his head, rotated like antennae gathering information on the crowd. Mas Amedda was an imposing figure in the Senate, but the chatter, the thousand private conversations, continued.

“Senators, please!” Mas Amedda called loudly. “Indeed, we have much to discuss. Many important issues. But the motion before us at this time, to commission an army to protect the Republic, takes precedence. That is what we will vote on at this time, and that alone! Other business must defer.”

A few complaints came back at Mas Amedda, and a few conversations seemed to gather momentum, but then Supreme Chancellor Palpatine stepped up to the podium, staring out over the gathering, and the great hall went silent. Mas Amedda bowed in deference to the great man and stepped aside.

Palpatine placed his hands on the rim of the podium, his shoulders noticeably sagging, his head bowed. The curious posture only heightened the tension, making the cavernous room seem even more silent, if that was possible.

“My esteemed colleagues,” he began slowly and deliberately, but even with that effort, his voice wavered and seemed as if it would break apart. Curiosity sent murmurs rumbling throughout the nervous gathering once more. It wasn’t often that Supreme Chancellor Palpatine appeared rattled.

“Excuse me,” Palpatine said quietly. Then, a moment later, he straightened and inhaled deeply, seeming to gather inner strength, which was amply reflected in his
solid voice as he repeated, “My esteemed colleagues. I have just received some tragic and disturbing news. Senator Amidala of the Naboo system … has been assassinated!”

A shock wave of silence rolled about the crowd; eyes went wide; mouths, for those who had mouths, hung open in disbelief.

“This grievous blow is especially personal to me,” Palpatine explained. “Before I became Chancellor, I was a Senator, serving Amidala when she was Queen of Naboo. She was a great leader who fought for justice. So beloved was she among her people that she could have been elected Queen for life!” He gave a great sigh and a helpless chuckle, as if that notion had been received as purely preposterous by the idealistic Amidala, as indeed it had. “But Senator Amidala believed in term limits, and she fervently believed in democracy. Her death is a great loss to us all. We will all mourn her as a relentless champion of freedom.” The Supreme Chancellor tilted his head, his eyes lowering, and he sighed again. “And as a dear friend.”

A few conversations began, but for the most part, the reverential silence held strong, with many Senators nodding their heads in agreement with Palpatine’s eulogy.

But at that critical time, on this most important day, the grim news could not overwhelm. Palpatine watched, without surprise, as the volatile Senator of Malastare, Ask Aak, maneuvered his floating platform down from the ranks and into the center of the arena. His large head rotated slowly about, his three eyes, protruding on fingerlike stalks, seeming to work independently, his horizontal ears twitching.

“How many more Senators will die before this civil strife ends?” the Malastarian cried. “We must confront these rebels now, and we need an army to do it!”

That bold statement brought many shouts of assent and dissent from the huge gathering, and several platforms moved all at once. One, bearing a blue-haired, scrunch-faced being, swept down fast beside the platform of Ask Aak. “Why weren’t the Jedi able to stop this assassination?” demanded Darsana, the ambassador of Glee Anselm. “How obvious it is that we are no longer safe under the protection of the Jedi!”

Another platform floated in fast on the heels of Darsana’s. “The Republic needs more security now!” agreed Twi’lek Senator Orn Free Taa, his thick jowls and long blue lekku head tentacles shaking. “Now! Before it comes to war!”

“Must I remind the Senator from Malastare that negotiations are continuing with the separatists?” Supreme Chancellor Palpatine interjected. “Peace is our objective here. Not war.”

“You say this while your friend lies dead, assassinated by those same people with whom you wish to negotiate?” Ask Aak asked, his orange-skinned face a mask of incredulity. All around the central arena, shouts and cries erupted, with Senators arguing vehemently. Many fists and other, more exotic, appendages were waved in the air at that explosive point.

Palpatine, supremely calm through it all, kept his disarming stare on Ask Aak.

“Did you not just name Amidala as your friend?” Ask Aak screamed at him.

Palpatine simply continued to stare at the man, a center of calm, the eye of the storm that was raging all about him.

Palpatine’s majordomo rushed to the podium then, taking the cue that his master must remain above this petulant squabbling if he was to be the voice of reason throughout this ferocious debate.

“Order!” Mas Amedda cried repeatedly. “Senators, please!”

But it went on and on, the screaming, the shouting, the fist waving.

Unnoticed through it all, yet another platform, bearing four people, approached the Senate gallery from the side, moving slowly but deliberately.

Aboard the approaching platform, Senator Padmé Amidala was shaking her head with disgust at the shouting and lack of civility emanating from the huge gallery before them. “This is exactly why Count Dooku was able to convince so many systems to secede,” she commented to her handmaiden Dormé, who was standing beside her, with Captain Typho and Jar Jar Binks in front of them, the captain driving the platform.

“There are many who believe that the Republic has become too large and disjointed,” Dormé agreed.

They came into the gallery, then moved slowly onto the main, central arena, but the Senators there, and those in the lower rows of the gallery, were too involved with their shouting and arguing to even notice the unexpected appearance.

Standing at the podium, though, Palpatine did see Amidala. His expression was one of blatant shock, for just a moment, but then he shook himself out of it and a smile widened upon his face.

“My noble colleagues,” Amidala said loudly, and the sound of her most familiar voice quieted many of the Senators, who turned to regard her. “I concur with the Supreme Chancellor. At all costs, we do not want war!”

Gradually at first, but then more quickly, the Senate Hall went quiet, and then came a thunderous outburst of cheering and applause.

“It is with great surprise and joy that the chair recognizes
the Senator from Naboo, Padmé Amidala,” Palpatine declared.

Amidala waited for the cheering and clapping to subside, then began slowly and deliberately. “Less than an hour ago, an assassination attempt was made upon my life. One of my bodyguards and six others were ruthlessly and senselessly murdered. I was the target, but, more important, I believe this security measure before you was the target. I have led the opposition to building an army, but there is someone who will stop at nothing to assure its passage.”

Cheers became boos from many areas of the gallery as those surprising words registered, and many others shook their heads in confusion. Had Amidala just accused someone in the Senate of trying to assassinate her?

As she stood there, her gaze moving about the vast, circular room, Amidala knew that her words, on the surface, could be seen as an insult to many. In truth, though, she wasn’t thinking along those lines concerning the source of the assassination. She had a definite hunch, one that went against the obvious logic. The people who would most logically want her silenced were indeed those in favor of the formation of an army of the Republic, but for some reason she could not put her finger on—some subconscious clues, perhaps, or just a gut feeling—Amidala believed that the source of the attempt was exactly those who would not logically, on the surface, at least, want her silenced. She remembered Panaka’s warning about the Trade Federation reportedly joining hands with the separatists.