Episode 50 - Coruscant
Stardate: 4 2 0 1 4.3
Earth Standard Date: January 06, 2365.
Location: Coruscant, Senate District
The clock struck 6:00, and Senator Sheev Palpatine was already in his office. He stood at the viewport with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the first pale threads of light creep across the Coruscant skyline. The planet never truly slept, but at this hour, the Senate District was quiet enough.
He had not slept well.
During the night, a disturbance in the Force had torn him from sleep. It was no small ripple or tremor; it had been a shockwave, rolling outward from some point he could not identify, more powerful than anything he had felt in decades. The echoes still clung to him, persistent and impossible to ignore. He had lain awake for hours, reaching into the dark, trying to trace the disturbance to its source. The Force offered no clarity. Only a faint current pulling toward Coruscant itself, and the whisper of patience.
Patience. He had been patient for years.
Palpatine turned from the viewport and crossed to his desk, settling into the high-backed leather chair. Three datapads, each containing the morning's intelligence summaries from different sectors. He had already reviewed them. The Kessel situation was stable. The Outer Rim trade disputes were escalating on schedule. The Banking Clan's latest lobbying effort had stalled in committee, exactly as he had arranged.
He picked up his commlink and pressed a button. "Have there been any developments in the Kessel situation?"
The voice of one of his many aides came through, tinny through the small speaker. "No, Senator. The situation remains stable. I will keep you informed if there are any changes."
"See that you do."
He set the commlink down. His fingers tapped the armrest. The disturbance nagged at him. Something of that magnitude would ordinarily justify abandoning his senatorial duties entirely, retreating to his private chambers until the source revealed itself. But the Force counseled otherwise. Whatever was coming, it was coming here. He could not tell if the current was the will of the Force itself or the machinations of his master's unseen hand, having set up events from before his... tragic demise. Either way, he would position himself to exploit it.
A faint beep interrupted his thoughts, and a holographic image of Senator Bail Organa materialized above his desk. The Alderaanian looked freshly groomed and irritatingly alert for the hour.
"Good morning, Sheev. We need to discuss the latest budget proposal. Can we meet later today?"
Palpatine offered a thin smile. "Of course, Senator. I will have my assistant arrange a time. I look forward to our discussion."
"As do I. Organa out."
The hologram dissolved. Palpatine's smile lingered for exactly one second after it vanished, then dropped away like a mask removed.
Dawn light filled the office by the time his staff began arriving. Aides and advisors filtered in through the outer chambers, checking schedules, sorting communications, and preparing the day's briefing materials. Palpatine sat with his eyes closed, his hands clasped before him on the desk, letting the noise wash over him without touching him. To anyone watching, he appeared to be in quiet contemplation. In truth, he was listening to the Force.
A soft chime sounded. He opened his eyes.
His assistant brought him a cup of hot caf. He accepted it with a nod, sipped, let the rich bitterness settle on his tongue, then set it aside.
"Senator," his assistant said, and her tone made him look up. "We've received a communication from Queen Amidala. She's on her way to Coruscant with the Jedi negotiators. She brings news of an invasion by the Trade Federation."
Palpatine set both hands flat on the desk.
"That is dire news indeed. Send a message to Chancellor Valorum. He will want to be there to greet the Queen when she arrives. Adjust my schedule to match."
"Yes, Senator." She made a note on her datapad and continued with the morning's agenda. "First up, a meeting with the Corporate Alliance representatives."
"I wonder what they're after this time," he murmured, scanning the schedule she held out to him.
He rose from his desk, straightening his robe and smoothing his silver hair into place. His assistant fell into step behind him as he moved toward the door.
"You're meeting with them in the East Wing, sir," she said.
Palpatine paused at the threshold. A single deep breath. He composed his features into mild, approachable warmth. His assistant recognized the cue and stepped back.
He stepped into the room.
The East Wing conference room table was empty.
Palpatine stopped two steps past the threshold. The long table, the vacant chairs, the untouched refreshment station along the far wall. The Corporate Alliance representatives were not here. No aides. No protocol droids. Nothing.
Except for a figure standing in the shadow of the room's support column, just beyond the reach of the overhead lighting.
