Star Wars - Darth Plagueis

heaving him face-first to the floor and driving the breath from him.
    Palpatine stood rooted in place, his hands trembling in front of him and his face stricken. Something stirred behind his incandescent eyes. He heard the pounding on the hatch and whirled.
    “Don’t come in! Stay away from me!”
    “What have you done?” It was his mother’s voice, panicked. “What have you done?”
    Cosinga pushed himself to his knees and began a terrified retreat, leaving smears of blood on the deck. But Palpatine was advancing on him now.
    “If the Force birthed you, then I curse it!” Cosinga rasped. “I curse it!”
    “As I do,” Palpatine growled.
    The hatch began to slide to, and he heard the voice of the guard who had escorted him from the Jafan III . “Stop!”
    “Cosinga!” his mother screamed.
    Palpatine pressed the palms of his hands to his head, then in eerie calm streaked to the hatch, pulled the surprised guard through the threshold, and tossed him clear across the cabin.
    Raising his face to the ceiling, he shouted, “We’re all in this now!”
    They could have been torturers: Plagueis and 11-4D, leaning over an operating table on Aborah that supported Venamis, still in an induced coma and now anesthetized, as well; the droid’s appendages holding bloodied scalpels, retractors, hemostats, and Plagueis, gowned and masked and with eyes closed, his shadow puddled on the floor by the theater lights, but in truth nowhere to be found in the mundane world. Folded deeply within the Force, instead, indifferent to the meticulous damage 11-4D had done to the Bith’s internal organs, but focused on communicating his will directly to the Force’s intermediaries, the droid monitoring cellular activity for signs that Plagueis’s life-extending manipulations, his thought experiments, were having their intended effect.
    A sudden current of intense dark side energy snaked through Plagueis. Stronger than any feeling he had experienced since the death of Darth Tenebrous, replete with flashes of past, present, and perhaps future events, the disturbance was powerful enough to snap him completely out of his trance. A rite performed; a confirmation conferred. Half expecting to find Venamis sitting upright on the table, he opened his eyes to the sight of 11-4D shuffling toward him from the operating theater’s communication console.
    Plagueis’s mouth formed a question: “Hill?”
    “No. The young human—Palpatine. A deep-space transmission.”
    Plagueis hurried to the device. They hadn’t spoken since the reunion on Chandrila, but Plagueis had been waiting, wondering if his manipulations had borne fruit. If not, then he might have to take personal action to solidify the Naboo gambit. Placing himself in view of the holocams, he took a moment to appraise the noisy image onscreen, Palpatine’s face bathed in the flashing lights of an instrument panel, something new in his eyes—color that hadn’t been there previously. A glance at the comm board’s coordinate readout; then:
    “Where are you?”
    “I’m not sure,” Palpatine said in clear distraction, his gaze shifting to something off cam.
    “You’re in a starship.”
    Palpatine nodded, swallowed, and found his voice. “The family ship.”
    “Read aloud the navicomputer coordinates.”
    When he had, Plagueis looked to 11-4D for elaboration.
    “Rimward of Exodeen along the Hydian Way,” the droid said.
    Plagueis absorbed it. “Contact the Sun Guard. Have them ready a ship and prepare yourself to accompany them.”
    “Yes, Magister.”
    Plagueis swung back to the monitor screen. “Are you capable of maintaining your present course?”
    Palpatine leaned to one side. “The autopilot is engaged.”
    “Tell me what happened.”
    The human took a deep breath. “My father arrived unexpectedly on Chandrila. He had me taken from the youth program vessel and brought to our ship. My mother and siblings were already aboard. After the launch I learned that I was being taken to Chommell Minor. Just as you warned. We fell into an argument … then, I’m not sure what happened—”
    “Tell me what happened,” Plagueis demanded.
    “I killed them,” Palpatine snarled back. “I killed them—even the guards.”
    Plagueis restrained a smile, knowing now that Naboo would be his. Over and done with. Now to reel him in further, and ensure his continued usefulness .
    “Did anyone on Chandrila observe you board the family ship?” he asked quickly.
    “Only the