Darth Plagueis - James Luceno [104]
Analysts were touting the vote as landmark, though it had been an admittedly slow news week on Coruscant. More to the point, a vast majority of the capital’s residents couldn’t have cared less about the outcome, since most only knew of the Trade Federation through self-serving advertisements that streamed on the HoloNet. Local gossip was always more interesting than politics, in any case.
For weeks, however, opponents and supporters of the amendments that would revise the rules regarding member status in the Republic had been giving voice to their arguments in the great Rotunda, often vociferously enough to shake their repulsorlift platforms, jabbing fingers and other appendages in the air for emphasis or accusation, in defiance of calls by the vice chancellor for order and decorum.
Standing with Sate Pestage and Kinman Doriana beneath the abstract statue of Core Founder Tyler Sapius Praji, Palpatine felt one step closer to his destined place, even if the scene in the plaza struck him as more vanity fair than Senatorial assembly. Like many of the others, he had been out half the night, drinking and dining with lobbyists eager to win his favor. At tapcafs, cantinas, restaurants, and nightclubs throughout the entertainment districts, credits had flowed freely, whispered bribes had been proffered, promises made, deals struck. Now some of the players he had encountered during the long evening were shuffling bleary-eyed through the gaping entrances of the umbrella-shaped Senate Building: Senators and their top aides; commissioners of the investment sector and securities exchange; members of the Trade Federation delegation and the board of the InterGalactic Banking Clan.
Elsewhere on the broad avenue—at key intersections, taxi stops, and mag-lev exits—stood groups of Jedi, a few with the hilts of their lightsabers conspicuously visible. For Palpatine the sight of so many of them in one place was at once exhilarating and sobering. Though thoroughly cloaked in the everyday, he could feel their collective pride trickle into him through the Force. Only the baseness of Coruscant’s populace, the almost sheer absence of anything natural, kept the world from being as strong in the light as Korriban was in the dark. While he accepted that he and Plagueis were more than equal to the most powerful of the Jedi Order, he understood that they were no match for their combined strength—the Sith imperative notwithstanding. The Jedi would fall only with the full collaboration of the dark side; that was, only when the dark side of the Force was ready and willing to conspire in their downfall.
His musings were interrupted by a sudden gust of wind, whipped up by a luxurious landspeeder that was alighting in the center of the avenue. Preceded by a vanguard of ceremonial guards wearing floor-length blue robes, Supreme Chancellor Darus emerged, waving to the crowd and for the hovercams that rushed in to immortalize his every expression. Palpatine studied him as the guards began to maneuver him through the throng, a train of handpicked journalists following dutifully in his wake: the easy way he carried himself; the way he made a point to stop and greet some while ignoring others; the way he laughed on cue …
He recalled the two coronations he and his father had attended in Theed, and could remember as if yesterday the envy that had wafted from Cosinga like sour sweat. How cravenly his inept father had desired to wield such power! And would that Cosinga could see his son now, standing so close to the center, surveying the Senate as Cosinga might have the