Blue skin. A lip-less, nose-less face with large red eyes. A Duros. The wide-brimmed hat sat low on his head, and a pair of breathing tubes ran from the sides of his face down into the collar of his long brown duster coat. Twin blaster pistols hung from his belt in quick-draw holsters, and a collection of devices Palpatine couldn't immediately identify were clipped along his bandolier.
Cad Bane.
Palpatine had read the intelligence files. Every senator with enemies, which was to say every senator, kept a working knowledge of the galaxy's most dangerous freelancers. Bane sat near the top of that list for good reason. The Duros had a confirmed record of successful captures that included mid-level Force sensitives, and the unconfirmed rumors were considerably worse. He worked alone, he worked fast, and he did not fail.
Palpatine clasped his hands before him and let the door slide shut behind him. Running would look wrong. A senator of Naboo did not flee from strangers in his own building. And more importantly, he needed to understand what this was before he decided how to end it.
"Senator Palpatine," Bane said. His voice was a dry rasp. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I'm sure you're wondering why I'm here."
"I assume it has something to do with a bounty." Palpatine kept his tone measured, conversational, inconvenienced rather than threatened. He gestured vaguely toward the door behind him. "I'm sure if you're seeking information, one of my aides can assist you. I have a rather full schedule today."
"You catch on quick. I've been hired to take you down, Senator, and I must say, it was easy tracking you." He pushed off the column with one shoulder and took a single step forward. "So nice that you stuck to the schedule. And that the security here is rather lax."
The observation was accurate, which irritated Palpatine more than the threat itself. Senate security was a patchwork of jurisdictions and competing egos, and the East Wing fell into a gap between the Senate Guard's patrol routes and the building's private security contractors. Bane had done his homework.
"I'm afraid you won't be able to collect on that bounty. I have powerful friends who won't take kindly to your interference."
"You'll have to excuse me if I couldn't care. I've taken down plenty in my time, and I don't see you as any different."
Palpatine's pulse climbed. Not from fear. From the tension of feeling like a leashed animal watching prey walk past. The Force was right there, ready to answer. One gesture and the bounty hunter's throat would close. One thought, and the blasters would tear themselves from his belt and crumple like foil. It would take less than a second.
And it would destroy twenty years of work.
He could not use the Force. Not visibly. Not here, where the security holocams might still be recording, where Bane himself might be transmitting to a partner or a client. The risk was too great.
But he was not helpless.
While Bane spoke, Palpatine shifted his left hand beneath the fold of his sleeve and pressed the emergency contact on his comlink. Three short pulses. The Senate Guard would respond, but response time from the central station to the East Wing was four minutes at best. Possibly five.
He would have to survive five minutes against Cad Bane without revealing what he was.
Palpatine kept his posture still, his expression fixed in what he hoped read as controlled alarm. A senator's fear. Dignified, restrained, but present. He let Bane see it. Let the hunter believe he was dealing with a frightened politician.
In truth, he was watching Bane's hands.
The Duros shifted his weight. His right hand drifted a fraction closer to the holstered blaster on his hip, and for a split second, his attention cut toward the door, checking it, confirming it was still closed.
That flicker was enough.
Palpatine moved. He threw himself forward and low, channeling just enough Force Speed into his legs to close the distance before Bane's hand reached the blaster grip. Not enough to look superhuman. Enough to look like adrenaline, like a desperate man making a desperate choice. He passed inside Bane's reach, shoulder clipping the bounty hunter's arm, and hit the door control at a dead sprint.
The corridor opened up ahead of him, mercifully empty. He ran. Behind him, Bane's boots pursued.
Palpatine cut left at the first junction, then right, then left again, following the route toward the Senate plaza's public entrance.
The doors opened, and sunlight hit him. He slowed immediately, forcing his stride from a sprint to a brisk walk as he stepped out onto the broad stone terrace overlooking the Senate plaza. Politicians, aides, and lobbyists moved in clusters across the open space. A pair of Senate Guards stood at the base of the steps.
Palpatine straightened his robes. Smoothed his hair. Composed his face into an expression of mild distress, nothing more.
Behind him, the plaza doors remained shut. Bane had not followed him into the open.
The guards approached. "Senator Palpatine, is everything all right?"
