Star Wars_ The Approaching Storm - Alan Dean Foster [145]
Padawan Ahsoka Tano to General Kenobi
CHANCELLOR PALPATINE’S OFFICE, CORUSCANT
“I NEVER THOUGHT I’D HEAR LORD JABBA SAY THAT,” PALPATINE murmured as the holomessage repeated in a shimmering blue loop. TC-70, Jabba’s droid, delivered the appeal for help to find Rotta while his master looked on, blinking and swaying slightly, clearly agitated. “He must be in enormous distress to ask for outside help.”
The Chancellor looked around at the Jedi assembled in his office to gauge their reaction. He could feel it, but it was always interesting to watch their little physical tells—the frowns, the twitches, the slight lifts of the shoulders—that hinted at the anxieties within.
Mace Windu stroked his chin, grim and unmoved. The man never looked so much as even slightly satisfied with his life. The others—Plo Koon, Luminara Unduli, Bolla Ropal—seemed to be leaving it to him to say what was on all their minds. Nobody was rushing to Jabba’s aid.
Palpatine nudged gently for a reaction. “A suitable job for Jedi. Nothing can be hidden from you for long, after all.” Except me, of course. Even now, after all these years of delicately careful planning, he had moments when the ease with which he moved undetected among them as a Sith Lord made him pause and marvel. You don’t deserve to be the guardians of the galaxy, do you? “Come along, Master Windu, what’s the problem?”
Windu leaned back in his seat. “It’ll be a sorry day for the Republic when we divert resources to helping criminal scum.”
“Harsh words, my friend. But I’m sure he speaks highly of you, too …”
“Chancellor, Jabba probably knows who’s done this—no doubt some other gangster he’s crossed.” Windu’s tone wasn’t exactly serene. “He’s never shied from kidnapping as a tactic himself. Why would he ask us? And why should we divert Jedi to a basic police task when there’s a war to fight?”
“Because it’s right, Master Windu.” Palpatine had no real need to leap to the moral high ground, but it amused him to do it and labor the point. Such blind spots, Jedi. This is how I shall remember you when you’re long gone—unable to see what was right before your eyes, from me to your own duty. “A child is missing. If it were a human child, would we be having this conversation? Does the parent’s lifestyle have any bearing on the child’s plight? Or do Hutt parents not feel the same grief that we do?”
“Would we be having this conversation,” Windu said, not rising to the bait, “if the human child’s father was the head of Black Sun?”
“We would, if he could deliver this.” Palpatine sat down and activated a holochart. It hovered above his desk, a complex web of lines and clusters of light representing the major points of the known galaxy. He tapped the control to remove layers of detail, and entire star systems and planets winked out of existence—so easily done, so very easy—to leave a few snaking threads of colored light that ended in the Outer Rim. “A hologram, as they say, is worth a thousand words.”
The threads were hyperspace routes. And they were all controlled by the Hutts.
Windu looked like a granite monument to disapproval. Eventually, he tilted his head slightly to one side. “I still feel uneasy. There’ll be more to this than a simple ransom demand or a settling of scores. I sense it.”
Palpatine allowed himself a sad smile, with just the right blend of I-share-your-concern and you-know-I’m-right. “You might not like doing deals with the Hutt, Master Windu, but these are trying times, and we can’t be too exacting in our qualification requirements for allies. As long as they help more than they hinder, that has to be good enough for us. This Hutt has control of the hyperspace access we need to move troops and matériel to the Outer Rim, and we have the expertise to find the unfindable. Mutual advantage.”
“I still say there’s more going on here than a simple kidnapping. It’s a sting of some kind, knowing Jabba.”
“I didn’t realize you were that well acquainted.”
“Based on his track record …”
“Then you need to put as many Jedi on this case