Darth Plagueis

“Naturally—” the Sullustan started, but Sidious interrupted him.

“In fact, you’re not here to recruit me.” Motioning negligently, he repeated: “You’re not here to recruit me.”

The Sullustan blinked in confusion. “In fact, I’m not really here to recruit you.”

“Then why are we here?”

“I don’t know why we’re here. I was instructed to meet with you.”

“Instructed by whom?”

“I, I—”

Sidious decided not to press him too hard. “You were saying?”

Again the Sullustan blinked. “I was saying … Just what was I saying?”

They both laughed and sipped at their drinks. At the same time, Sidious used the Force to shift the apron of one of the waiters just enough to reveal the grip of a hold-out blaster the man was wearing at his waist. Lifting his glass for another swallow, he did the same to another of the waiters, whose apron concealed an identical weapon. Both had been manufactured by BlasTech, but not for common consumption. The E-series 1–9—the aptly named Swiftkick — was available only to elite members of Santhe Security, headquartered on Lianna.

“I had better slow down,” he said with purposeful awkwardness. “I believe I’m becoming a bit light- headed.”

The Sullustan’s demeanor changed, though almost imperceptibly. “You just need some more food.” He slid a menu across the table. “Choose whatever you wish. Cost is no issue.” He stood. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, we’ll order as soon as I return.”

Sidious noted that the Sullustan wasn’t the only one getting to his feet. Under low-voiced orders from the waiters, patrons were calling for their checks and exiting. In moments he would be the Shimmersilk’s sole customer. As he swung slightly in his chair to stare into the corner of the room, a scenario began to emerge in his imaginings. The Sullustan, STP’s link to Malastare, Santhe Security agents, even the Dug bartender … Their issues were not with him but with Damask Holdings. He wasn’t being set up for an eventual allegation of corruption; a far more sinister deception was unfolding, and his interest was immediately renewed.

His first thought was that they had attempted to drug him. His investigations into Sith sorcery had taught him how to nullify the effects of many common poisons and venoms — a practice he had performed routinely before he’d even seated himself at the table. Perhaps, then, they were waiting for him to slump forward and lapse into unconscious or froth at the mouth and be shaken by spasms …

Just when he was thinking that it was his acting ability that was going to be put to the test, two of the waiters converged on him, now showing their discreet but powerful weapons.

“Someone wants a word with you, Senator,” the taller of the pair said.

“Here?” Sidious said in apparent confusion.

The other one motioned to a door. “Through there.”

Sidious masked his smile: the Shimmersilk had a back room.

He stood clumsily, leaning deliberately toward one of the security men, gauging his body temperature, heart rate, and respiration. “I’m slightly intoxicated. I may have to count on you for support.”

The man made a sound of exasperation but allowed Sidious to place one arm on his shoulder.

How effortless it would be, he thought, as the dark began to rise in him, searing and hungry, yearning to assume control of his body and unleash itself, to break the necks of both of them, to tear their beating hearts from their chests, to hurl and plaster them against the walls, to bring the entire sour-smelling place down on their heads …

But he didn’t. He needed to meet his abductor. He needed to learn the names of all those responsible. He needed to prove to his Master that he was adroit and capable — a true Sith Lord.

The back room had a second door that opened into a dark corridor leading to an ancient turbolift. Shoved forward by the guards, Sidious calculated the distance they had come from the Shimmersilk to the turbolift. He fell silent as they began to rise, and devoted his attention to calculating their rate of climb. He estimated that they had risen fifty levels when the turbolift came to a halt, depositing them in a corridor as aged as the first, though wider, tiled, and illuminated by wall sconces. Perhaps a maintenance corridor for the monads above, though still far below what would constitute the deepest of the sub-basements. The Santhe Security men guided him north across a stretch of stained permacrete floor to an intersection where a four-being speeder was idling, a heavily armed Rodian seated at the controls.

This one isn’t Santhe, Sidious told himself. A freelance mercenary or assassin.

Shoved roughly onto the speeder’s rear bench seat, he was reminded not to do anything foolish. Restraining an impulse to reveal that they already had, he continued to play the intimidated abductee, cowering in the seat, hands interlocked in his lap, avoiding eye contact. The speeder traveled east at a moderate speed until the first intersection, then turned in the direction of the government district and resumed the same speed for a longer duration. Sidious reckoned that they were twenty or so tiers beneath the outlying buildings of the Senate when the speeder swung west into an even broader corridor toward a district known as The Flats or The Works — a kind of industrial plain situated well below the governmental plateau, overlooked to the far north by the Jedi Temple and the horizontal landing fields of Pius Dea Spaceport, and to the south by the resiblocks and commercial towers of the Fobosi district.

Where Plagueis was attending Larsh Hill’s induction into the Order of the Canted Circle.

The Rodian speeder pilot delivered them to an antigrav turbolift car. While pretending to tremble in fear, Sidious had come to an additional conclusion: the fact that his abductors had gone to a lot of trouble to keep him out of public view meant that the plan called for him to be held for ransom or executed clandestinely rather than publicly.

The elevator carried them to a midlevel docking area of an abandoned factory, where several more guards were waiting. Oblique, particulate-suffused daylight streamed though massive windows yet to be smashed by the gangs that ruled The Works, falling on items that had been deemed worthless when the factory’s owners had abandoned Coruscant for less costly worlds in the Mid or Outer Rim. Sidious’s human handlers forced him to sit atop the boxy body of an overturned power droid. A portable holoprojector was moved into position in front of him, and a transmission grid placed under his feet.

One of the Santhe guards spent a moment activating the projector, then stepped aside as a faintly blue, life-sized image of Gran Protectorate Senator Pax Teem took shape above. Teem was dressed in a richly brocaded robe and a shimmersilk tunic banded by a broad cummerbund. The stable and sharply detailed quality of the image suggested that its source was Coruscant or a nearby Core world, rather than Malastare.

“We apologize for not having provided a seat more suited to your station, Senator. No doubt the head of House Palpatine is accustomed to more comfortable surroundings.”

Sidious rejected outrage and intimidation for rankled curiosity. “Is this the point where I’m expected to ask why I’ve been abducted?”

Teem’s eyestalks lengthened. “You’re not the least bit interested?”

“I assume that this has something to do with Naboo’s abstention in the vote.”

“That’s certainly part of the reason. You should have voted as your predecessor would have, Senator.”

“Those were not my instructions.”

“Oh, I’m certain of that much.”

Sidious folded his arms across his chest. “And the rest of it?”

Teem rubbed his six-fingered hands together in eagerness. “This has less to do with you than with the beings you serve. In a way, it’s simply your bad luck that you find yourself in the middle.”

“I don’t believe in bad luck, Senator, but I take your point to mean that my abduction is an act of retribution. And as such, you demonstrate that the Gran Protectorate is willing to employ the same tactics used by those who ordered the assassination of Vidar Kim.”

Teem leaned toward the cam that was transmitting his image and allowed anger to contort his features. “You say that as if it’s still a mystery, when we both know that the murder wasn’t ordered by the Trade Federation but by your Muun master. By Hego Damask.”

Sidious’s expression didn’t change. “He is hardly my master, Senator. In fact, I scarcely know him.”