"A minor incident. Someone attempted to accost me in the East Wing. A common mugger, I suspect. Please see that the area is searched."
They nodded and moved to comply. He turned and walked back toward his office at an unhurried pace, his hands clasped behind his back.
His pulse was still elevated. Not from the running.
He had used the Force. Only a fraction, only for a moment, but he had used it. If Bane had been recording, if there was footage, if anyone with the right expertise reviewed the speed at which a middle-aged senator from Naboo had crossed that room...
The risk had been minimal, but necessary.
— Star Jumper —
A pinpoint of light expanded into a shimmering oval, and Tyson stepped through it onto the Naboo cruiser. He moved slowly, hands visible, because two lightsabers had already ignited before his boots touched the floor.
Qui-Gon Jinn stood with his green blade angled across his body, balanced and ready. Obi-Wan had dropped into a low guard beside him, blue saber humming. The narrow corridor didn't leave much room for three men and two plasma swords.
"It's just me." Tyson kept his hands up, palms out. "I'm back."
Qui-Gon studied him for a long moment, then thumbed the activation switch. His blade retracted with a hiss, and he clipped the hilt to his belt. Obi-Wan didn't move. His saber stayed lit, casting blue light across the bulkhead panels, and his attention stayed fixed on Tyson.
"That ability," Qui-Gon said. "The portals. How do they work?"
"I can open them to anywhere I've been before." Tyson lowered his hands. "I stepped onto this ship on Tatooine. So I could come back to it."
Qui-Gon accepted that with a slow nod. "The Sith?"
"Escaped. A Zabrak. Tattooed, red and black. He called himself Maul. Darth Maul."
Qui-Gon went still with the confirmation of something he'd already suspected and wished hadn't been confirmed. He stroked his beard once, then let his hand drop.
"A Darth," he said quietly.
"That's what he said."
Obi-Wan finally disengaged his lightsaber. The blue light vanished, and the corridor felt darker for its absence. "You fought a Sith Lord alone, and he simply escaped?"
"He was fast," Tyson said. "Faster than I expected. He retreated on that same speeder he arrived on."
Obi-Wan's jaw tightened, but he said nothing else.
Qui-Gon turned toward the forward section of the cruiser, gesturing for both of them to follow. "We're nearly to Coruscant. The hyperdrive is holding, and we should arrive within the hour. We will need to report to the Jedi Council. All of it. The Sith, your abilities, what happened on Tatooine."
He glanced back at Tyson.
"They will have questions."
The Naboo cruiser broke through the upper atmosphere. Only one city he'd seen compared to this one. Taris. Coruscant filled the viewport, and it was more magnificent. The planet had no horizon that wasn't architecture. Skyscrapers climbed past the cloud line, their surfaces alive with running lights and holographic advertisements the size of football fields. Highways stacked ten, twenty layers deep cut between the towers, and speeders threaded through the gaps in streams so dense they looked like rivers of light. The scale of it broke something in his sense of proportion. New York City, the whole five boroughs, would have fit inside a single district here and vanished.
He stood at the viewport and watched it grow larger as they descended. The ship banked, and a landing platform came into view, jutting out from a government complex. The engines shifted pitch, the deck vibrated beneath his feet, and then they were down.
The ramp lowered with a hydraulic whine, and the royal procession formed up behind the doors. The Queen emerged first, her painted face unreadable beneath the white makeup, her gown trailing behind her in heavy folds of burgundy and gold. The handmaidens followed, hooded and silent. Shmi Skywalker walked among them. She'd taken to the role. She'd already had decades of reading others' needs, of moving through spaces without drawing attention. She looked like she'd been doing this her whole life.
Tyson hung back with Anakin and the Jedi as the delegation crossed the platform toward the welcoming party. Chancellor Valorum stood at the head of a small group of aides and Senate functionaries. He looked tired around the eyes. The kind of tired that came from fighting battles with paperwork instead of weapons.
"Welcome to Coruscant, Your Highness," Valorum said, and his smile was genuine even if it couldn't quite hide the strain underneath.
The Queen inclined her head. "Thank you, Chancellor. I am grateful for your hospitality."
