by James Luceno
The assassination of Kerred Santhe, Sidious thought. “I fear, Senator, that you have not given this matter sufficient thought.”
Teem’s face took on color. “Repercussions, Palpatine? Ah, but we have thought through the matter, and have taken the necessary precautions.”
Sidious nodded. “I’ll give you one final chance to reconsider.”
Teem swung to someone off cam and loosed a belly laugh. “Tell that to the beings who hold your life in their hands, Palpatine. And do take heart in the fact that you accomplished so much in your brief career.”
No sooner did the holoimage dissolve than two of the security men began to advance on him. Sidious readied himself for action. A Force blow to send them reeling back toward the holoprojector, then a leap, arms extended, hands curled into claws, one for each windpipe, which he would tear from their throats—
The Force intruded, drawing his attention to the windows in the upper walls.
At once, the sound of repeating blasters and pained cries echoed from adjacent rooms; then a nerve-jangling shattering of glass as Sun Guards crashed through the high windows and began to rappel to the filthy floor, firing as they slid down on their microfilament lines, catching the Santhe men and the Rodian with so many bolts that their bodies were left quartered by the volleys.
Other towheaded Echani rushed into the landing from both sides, some carrying force pikes, others blasters. Sidious had yet to move a muscle when a silver-eyed female hurried over to him.
“You’re safe now, Senator Palpatine.”
He smiled at her. “I can see that.”
An Echani male standing alongside the holoproj was using a handheld device to extract information from it. A moment later, an image of Hego Damask dressed in a ceremonial robe genied into view where Teem’s had been; the droid 11-4D stood behind him.
“We have the source, Magister,” the Sun Guard said. “Panoply Orbital Facility.”
Damask nodded. “Rendezvous with the rest of your team and execute the assault.”
The Sun Guard nodded briskly. “Shall I leave personnel with Senator Palpatine?”
“No,” Damask told him. “Senator Palpatine doesn’t require your protection. Leave us.”
Sidious could hear airspeeders hovering outside the factory. Without further word, the Sun Guards began to race from the room.
“You’ve obviously been keeping a close eye on me,” Sidious said as he approached the projector.
Darth Plagueis nodded. “Your abduction has been in the planning stages for some time.”
“Ever since you made it a point to greet me openly at the Senate.”
“Even before that. Veruna alerted me to the fact that a group of disgruntled nobles had made contact with the Gran.” Plagueis paused a moment. “You might consider using Sate Pestage to settle the score with them.”
“The thought occurred to me.”
“As for our public meeting, I needed to dangle you in front of them.”
“Without my knowledge.” The ruddiness that had come to Sidious’s face deepened. “Another test?”
“Why should I need to test you?”
“Perhaps you thought I was becoming so enthralled with life on Coruscant that I wouldn’t recognize danger.”
“Clearly you weren’t. I could see that you were aware from the start. You were determined to please me, and indeed you have.”
Sidious inclined his head in a respectful bow.
“Even in partnership with Santhe Security, Teem and the other Gran are rank amateurs,” Plagueis continued. “Our agents persuaded them to use the eatery in Uscru, and the factory in which you find yourself — owned by us, as it were, through a holding company called LiMerge Power. We were unable, however, to determine where the Gran would be taking refuge.”
“And now you know,” Sidious said. “But why go to such lengths to set them up? Why not simply kill them?”
“This isn’t Sith business, apprentice. For the sake of appearances we need to justify what we are about to unleash on them. They failed to understand our message and now they must be taught a lesson. Still, other interests need to be convinced of our reasoning.”
“How can I help?”
“You’ve already played your part. Now go about your usual business. We’ll speak again when the ceremony at the Order of the Canted Circle is concluded.”
Sidious fell silent for a long moment, then said, “Is there an end to these trials?”
“Yes. When there is no further need of them.”
20: THE CANTED CIRCLE
The stage was set.
