'Perhaps it is time to ask the Jedi for help,' he said at last.
Valorum regarded him for a long moment. 'Yes, perhaps the Jedi would be willing to intervene.' He brightened somewhat. 'Two of them helped thwart my would-be assassins.' 'Indeed?' 'The senate will have to sanction Jedi involvement. Would you consider introducing the motion?' Palpatine smiled with his eyes. 'I would consider it a great honor, Supreme Chancellor.' Leaving the hospital docking platform behind, Sate Pestage accelerated into a midlevel traffic lane, then, at each vertical exchange, began to ascend toward the upper-tier thoroughfares, until he had entered a rarefied zone of limousines and private skycars. Here, one seldom encountered a taxi, much less a delivery craft, because those who resided in the heights owned their own vehicles, and goods were delivered to the lower stories of the buildings and moved skyward by turbolift.
Pestage kept climbing until he was in the uppermost lane. In that part of Coruscant, the lane was restricted to skycars the mobile traffic scanners could verify as enjoying diplomatic privilege, which Senator Palpatine's vehicle did.
He piloted the car to the attached platform of a luxurious, kilometer- high skyscraper and docked. From the car's luggage compartment, he retrieved two expensive-looking bags. The larger was a square handheld piece; the other was a sphere about the size of a sweetmelon, which fit snugly into a specially designed shoulder bag.
Pestage carried both into the building's upper-tier lobby, where he was scanned head to toe before being allowed to enter the turbolift that accessed the penthouse. Once again, his employer's credentials opened many a door that would otherwise have been locked to him. Few residents were about, and none gave him a second look, trusting implicitly that anyone who had managed to get into the building had every right to be there.
He rode the turbolift to the penthouse, which was owned by one of Palpatine's peers in the senate, but was presently unoccupied, as the senator had, only the previous day, embarked on a visit to her homeworld.
In the penthouse alcove, Pestage carried the bags to the entry and tapped a code into a touchpad mounted on the wall. When the scanner asked for retinal corroboration, he entered a second code, which essentially commanded the scanner to cut short its usual security routine and simply open the suite.
The bypass code did the job, and the door pocketed itself into the wall.
Soft lighting came up as Pestage moved into the elegant front room.
Furniture and artwork attesting to the senator's refined taste were everywhere in evidence. Pestage went directly to the terrace doors and stepped outside.
Traffic hummed below the tiled enclosure, and the lights of still-higher buildings shone down on him. The air was ten degrees cooler than at midlevel, and nowhere near as grimy. From the chest-high wall at the edge of the terrace, Pestage could see clear to the Jedi Temple in one direction and the Galactic Senate in the other.
But those weren't the views that interested him; only the view directly across the cityscape canyon, into a mostly darkened penthouse of similar size.
Pestage set the two pieces of luggage on the floor and opened them. The square one contained a computer, with a built-in display and keypad. The second was a surveillance droid, black and round, with three antennae projecting from its metallic pate and sides. Standing the computer on end, Pestage positioned the droid alongside it.
The two devices conversed for a long moment, in a dialogue of beeps and warbles. Then the surveillance droid levitated of its own accord and began to float out into the canyon.
Pestage repositioned the computer so that he could monitor the flight of the surveillance droid while he entered commands on the keyboard.
By then the black sphere had crossed the abyss and was hovering just outside one of the penthouse's lighted rooms, and relaying color images back to the computer's display screen. The small screen showed five Twi'lek females, lounging together on comfortable furniture. One of the females was Senator Orn Free Taa's red- skinned Lethan consort. The others may have been lesser consorts, or simply friends of the Lethan, indulging in drink and gossip while the fat-faced senator was off visiting Valorum at the medcenter.
Pestage was pleased. The females were so absorbed in debauched merriment that they were unlikely to interfere with his business.
He instructed the surveillance droid to move to an unlighted window, three rooms away, and go to infrared mode. A moment later the screen displayed a close-up of Taa's computer terminal, which, while it was capable of interfacing with distant systems, could not be accessed remotely.
Pestage did rapid input at the keyboard.
Pressing close to the window, the droid activated a laser and burned a small hole in the sound-silencing and blasterproof pane-just large enough to accommodate the computer interface arm that telescoped from its spherical body. At the end of the arm's extensible rod was a magnetic lock, which the droid inserted into the access port of Taa's system.
The computer booted up and asked for a passcode, which Pestage provided.
A novice operative might have thought to ask Senator Palpatine how he had secured the passcode. But part of what made Pestage a true professional was knowing when not to ask questions.
Taa's computer welcomed him inside.
Now it was simply a matter of slicing into the relevant files and planting the bits of coded information Pestage had been given. Even so, the infiltration was hardly routine. First of all, the data had to be untraceable, and it had to be implanted in such a way that the computer would be convinced that it had, in fact, discovered the data. Then the computer had to be instructed to reveal the data-to flag it-only in response to specific requests from Taa.
Most important, Taa himself would have to be persuaded that he had uncovered data of such resounding import that he was compelled to shout it from the rooftops.
At the center of the Jedi Temple's High Council spire was an enormous holographic representation of the galaxy, which highlighted trouble spots and locations of Jedi activity. The spherical projection changed in accordance with signals received by a multifeed assembly located in the tower's summit chamber, while a collimating disk located beneath the projection focused the signal beams and sustained them through power fluctuations.
