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Leia waved away the Chief of State’s objection. “Now may not be relevant. The Order waxes and wanes in public opinion … and is usually viewed in a heroic light, recent events notwithstanding.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Daala offered a tiny, dismissive shrug. “The public doesn’t want to be taxed, either. And without those taxes, the infrastructure of the Alliance evaporates, the armed forces cease to exist, some entire worlds become uninhabitable—Kessel, for example. The public, collectively, is not smart enough to make a decision like that.”

Now it was Leia’s turn to sound icy. “So the public has no right to demand that it be listened to, represented. Only ruled. Palpatine certainly thought that way.”

“There’s a difference between direction and distance, Princess. Palpatine went too far—vastly exceeded the distance he should have traveled. But his direction had merit.”

Leia’s expression froze as if carved in stone, and Daala knew they would find no common ground today.

Hundreds of meters away, in a secure hangar bay within the building, a Galactic Alliance Security two-person team carrying scanning apparatus descended the boarding ramp of the Millennium Falcon. The two women moved away from the saucer-shaped light freighter, casting not a backward look despite the vehicle’s antiquity and fame.

In the cockpit, seated in the copilot’s chair, C-3PO watched them through the starboard viewport. “Oh, dear. I wish they hadn’t left so soon.”

Behind him, standing in the cockpit doorway, R2-D2 tweetled musically.

C-3PO turned to glare at the dome-topped astromech. He knew he had no facial expressions with which to indicate his irritation, so he relied on posture and vocal tone. “Because, you assemblage of malfunctioning processors, now we have to do what Master Han and Mistress Leia asked of us. And I, for one, am not looking forward to it.” He held up his arms so his photoreceptors could scan them. “Look at us, we’re not even ourselves.”

It was true. Where the protocol droid was normally shiny, if sometimes scuffed, gold and occasionally silver, he was now a matte metal-orange from head to foot, consequence of a session with a spray can. The orange color would peel away with a little work, and C-3PO wished that the work would begin immediately. The novelty of being in disguise did not endear the condition to him.

R2-D2 was similarly changed. All his blue coloring had temporarily been changed to black. He was disturbingly not himself.

Both droids also wore restraining bolts; C-3PO’s was plugged into his chest. The bolts were false, inactive, but they looked identical to those with which droids temporarily visiting the Senate Building were routinely equipped.

R2-D2 tweetled with the old, let’s-get-it-done manner that C-3PO found so irritating.

“Very well.” Awkward, the protocol droid stood. From the pilot’s seat beside him, he picked up a toolbox—innocuous looking, scarred from years of use, brushed durasteel with a black handle.

Together the two droids moved down the boarding ramp and headed for the interior exit, the one leading to the curved corridor accessing all the Level Two hangar bays. Two troopers in the uniforms of Galactic Alliance Security stood at that exit, talking, keeping an eye on the bay interior. One was a large Twi’lek male, blue-skinned, his brain-tails decorated with alternating yellow and red stripes like some sign from nature that he was a venomous reptile, while the other, a Bothan female, had fur that, had it been metallic, would have been an exact match for C-3PO’s current color.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I hate this part.” Clutching the toolbox in both orange hands, C-3PO, affecting as nonchalant a walk as a protocol droid could manage, maneuvered to pass by the security operatives without engaging their interest.

“Halt,” the Twi’lek barked.

C-3PO, programmed to obey the orders of living beings when they did not countermand more significant orders, jumped, then froze in place. “Sir?”

“You have no business here.”

“Oh, please, sir, but I do. The mechanic