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The worst part, Fox would later insist, was that Chancellor Palpatine simply would not stop talking. Not yelling. Not threatening. Talking. Like Fox was stupid. Which, after approximately three years of Coruscant politics, had become one of the fastest ways to activate homicidal ideation inside Commander CC-1010.
Chancellor Palpatine had invited Commander Fox into his office at precisely the wrong hour, which meant, in practice, any hour at all. The office was warm, polished, and as full of itself as ever.
Fox stood just inside the door with his bucket tucked under one arm, armor spotless, posture perfect, expression blank in the way that made senators nervous and criminals reconsider their choices.
Palpatine smiled at him from behind his desk like a kindly old grandfather who had never once, in his life, been told no. “Commander Fox,” he said, with that soft, silky warmth that made Fox extremely uncomfortable, “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”
Fox didn’t sit. “Of course Chancellor,” he said flatly, “I exist to serve.”
Palpatine chuckled. “Ah, your usual candor. I do admire that in you.”
Fox stared. He had learned, over the years, that this was one of the things natborns said when they wanted something. I admire that in you. You’re quite exceptional. You’re not like the others. All of it was syrup poured over a knife.
He waited for the knife. Palpatine did not get to it immediately. He never got to it immediately. Instead he leaned back in his chair and began to talk. That was the problem.
At first, Fox thought it might be a lecture. Palpatine liked those. He liked speaking in circles until the listener forgot there had ever been a point. He liked making people feel as though every word was a favor. He liked the sound of his own voice in a way that suggested he had been given a private blessing by the galaxy and was determined to share it against everyone’s will.
He talked about the war. Then about Senate morale. Then about the burdens of leadership. Then about the importance of trust, of course, because politicians were always obsessed with trust when they meant control.
Fox stood there, still as a durasteel post, while the Chancellor wandered from topic to topic with the obscene confidence of a man who had never once had to filter himself in the presence of a being he considered beneath him.
And somehow he kept going. And going. And going. Fox’s jaw tightened. Palpatine smiled pleasantly and continued speaking.
“I’ve always believed,” the Chancellor said, folding his hands, “that good men are often most vulnerable to those who flatter them into thinking they are alone.”
Fox’s eyes narrowed a fraction. Palpatine did not notice. Or didn’t care.
“Skywalker is an excellent example, really. Such passion. Such raw, unrefined power. He requires guidance, but not the sort that constrains him—no, no, I mean guidance that helps him understand his place in the great architecture of events.”
The implications there were odd to say the least. Fox despised implication. If you were going to say something suspicious, at least have the decency to commit to the felony. The room was silent except for Palpatine’s voice and the faint hum of the city beyond the window. He kept talking.
“Of course, the Council sees the boy as a tool, but I’ve always found that the truly dangerous young men are the ones who have been made to think they are tools by everyone but the one person who properly recognizes their worth. You understand what I mean, I’m sure. Clones, after all, have always been terribly underappreciated—”
Fox’s eyes flicked up sharply. Palpatine smiled and kept talking.
That was when Fox realized the true horror of the situation. It wasn’t whatever osik attempt at manipulation this was. It was the fact that Palpatine had no intention of stopping. Ever. He would keep talking forever if permitted.
He would talk through wars and funerals and coups and planetary collapse. He would talk until the stars went out and then probably comment on the symbolism.
Fox had dealt with blaster fire, gang ambushes, Senate corruption, crime syndicates, defective holoprojectors, and one memorable week with a broken caf machine. He could tolerate a great deal. What he could not tolerate was this man speaking to him like he was a particularly dense piece of furniture.
Palpatine was still talking. Still smiling. Still explaining, with awful patient confidence, how power moved through institutions and why only a select few were equipped to shape it properly.
Fox’s right eye twitched.
“And that,” Palpatine said, “is why loyalty must be cultivated carefully, Commander. One cannot simply assume that those beneath us understand the greater design. They require perspective. Reassurance. A steady hand.”
Fox stared at him. Palpatine went on. “Many men mistake silence for ignorance, you see. But silence is often merely the posture of someone waiting for the correct moment to act.”
Fox’s mouth flattened. The Chancellor smiled as though he had delivered something profound. Fox thought, with startling clarity, that he would rather wrestle a rancor in a stairwell than endure one more sentence of this. Palpatine opened his mouth again.
“You talk too much,” Fox interrupted.
For the first time in years, Palpatine appeared genuinely speechless. Fox took deep satisfaction in that. Most people did not talk back to Supreme Chancellor Palpatine; Fox was aware of this. He simply did not care.
Palpatine’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Careful, Commander.”
Fox crossed his arms. “With what?”
“The tone you are taking.”
Fox stared at him for a long moment. Then, before his self-preservation could intervene: “With all due respect, sir, if you wanted someone sit here and listen to you talk without saying anything, you should’ve requested a protocol droid.”
