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Pale hands clasped at his back, he stood at the bank of transparisteel windows that faced the dawn, though daybreak was hours behind him. He wore a magenta tunic that was high collared and double-breasted, with matching trousers and a wide cummerbund. Southern light, polarized by the transparisteel panels, flooded the room. But Valorum’s sole guest had taken a seat well out of the light’s reach.

“I fear, Supreme Chancellor, that we face a monumental challenge,” Senator Palpatine was saying from the shadows. “Frayed at its far-flung borders and hollowed at its very heart by corruption, the Republic is in grave danger of unraveling. Order is needed, directives that will restore balance. Even the most desperate remedies should not be overlooked.”

Although such opinions had become the common sentiment, Palpatine’s words pierced Valorum like a sword. The fact that he knew them to be true made them all the more difficult to hear. He turned his back to the view and returned to his desk, where he sat heavily into his padded chair.

Aging with distinction, Valorum had a receding cap of shorn silver hair, pouches under piercing blue eyes, and dark, bushy brows. His stern features and deep voice belied a compassionate spirit and questing intellect. But as the latest in the line of a political dynasty that stretched back thousands of years—a dynasty many thought weakened by its uncommon longevity—he had never been fully successful at overcoming an innate patrician aloofness.

“Where have we gone wrong?” he asked in a firm but sad voice. “How did we manage to miss the portents along the way?”

Palpatine showed him an understanding look. “The fault is not in ourselves, Supreme Chancellor. The fault lies in the outlying star systems, and the civil strife iniquity has engendered there.” His voice was carefully modulated, occasionally world-weary, seemingly immune to anger or alarm. “This most recent situation at Dorvalla, for example.”

Valorum nodded soberly. “The Judicial Department has requested that I meet with them later today, so they can brief me on the latest developments.”

“Perhaps I could save you the trouble, Supreme Chancellor. At least in terms of what I’ve been hearing in the senate.”

“Rumor or facts?”

“A bit of both, I suspect. The senate is filled with delegates who interpret matters as they will, regardless of facts.” Palpatine paused, as if to gather his thoughts.

Prominent in a kind if somewhat doughy face were his heavy-lidded, watery blue eyes and rudder of a nose. Red hair that had lost its youth he wore in the provincial style of the outlying systems: combed back from his high forehead but left thick and long behind his low-set ears. In dress, too, he demonstrated singular allegiance to his home system, favoring embroidered tunics with V-shaped double collars and outmoded cloaks of quilted fabric.

A sectorial senator representing the outlying world of Naboo, along with thirty-six other inhabited planets, Palpatine had earned a reputation for integrity and frankness that had set him high in the hearts of many of his senatorial peers. As he had made clear to Valorum in numerous meetings, both public and private, he was more interested in doing whatever needed to be done than in blind obedience to the rules and regulations that had made the senate such a tangle of procedures.

“As the Judicial Department is certain to tell you,” he began at last, “the mercenaries who assaulted and destroyed the Trade Federation vessel Revenue were in the employ of the Nebula Front terrorist group. It seems likely that they gained access to the freighter with the complicity of dockworkers at Dorvalla. How the Nebula Front learned that the freighter was carrying a fortune in aurodium ingots has yet to be established. But clearly the Nebula Front planned to use the aurodium to finance additional acts of terrorism directed against the Trade Federation, and perhaps against Republic colonies in the Outer Rim.”

“Planned?” Valorum said.

“All indications are that Captain Cohl and