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There was a game — when has there not been a game? — when you were younger. Your sisters played it. Lining up little sticks, like an army of blue and white soldiers, for the sole purpose of knocking them down. The art, however, was in toppling them all with a single flick. Stepping around their game in the hall or watching them play on the terrace, you always thought it a colossal waste of time. So much work for the pleasure of one perfect moment. But played with real stakes and living pieces, you cannot get enough of it. Arranging people, arranging armies, arranging governments, arranging everything until it is just so.
Tiresome work, some might say, but even the most subtle alterations can reap a spectacular harvest.
The report from Ghorman is, you suppose, satisfactory. It does not fill you with pleasure. If you are being honest with yourself — and you must be honest with yourself, for no one else is — it bores you. Your servants have done well. Project Stardust will have the resources it requires. But where once you might have poured over the minutiae, you simply cast the datapad aside in contempt. The sticks are falling, one by one, and you have seen the game play out too many times to care.
It is done. That is all.
There are other matters that require your attention.
But the feeling stays with you. You cannot focus on anything else. You are, perhaps, unnecessarily short with Yularen — who clearly expected a degree of praise — but you are no longer accustomed to pretending to be pleased when you are not. Irritation gnaws at you and you cannot say why.
It would be too charitable to call it a premonition.
“Your Majesty,” Amedda whispers, “will you be—?” He falters, unacknowledged, head bowed.
“Yes?”
“There may be… difficulties in the Senate tomorrow. I thought, perhaps…?”
“You want me to do your job for you?” Keeping the Senate on a leash is hardly a difficult task.
“No, sire, of course not. But if you were to speak on the tragedy, the loss of imperial lives… it would be more difficult for any troublemakers to contradict the official narrative.”
You stare at the Chagrian. You have known each other for many years — since both of you were mere senators — and you have always valued his stolid lack of morality and imagination. Only once, at the very beginning of your acquaintance, did proud Senator Mas Amedda of Champala challenge you and the lesson you taught him as a consequence was so resounding that it inspired decades of loyal service from the self-serving bureaucrat. But in this moment he is nothing more than a symptom of the dissatisfaction that has been haunting you all afternoon.
And it would be so easy to simply reach out with the Force and end his life.
“You don’t believe my presence would add too much significance to the event?”
“There remains a degree of uncertainty in some quarters concerning what took place on Ghorman and there have been reports that certain senators intend to speak on the matter. Your Majesty would provide... clarity.”
“Their intentions are immaterial. The list of speakers has been fixed.” But it does not do to become complacent and you have not presided over the Senate in some time. They must be reminded, now and again, who it is they serve. “You said Ghorman was the first thing on the agenda tomorrow morning?”
“Yes, sire.”
“Very well. I will deliver an address.”
You carry your own silence. It ripples out from you in waves. It is not a long walk from the executive dock through to what is still, technically, your working office. There are no senators or diplomats in the warren below the Grand Convocation Chamber — windowless basement offices are reserved for government functionaries both high and low — and the morning shift of technical and administrative staff, heading to their stations with bleary eyes and cups of kaff, slow their pace to stare as you pass by with your crimson escort.
There was a time, not so long ago, when you spent the majority of your time shuttling between here and your office in the Executive Annex, and your destination is larger but no more luxurious than the rest of the place. It would have been divided into a dozen administrative capsules long ago if it didn’t also house the Speaker’s Podium. The actual workspace, circling the rim of the platform, is negligible once the ceiling opens up and the Senate is in session. Although it technically belongs to you alone, in practice the holding office is shared between you, Amedda, the Oathkeeper, the Sergeant-At-Arms, and the Journal Clerk.
The Oathkeeper, recently sworn in to lead the latest round of investitures, grovels: “Your Majesty, we are honoured… honoured!”
“Please.” You smile, taking the time to be gracious with the self-important pustule. “We are all colleagues here.”
Amedda says nothing. He has never understood the value of pandering to such fools. But it does him good to see you bestow favour elsewhere. Besides, until the Senate is disbanded and Project Stardust is operational, it behoves you to be loved as well as feared.
Your speech — dashed off last night between a budgetary meeting and a holo conference with the Sern Sector governor — has been spun overnight into a moving eulogy for the fallen. You take your time going over it, removing a word here and adding a sentence there, feeling your way through where the pauses should be. You never use notes or cues of any kind. Referring to a datapad during a speech makes beings look weak and suggests they do not believe what they are saying. A brutal tragedy. Your words must carry complete conviction and descend on the Rotunda as though from on high. A senseless act of violence.
“Sir?” It is Pestage, your chief administrative aide. His voice is soft as lays a hand on the back of your chair. “It’s time.”
Standing on the narrow hydraulic column is a very different experience to the wide senatorial pods. Although it was probably an excuse to cover a burgeoning political scandal, it was claimed that the shock resignation of newly elected Supreme Chancellor Kelaris was due to severe attack of vertigo during his inaugural address. You remember your first time in the holding office, nodding through the safety briefing before being allowed to take your place on the podium to swear your oath of office — finally the central point of gravity around which all things must orbit — and begin your work in earnest.
You open the debate: I know I was not scheduled to address you this morning, but I have been so deeply troubled by overnight reports of atrocities committed against imperial citizens on Ghorman that I felt moved to speak...
It’s a good speech and you settle into its raw grief and underlying anger like a man reuniting with an old lover. Your eyes drift to those who have been selected to speak and they flinch beneath your gaze. Power and performance. Performance and power. It runs like fire through your veins as you let your voice break with sorrow and then slide — oh so slowly — into tightly controlled fury.