Valorum turned to the aide at his shoulder. The aide gave a small shrug, almost apologetic, and Valorum's smile thinned. "I apologize for the absence of the Senator from Naboo. He intended to be here to greet you, but must have been delayed."
Disappointment, sharp and quick, flickered across the Queen's face before the mask settled back into place. Tyson cracked a slight smile. In the movie, Palpatine had been there to greet the queen when she arrived. Unless Plague of Butterflies had another surprise brewing, this was the first hint that the plan was going right. The bounty D'Lavina had placed on Palpatine was being collected, or at least he was being targeted and delayed. Tyson fully expected the bounty hunters to fail. Killing Palpatine was only the stated goal, not the expected outcome. The true goal was to ruin Palpatine's plans by outing the Senator as a Sith.
"I must admit, the situation on my planet has become quite precarious. I fear for my people's safety." The Queen paused. "I'm concerned that our own Senator is not present, given the dire circumstances."
The political warmth drained from Valorum's face, and something heavier replaced it. "I share your concern, Your Highness. Rest assured, we will do everything in our power to help Naboo."
"Thank you, Chancellor. I look forward to working with you."
The two groups merged and moved toward the waiting transports. The split happened in real time. Padmé fell into step with the politicians, her handmaidens closing ranks around her as Valorum's aides guided them. Qui-Gon was met by a pair of Jedi in brown robes at the far edge of the platform. Words were exchanged. Heads nodded.
Qui-Gon turned back to Tyson. "If you're willing, please protect the Queen and Anakin. I have much to discuss with the Jedi Council."
"I will."
Qui-Gon looked at him a moment longer, then turned and walked toward the waiting Jedi. Obi-Wan followed half a step behind.
He watched them go. The Jedi Temple was visible from here, impossible to miss. Five towers of white stone rose above the surrounding cityscape, glowing against the endless grey and chrome of Coruscant. It looked like a cathedral. Extravagant for an order that shunned materialism.
Qui-Gon's group made their way through the Temple's grand entrance and into halls wide enough to fly a speeder through. Other Jedi passed them, some in robes, some in training gear, Padawans with their single braids. A few nodded to Qui-Gon as he passed.
The Council chamber sat high enough that the afternoon light came in sideways through the windows, painting long rectangles of gold across the polished floor. Chairs in a loose semicircle. Jedi Masters, some of the oldest and most powerful Force users alive, sat in absolute stillness. The Coruscant skyline behind them was all movement and noise, thousands of speeders threading between towers, but none of it reached this room. The silence here had weight.
Qui-Gon stood at the center of the chamber. He'd laid out the events on Tatooine, every detail, building toward the conclusion he knew they wouldn't want to hear.
"My only conclusion can be that it was a Sith Lord."
Mace Windu sat forward in his chair. "Another Sith Lord?"
The disbelief in his voice was controlled, but it was there. Windu was not a man given to outbursts. That he reacted at all said something.
"Impossible," Ki-Adi-Mundi spoke from across the semicircle. "Revan and Malak were defeated. The Sith Triumvirate that replaced them has fallen apart. And now you say there is yet another Sith Lord?"
"The very Republic is threatened, if more Sith Lords there are," Yoda said. He sat in his chair with his hands folded over the head of his stick, his ears slightly lowered. No alarm in his voice. Something worse. Certainty. "Hard to see, the dark side is." He closed his eyes briefly. "Discover who this assassin is, we must."
Qui-Gon produced a small holoprojector for the council to see. Blue-white light resolved into the Tatooine desert, the sand flats outside Mos Espa. The recording had been provided by Tyson, who somehow had a recording device on himself that captured the fight. The twin blurs of green and red plasma as Qui-Gon and the Zabrak collided.
The council watched in silence. The recording showed the Sith's fighting style in full. Aggressive, acrobatic, built around the double-bladed saber. He pressed Qui-Gon hard, driving him back across the sand with combinations that flowed one into the next without pause. Qui-Gon gave ground, absorbed the assault, and countered when openings appeared. Tyson was part of the fighting, but the council never got a clear image of him, as the footage was from his perspective. The recording covered only the exchange leading up to Tyson's retreat, joining Qui-Gon on the ship.
"This recording is accurate?" Ki-Adi-Mundi asked.
"It is," Qui-Gon said.