A perfect circle, twenty meters in diameter, had been cut from a single slab of imported stone and constructed so that one end touched the floor while the other was held ten degrees above it by concealed antigrav generators. This was the Canted Circle, known only to members of the order — which, throughout its long history, had never numbered more than five hundred in any given period — and was housed in the clear-domed summit of the esoteric society’s monad in the heart of Coruscant’s Fobosi district. Legend had it that the round-topped building — thought to be one of the oldest in that part of the planet — was built over an ancient lake bed and had been the sole survivor of a seismic event that had tipped it ten degrees to the southwest. A century after the quake, the structure had been righted to vertical, except for the central portion of the canted floor of its uppermost story, which later supplied the name for a clandestine organization founded by influential beings who had purchased the building sometime during the reign of Tarsus Valorum.
Just then, Larsh Hill, draped in black robes, was standing at the raised end of the circle, and Plagueis, 11-4D, and ten other Muuns — also wearing black garments, though different from the order’s hooded garb — stood at the other. Scheduled to begin at the top of the hour, the initiation ceremony would commence with the high official joining Hill on the circle, initiating him, and placing around his neck the order’s signature pendant. Plagueis had declined an offer of enrollment twenty years earlier, but had continued to do business with the Grand Mage and many of the order’s most prominent members, several of whom were regulars at the Gatherings on Sojourn. The Order of the Canted Circle was content to serve as an exclusive club for some of the galaxy’s most influential beings; its aims were narrow in focus and its rituals universally allegorical, replete with secret phrases and handshakes. Plagueis understood the need to instill members with a sense of furtive fraternity, but he couldn’t risk having the high officials dig too exhaustively into his background. Larsh Hill’s past, on the other hand, was exemplary — even the decades he had spent working with Plagueis’s father. Once initiated, Hill would become Damask Holding’s principal agent on Coruscant, and his son, San, would become Hego’s right hand, in preparation for his eventual role as chairman of the InterGalactic Banking Clan.
Returned from the short holocommunication with Sidious, Plagueis was filled with a sense of triumph. Before night fell on the Fobosi district, the members of the Gran Protectorate would cease to be a concern. Pax Teem and the rest believed they had found shelter aboard one of Coruscant’s orbital facilities, but the Sun Guards — save for a pair Plagueis had kept in reserve in the order’s initiation room — were on the way to them now, in forces sufficient to crush whatever defenses Santhe Security might be providing. Sidious had played his part perfectly, and had redeemed himself fully in Plagueis’s eyes. The time had come to bring his apprentice deeper into the Sith mysteries he had been investigating for most of his life; to introduce him to the miracles he was performing on Aborah.
From a series of arch-topped doorways lining the circumference of the room came the sounds of solemn chanting as perhaps three dozen of the order’s black-robed members began to file in and take their places along the perimeter of the Canted Circle. Last to emerge was the high official, who wore a mask and carried the circular, emblematic pendant draped over both hands, which he held as if in prayer. Rituals of a similar sort had been enacted
by the ancient Sith, Plagueis thought, as Larsh Hill genuflected before the high official.
At the same instant Hill’s right knee touched the polished stone, a jangle of foreboding laddered up Plagueis’s spine. Turning ever so slightly, he saw that 11-4D had rotated its head toward him in a gesture Plagueis had come to associate with alarm. The dark side fell over him like a shroud, but instead of acting on impulse, he restrained himself, fearful of betraying his true nature prematurely. In that instant of hesitation, time came to a standstill, and several events happened at once.
The high official gave a downward tug to the pendant he had placed around Hill’s neck, and the old Muun’s head toppled from his shoulders and began to roll down the tipped stage. Blood geysered from Hill’s neck, and his body fell to one side with a thud and began to jerk back and forth as one after another of his hearts failed.