The silence afterward was deafening. Palpatine’s pleasant grandfatherly mask flickered for a second. Fox saw the coldness beneath warmth. There was something ancient and vicious beneath the politician’s smile. Interesting.
“Commander,” Palpatine said softly, “you seem to misunderstand your position.”
Fox, already irritated beyond reason from ninety-three uninterrupted minutes of political monologuing, replied before wisdom could stop him. “No, Chancellor, I understand it perfectly. I am a military officer being lectured in circles by a man who thinks he’s subtler than he is.”
The room went very still. Palpatine rose slowly from behind the desk, the pleasantness entirely gone now. Suddenly Fox understood why so many senators came out of private meetings looking vaguely hunted.
“You are speaking far beyond your station,” Palpatine said quietly.
Fox snorted. “You keep saying things like that as if rank impresses me.”
Well that did it. Fox felt the air change. Literally. There was now a pressure on his shoulders pushing down. Fox also got the instinctive sense that every living creature got when everyone in the room should be backing away very slowly from a very large predator.
Palpatine stepped around the desk, eyes no longer warm but burning yellow beneath the office lights. And then lightning cracked around his fingertips.
Fox stared. Palpatine apparently realized what he had done approximately half a second too late. The lightning hissed faintly through the air before vanishing again. There was a long silence.
Fox blinked once. Then twice. He looked at Palpatine. At the man’s yellow eyes. At the residual sparks dancing briefly over wrinkled fingers. Then back up again.
“…Oh. You’re a Sith.”
Now, for the first time in …possibly ever, the Chancellor appeared genuinely caught off guard and Fox took even more satisfaction in that. Then he pointed vaguely at the lightning. “You know, in hindsight, this explains so much.”
Palpatine’s expression twisted into something colder. “So you finally see.”
Fox stared at him. “Yes,” he said flatly, “unfortunately.”
Lightning crackled faintly around Palpatine’s fingertips again. Fox looked profoundly unimpressed. “Oh, don’t do that,” he sighed. “I already hate this conversation enough.”
Palpatine’s lip curled. “You are remarkably arrogant for a clone.”
Fox barked a short laugh. “And you’re remarkably dramatic for a secret evil wizard.”
The Sith Lord’s expression darkened murderously. Fox continued before he could stop himself, “Honestly, the lightning is a little much. What happened to subtle manipulation? Political corruption? Quiet evil? You really jumped straight to cackling supervillain there.”
Palpatine’s patience finally snapped and lightning exploded across the room. Fox dove sideways instantly as blue-white energy tore through the space where he had been standing moments before, annihilating a chair in a shower of sparks and flaming upholstery.
“Well,” Fox muttered from behind the overturned couch, drawing his blaster, “this meeting has deteriorated significantly.”
Palpatine lunged and more furniture burst apart as Fox dodged his lightning. The windows cracked.
“YOU ARE A FOOL,” Palpatine roared.
Fox fired upward blindly. “AND YOU TALK TOO MUCH!”
The duel that followed was less an elegant confrontation between good and evil and more one deeply irritated clone commander attempting to shoot a wizard to death out of sheer accumulated annoyance.
Palpatine hurled Senate furniture with terrifying power. Fox responded by emptying increasingly large quantities of ammunition into the office.
“YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME!”
“THAT’S FINE,” Fox shouted back. “I CAN DEFINITELY OUTLAST YOUR MONOLOGUE!”
At one point Palpatine attempted another dramatic speech about destiny. Fox hit him with a chair.
The Sith Lord staggered backward in absolute disbelief. Fox pointed accusingly, “See?! You stopped talking for almost thirty seconds! We’re making progress!”
Eventually Palpatine made the critical tactical error of beginning a sentence with: “Did you ever hear the tragedy—” And Fox finally shot him directly in the chest.
Then there was blissful silence as Palpatine collapsed heavily against the floor, dead and finally quiet.
Fox stared down at the body, breathing hard. The anger was gone now. What remained was simple, almost disappointed exhaustion.
He looked around the wrecked office, at the shattered desk, the scorch marks, the spilled papers, the broken view of Coruscant beyond the window.
He realized his blaster was still raised, and he slowly lowered the weapon, and looked at the corpse. Then sighed with profound relief.
“Oh thank kriff.”
The alarms had started a few minutes ago, but he was only really hearing them now. Heavy footsteps thundered down the hall.
Fox glanced once toward the window, once toward the door, and then back at the body with faint irritation, as if the dead Chancellor had committed one final offense by making this inconvenient.
He sighed and muttered, “At least you’re quiet now.”
Then he took one look at the approaching security signatures, pulled his helmet on, and reached for the door handle with the calm efficiency of a man who had murdered the Supreme Chancellor because he would not shut up and was now mildly annoyed about the paperwork.
It was going to be a long night, but at least the Republic had one fewer man who believed he had a right to lecture Commander Fox.