"This attack was with purpose, that much is clear." Windu studied the frozen final frame, the Zabrak's tattooed face looking up at the ship. "And it seems the Queen was the target."
"With this Naboo Queen, you must stay, Qui-Gon." Yoda opened his eyes. "Protect her."
Windu nodded. "We will use all our resources to unravel this mystery and discover more about this Darth Maul and the state of the Sith leadership. May the Force be with you."
"May the Force be with you," Yoda repeated.
Obi-Wan, who had been standing just behind Qui-Gon's shoulder throughout, turned toward the door. But Qui-Gon didn't move. He remained where he was, facing the council, and Obi-Wan stopped mid-step.
"Master Qui-Gon. More to say, have you?"
"With your permission, my Master. I have encountered a vergence in the Force."
The room changed. Every Master in the chamber sat a fraction straighter.
"A vergence, you say?"
"Located around a person?" Windu asked.
"Two, in truth. A boy. His cells have the highest concentration of midi-chlorians I have seen in a life form. It is possible he was conceived by the midi-chlorians."
"You're referring to the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force. You believe it's this boy?"
"I don't presume."
"But you do." Yoda's ears lifted slightly. "Revealed, your opinion is."
"I request the boy be tested."
Silence. The Masters looked at one another. Something passed between them, unspoken. Qui-Gon could feel it but not read it.
"Trained as a Jedi, you request for him?" Yoda asked.
"Finding him was the will of the Force. I have no doubt of that." Qui-Gon paused. "The other is the one who made that recording, fought the Sith. He was close to the boy, and I sensed his presence from afar, like a blazing brightness in the Force. The brightest I have seen. His midi-chlorian count matched the boy's concentration levels. He claims to have defeated Darth Malak by posing as his apprentice and then killing the Sith Lord in single combat. He also claims responsibility for the destruction of the Star Forge and the true death of Revan."
Every Master in the chamber went still.
"Impossible," Ki-Adi-Mundi said for the second time.
"Bring them before us, then," Windu said.
"Tested, they will be."
— Star Jumper —
Senator Palpatine settled into the hovercraft's rear seat and smoothed the front of his robes. The pilot droid chirped its readiness, and the vehicle lifted from the Senate platform with a gentle hum, merging into the skylane traffic bound for the executive landing pads. Queen Amidala's ship would be arriving within the hour. Everything was back on schedule after the unexpected visit from that bounty hunter. He'd need to look into that, but priorities. This was a critical time.
He reviewed the talking points in his mind. The young Queen would be frightened, out of her depth, surrounded by Jedi she barely knew and a political system she understood even less. She would need a friendly face. A guiding hand. His hand.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. The sensation was faint, a whisper beneath the roar of Coruscant's trillion living signatures, but unmistakable. The Force carried it to him like the scent on the wind before a thunderstorm.
He was being hunted.
He checked the traffic lanes. Speeders, cargo haulers, air taxis, the usual crush of the capital. Nothing out of place. Nothing visible.
The explosion hit the undercarriage and turned the world sideways.
The hovercraft bucked hard, throwing Palpatine against his restraints. The pilot droid sparked and went dead, its photoreceptors dark. Warning klaxons screamed from every panel as the vehicle dropped out of the skylane, spinning, trailing smoke and molten fragments of its repulsor housing. Wind tore through the shattered canopy.
Palpatine unstrapped and grabbed the manual controls. The stick fought him, dead weight in his hands. He pulled on the Force, threading it through the ruined systems, and the hovercraft lurched back under something resembling control.
A gunship dropped out of the traffic above him. Trandoshan make. Heavy forward cannons were already tracked on.
The second volley punched through the space he'd occupied half a second earlier. Palpatine had already wrenched the hovercraft into a spiraling dive between two residential towers, close enough to scrape paint from the transparisteel windows. The Trandoshan gunship followed, its pilot skilled enough to match the turn.
Sheev's jaw tightened. More bounty hunters.
He banked hard left, threading the gap between a cargo platform and a communications array. The hovercraft shuddered with every correction. Half the repulsors were gone. The other half were dying. He was flying the vehicle with his will as much as with the controls, pouring the Force into keeping it airborne.