Yanking their hands from the roomy, opposite sleeves of their robes, the hooded members of the order made sidelong throwing motions, which sent dozens of decapitator disks screaming through the air. Muuns to both sides of Plagueis fell to their knees, their last breaths caught in their throats. A disk buried deep in his forehead, one of the Sun Guards twirled in front of Plagueis like a crazed marionette. Blood fountained, turning to mist. Struck in at least three places and leaking lubricant, 11-4D was trying to limp to Plagueis’s side when another disk whirled into its alloy body, touching off a storm of sparks and smoke.
Plagueis pressed his right hand to the right side of his neck to discover that a disk had made off with a considerable hunk of his jawbone and neck, and in its cruel passing had severed his trachea and several blood vessels. He cupped the Force against the injury to keep himself from lapsing into unconsciousness, but he fell to the floor regardless, with blood pumping onto the already slick stone circle. Around him, slanted in his faltering vision, the assassins had drawn vibroblades from the other sleeves of the robes and were beginning a methodical advance on the few Muuns who were still standing. A hail of bolts streaked from the blaster cradled in the arms of the remaining Sun Guard, sweeping half a dozen hooded beings off the rim of the circle, before he himself was butchered.
Tricked, Plagueis thought, as pained by the realization as he was by the wound. Outmaneuvered by a group of inferior beings who at least had had sense enough to place artfulness above arrogance.
In his small but orderly Senate office, Palpatine gazed out on a sliver of Coruscant. On the far side of a ceaseless current of mid-tier traffic was the sheer cliff-face of a drab government complex.
Go about your usual business, Plagueis said. But how could he be expected to behave as if nothing had happened, even in the interest of establishing an alibi? Did Plagueis expect him to return to the Uscru and finish lunch? Go for a stroll in Monument Plaza? Keep his appointment to meet with the inconsequential Bothan who chaired the Finance Committee?
He stormed away from the office window, victim of his own unreleased rage.
This was not the life he had imagined for himself ten years earlier when he had sworn loyalty to the dark side of the Force. His hunger to be in closer contact with the Force, to be an even more powerful Sith, knew no bounds. But how was he to know when he had arrived at some semblance of mastery? When Plagueis told him?
He regarded his trembling hands.
Would his ability to summon lightning come more effortlessly? What powers had Sith Lord Plagueis kept to himself?
He was standing in the center of the room when he sensed someone in the corridor outside. Fists pummeled the door; then it slid to one side and Sate Pestage burst into the room. Seeing Palpatine, he came to a sudden stop, and the panicked look he wore on entering transformed to one of visible relief.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” he nearly screamed, running a hand over his forehead.
Palpatine regarded him quizzically. “I was occupied. What has happened?”
Pestage sank into a chair and looked up at him. “Are you sure you want to know?” He paused, then said, “In the interest of separating what I do from what you do—”
Palpatine’s eyes blazed. “Stop wasting my time and come to the point.”
Pestage gritted his teeth. “The Maladian commander I did business with during the Kim affair.”
“What of him?”
“He contacted me — two, maybe three hours ago. He said that he felt humiliated because of the manner in which the Kim contract had been implemented, and wanted to make it up to me. He said he’d just received word that a Maladian faction had accepted a contract to carry out a major hit on Coruscant, involving someone closely affiliated with Damask Holdings.” Pestage kept his eyes on Palpatine. “I feared it might be you.”
Palpatine swung back to the window to think. Had the Santhe guards planned to turn him over to the Maladians following the holocommunication with Pax Teem?
He turned to Pestage. “Who took out the contract?
“Members of the Gran Protectorate.”
“It fits,” Palpatine said, more to himself.
“What fits?”
“Where are these Gran now?”
“As soon as I heard from the Maladian, I asked Kinman to keep an eye on them. They’re holed up in the Malastare ambassador’s residence.”
Palpatine blinked. “Here? On Coruscant?”
“Of course, here.”
“It’s not possible that they’re offworld?”
“No, they’re downside.”
