Star Wars - Darth Plagueis

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 hefelt 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