It's an impossible act to follow. But you sit back and watch them try — letting Amedda chair the debate — and the results are dull by anyone’s standards. Martyrs who gave everything on the brutal streets of Ghorman. Someone raises a point of order. You stop listening. It’s simply noise. You are the only living being in a room full of ghosts.
...It specifically states that a senior senator, in the case of an emergency, may yield the floor freely and without interruption to another senior senator. Now, Senator Karloo has just spoken so passionately about the imperial martyrs from yesterday’s events on Ghorman and I listened very carefully, as did you all, to the Emperor’s moving address... and he repeatedly used the word emergency.
You blink and your eyes fix on Senator Organa. He would not dare, he would not dare—
And, as there has been no objection to this description from the floor, I am invoking Article 17-252 and yielding the floor to the senior senator from Chandrila.
You open your mouth to object, to nudge Amedda into calling into question the difference between rhetoric and the legal definition of an emergency — or, at the very least, to regain control of the debate — but the Sergeant-At-Arms has already released Senator Mothma’s pod with a nod from your outwitted Vizier.
“She won’t do it,” Pestage murmurs, seated beside you, watching the Chandrilan pod drift upwards from the Core circle. “it’s suicide.”
How can the fool have sat through an hour of overwrought mourning and not understand the value of a well-placed martyr? Your lips tighten. Now is not the time to be seen whispering with your aides. You must look straight ahead. Calm. Regal. Dignified.
Fellow senators, friends, colleagues, allies… adversaries.
Adversaries. Yes, that was definitely aimed at the Speaker’s Podium. The woman is about to set herself on fire.
I stand before you this morning with a heavy heart. I’ve spent my life in this Chamber. I came here as a child. And, as I look around me now, I realise I have almost no memories that pre-date my arrival and few bonds of affection that cleave so tightly. Through these many years, I believe I have served my constituents honourably and upheld our code of conduct...
It a valediction. They can all hear it. But it won’t end in fond farewells. Mothma is a milquetoast orator at best, but there are no idle whispers or murmurs of dissent. Her daring has bought everyone’s silence. They know she is working her way towards her execution.
Well. If she wants to waste her life on dead Ghormans then let her.
This Chamber is a cauldron of opinions and we’ve certainly all had our patience and tempers tested in pursuit of our ideals. Disagree as we might, I am hopeful that those of you who know me will vouch for my credibility in the days to come...
Credibility! You want to laugh. You will bury her so deeply that no one will dare say her name, lest they too be taken for Ghorman sympathisers and traitors to the Empire.
I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous…
Amedda is trying to cut the broadcast, but there is some difficulty with the security protocols. All the camera droids are still running and the Press Gallery has been filling steadily since the media were alerted that you would attend the debate. This is his failure and his clawed hands tremble on the controls. He knows that every second you are forced to sit here and listen to this sedition will be visited upon him in pain.
The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest...
Your lip curls as she finally turns her gaze on you. You flex your fingers, nostrils flaring, longing to reach out and slam her pod into the ground.
This Chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza!
There are jeers, shouts, and cries of shame. You let them speak for you. The tide is against her, as it has been against so many beings before her, and you lean back in your seat. They all know you are watching. They all know the consequences of being seen to side with Mothma. She is shouting now, fighting to make her words heard above the din.
What took place yesterday… what happened yesterday on Ghorman… was unprovoked genocide!
Yes!
Genocide!
And that truth has been exiled from this Chamber!
She is a study in passion. Her eyes burn directly into yours as she flings one hand out and years of supressed rage pour out of her in one all-encompassing blaze.
And the monster screaming the loudest?
It is masterful.
The monster we’ve helped create?
It is beautiful.
The monster who will come for us all soon enough…
It is dangerous.
…Is Emperor Palpatine!
Uproar devours the Rotunda, but you barely hear it. You stare at her and she stares at you. It is a duel. No one else exists.
Monster.
She may be intoxicated with defiance, but you are the better speaker and there is nothing more she can say.
Monster.
She has no idea what you are or what you are capable of.
Monster.
You will eviscerate her with words and later, when she is awaiting sentence in an ISB holding cell, you will show her exactly what kind of monster you really are. She has earned that privilege.
You get to your feet, gesturing for silence, anticipation singing through your veins—
—And some fool cuts the broadcast.
It is rank incompetence, closing the gate after the fathier has thoroughly bolted, and you hiss through your teeth.
The Chamber erupts into chaos. Amedda, screaming for order, bangs his staff to no avail.
And Mothma, alone in her pod drifting slowly back to its dock, has the audacity to smile.
You could kill her now. It would not be difficult.
She's just one woman.
You could raise your hand and wrap your fingers her neck. No one would be able stop you.
No.
Locked behind your mask, you must be shocked, appalled, blindsided by this iniquity. Let her smirk. It is the image you will plaster all over the HoloNet. Mon Mothma the deceiver. Mon Mothma the traitor.
Too many things have gone wrong this morning. You do not believe in coincidence or the will of the Force. Sticks are tumbling outside of your control — on the Senate floor no less! — and someone other than you has set them in motion. There are others behind her. You can sense them, so close, lingering in her shadow. Waiting.
But for what?
They may have won this round, but next to them you are a god and you can only smile when your servants inform you that Senator Mothma has escaped. Let her challenge stand. You will answer it.
After all, it would be a shame if the Ghormans died for nothing.