Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 04_ Backlash - Aaron Allston [96]
“Just get out.”
A SUITE AT THE GLEAMING FORTUNES CASINO,
CORUSCANT
The turbolift door rose. Emperor Palpatine and his bodyguard, a headless Gamorrean, stepped off the lift. The guard on this floor, Darth Vader but only a meter tall, waved an electronic reader at the chest of each, noted that its diode continued to glow blue, and courteously waved them toward a set of golden doors inset in the black stone walls of this circular turbolift lobby. Palpatine and the headless thing approached the doors, which opened before them.
The suite beyond was the stuff of conspicuous wealth. The carpeting was transmutive, now graduating from a pleasing shell gray into a sky blue; the change began at the far side of the chamber, beside the wall-length transparisteel viewport, and graduated toward the doors through which they had entered. The walls were Kuati marble, white and veined with blue, but also inset with gilt flecks. The sofas and chairs were white and glowed faintly, both as an expression of their costliness and to warn anyone wandering through a pitch-dark suite of their presence. The central table, circular, with depressions all along its rim for drinks and game pieces, was of an artificial black marble veined in silver.
Across the end of one sofa lay what appeared to be a Wookiee, but it was flat, deflated, as if the creature’s bones and organs had been removed, leaving only skin behind. At the round table sat a slightly oversized silver protocol droid with a human head, a thruster-pack-wearing clone trooper of six decades before, his helmet on the floor beside him, and a berobed female with the gray hands of a Neimoidian but the face of an elderly human female. A Neimoidian face, noseless and gray, as deflated as the body of the Wookiee, lay on the table beside her. A circular card-dealer droid scuttled around crab-like on the tabletop, and young, fit men and women dressed in dark garments were positioned along the walls. All looked up as the Emperor and his undead companion entered.
The Emperor gestured as if preparing to launch Force lightning. “Upon pain of death … deal me in.”
The human/Neimodian clapped her hands together and beamed. “What a marvelous impersonation. Why have you never done this before, at social events?”
The Emperor shrugged. When he spoke again, it was in his own rich, mellow tones, not the Emperor’s curdled voice. “One must be in the correct crowd to amuse with that impersonation, my dear Senator Treen.” He glanced sideways at the headless Gamorrean, who bowed, then walked—cheekily, still in character, with a bounce to his stride accentuated by the foam suit he wore—to the wall, taking up a proper bodyguard’s station there.
The Emperor took an empty seat, then reached up to peel his face off. He set the Emperor mask beside Treen’s Neimoidian face. “That’s a relief.”
The protocol droid, Senator Bramsin, gave him a sympathetic look. “I know what you mean. I couldn’t wait to get that monstrous mask off.” He glanced at the clone trooper. “It must be hard for you.”
The trooper shook his head. “Built-in cooling system. But it’s hard to sit and even harder to stand up.”
Bramsin nodded. “I now understand why I’ve never seen a protocol droid sitting down.”
Senator Treen looked between the Emperor and the clone trooper. “Moff Lecersen, allow me to present you General Jaxton, Galactic Alliance Starfighter Command.”
“We haven’t met, but I recognized the general from the news, of course.”
Jaxton gave Lecersen a little sand-panther-ish grin. “And from intelligence briefings, I would imagine.”
Lecersen resumed Palpatine’s oily tones for just a moment. “Such things are not spoken of.”
The card droid flipped three cards, thoop-thoop-thoop, facedown to land neatly before Lecersen. The cards bore the emblem of the Empire on their backs. He smiled; how fitting. He picked them up and looked at their faces, surprised to discover that they were playing Chambers instead of sabacc. He held the Red Courtesan, Blue Destroyer Droid, and