Palpatine paced away from Pestage. He opened himself fully to the Force, and was left staggered by an inrush of overwhelming malevolence. He planted his left hand on the desk for support and managed a stuttering inhale. Somewhere close by, the dark side was unspooling.
“Palpatine!” Pestage said from behind him.
“Hego Damask,” Palpatine said, without turning around.
Pestage was too stunned to reply.
The Gran had turned the table on him! On both of them. Plagueis had been so fixed on executing his own plan that he had neglected to consider that the Gran might also have a plan. How, though? How could he have been so blind?
“Ready a speeder, Sate!”
He heard Pestage leap to his feet.
“Where are we headed?”
“The Fobosi. The lodge of the Canted Circle.”
Slumped on his right side, knees drawn up to his chest, eyes open but unmoving, Plagueis watched the second Echani succumb to multiple stabs from the assassins’ vibroblades. With blood welling out from under Plagueis’s cupped right hand and glistening in a pool on the floor beneath his neck, they had taken him for dead. But now they were moving from the body of one fallen Muun to the next, checking for signs of life and finishing what they had begun. A few had lowered their black hoods, revealing themselves to be Maladians — the same group Sidious had employed to deal with Vidar Kim.
For an instant he wondered if Sidious had secretly taken out a second contract, but he immediately dismissed the thought — born as it was of his not wanting to admit to himself that the Gran had bested him. He wondered if the Maladians had actually been bold enough to kill the prominent Canted Circle members they were impersonating. Unlikely, given that the assassins were known and respected for their professionalism. The members had probably been rendered unconscious by gas or some other means.
Not a meter away stood 11-4D, five decapitator disks protruding from his alloy body and telltale lights blinking, in the midst of a self-diagnosis routine. Having run himself through a similar test, Plagueis knew that he had lost a great deal of blood, and that one of his subsidiary hearts was in fibrillation. Sith techniques had helped him perform chemical cardioversions on his other two hearts, but one of them was working so hard to compensate that it, too, was in danger of becoming arrhythmic. Plagueis moved his eyes just enough to fix the locations of some of the two dozen assassins that had survived the Sun Guards’ counterattack; then he dug deep into the Force and catapulted himself to his feet.
The closest of the assassins
swung to him with raised vibroblades and rushed forward, only to be flung backward off the canted stage and against the room’s curved walls. Others Plagueis felled with his hands by snapping necks and putting his fists through armored torsos. Spreading his arms wide, he clapped his hands together, turning every loose object in the vicinity into a deadly projectile. But the Maladians were far from run-of-the-mill murderers. Members of the cult had killed and wounded Jedi, and in response to confronting Force powers, they didn’t shrink or flee but simply changed tactics, moving with astounding agility to surround Plagueis and wait for openings.
The wait lasted only until Plagueis attempted to unleash lightning. His second subsidiary heart failed, paralyzing him with pain and nearly plunging him into unconsciousness. The assassins wasted not a moment, throwing themselves at him in groups, though in a vain attempt to penetrate the Force shield he raised. Again he rallied, this time with a ragged sound dredged from deep inside that erupted from him like a sonic weapon, shattering the eardrums of those within ten meters and compelling the rest to bring their hands to their ears.
In blinding motion his hands and feet smashed skulls and windpipes. He stopped once to conjure a Force wave that all but atomized the bodies of six Maladians. He spun through a turn, dragging the wave halfway around the room to kill half a dozen more. But even that wasn’t enough to deter his assailants. They flew against him again, making the most of his momentary weakness to open gashes on his arms and shoulders. Down on one knee, he levitated a Sun Guard blaster from the floor and called it toward him; but one of the assassins succeeded in altering its trajectory by hurling himself into the path of the airborne weapon.
With nothing more than the Force of his mind, Plagueis rattled the floor, knocking some of the assassins off their feet, but others rushed in to take their places, slashing at him with their vibroblades from every angle. He knew that he had life enough to conjure one final counteroffensive. He was a moment from loosing hell on the Maladians when he sensed Sidious enter the room.