Another burst of cannon fire came his way. The shots went wide, chewing into the face of a commercial tower and sending a rain of duracrete into the depths below. Palpatine used the debris cloud as cover, cutting his thrust and dropping three levels before accelerating again on a perpendicular heading.
The Trandoshans adjusted. Their gunship was faster, better armed, fully operational. The gap was closing.
Sweat ran down Palpatine's temple. He jerked the hovercraft through another impossible turn, scraping the underside along a skybridge. Sparks fountained behind him. The controls went completely dead in his hands.
He was flying the craft with the Force alone now. Every meter forward was an act of concentrated will, and even his strength was not infinite. The strain was immense.
A tower filled his viewport. Residential, from the look of it. Hundreds of floors of occupied apartments directly in his path, and the hovercraft had nothing left to give.
Palpatine released the controls and moved.
He blew out the side canopy with a Force push and threw himself through the opening. The wind hit him like a wall. He reached out, found the rooftop of a lower structure rushing up beneath him, and pulled the Force around his body like a cocoon. He hit the roof hard, rolling across the duracrete, and came up on one knee as his abandoned hovercraft slammed into the tower above with a bloom of fire and twisted metal.
The Trandoshan gunship was already banking, coming around for another pass. They'd seen him eject. They were committed to the kill.
Palpatine stood on the rooftop with smoke in his hair and dust on his Senate robes, and he let go.
The anger was always there. He kept it banked like coals beneath ash, useful, controlled, hidden. Now he let it breathe. It flooded through him, and the Force answered it.
He raised one hand toward the oncoming gunship.
The Trandoshan pilot tried to pull up. The ship did not respond. It continued forward, accelerating, locked on its trajectory by a grip the pilot could neither see nor break. The gunship hit the already burning tower at full speed. The explosion was enormous, a second fireball swallowing the first, and the damaged structure groaned as support columns failed in sequence.
Palpatine lowered his hand. The debris fell.
The rooftop was quiet except for distant sirens. He looked down at his robes, torn and blackened, and then toward the executive landing pads where Queen Amidala's ship would already be on approach.
He had missed the meeting.
"Damn," Palpatine said quietly.
Over an hour later, he strode down the corridor toward the Senate chambers. He'd changed into a fresh outer cloak from the emergency wardrobe he kept in his secondary office, but the underlayers still carried the acrid smell of burning repulsor fluid. A superficial cleaning was all he'd had time for. Coruscant Security had swarmed the crash site within minutes, and he'd slipped away before they could cordon the area and trap him in hours of witness statements and protective custody protocols.
He could not afford protective custody. Not today.
The emergency session was already underway. Queen Amidala would be inside, surrounded by advisors who didn't understand what they were advising, and Jedi who understood too much. Every minute he spent outside those chambers was a minute someone else shaped the narrative. Valorum would dither. The Jedi would counsel patience. And Amidala, young and furious and desperate for her people, would have no one whispering the right words at the right moment.
His moment. His words.
Palpatine turned the corner toward the back entrance and stopped.
A man in Mandalorian armor blocked the corridor. The armor was clean, well-maintained, and painted with blue accents. A T-visored helmet hid the face beneath. The figure stood ready, weight balanced, hands loose at his sides, one resting near the holstered blaster on his hip.
Palpatine adjusted without breaking stride, angling to pass on the left. The Mandalorian sidestepped into his path. The hand on the blaster grip tightened.
"I'm sorry." The voice came through the helmet's vocoder, flattened and stripped of inflection. "I can't let you pass."
Palpatine drew himself up. He was not a physically imposing man, but he had spent decades learning how to fill a space with authority, and he deployed that skill now.
"And why is that? Don't you know who I am?"
The Mandalorian's helmet tilted. It was a small motion, but it communicated recognition. Not the kind a citizen offered a public servant. The kind a hunter offered prey.
The silence stretched for two heartbeats.
Palpatine was tired. The crash had cost him more than he would admit. Flying a dead hovercraft on willpower alone, killing the gunship crew, the hard landing on the rooftop. Using the Dark Side demanded fuel he could not openly burn. Not here, in a corridor fifty meters from the Galactic Senate, where any Force-sensitive within a kilometer would feel the flare.
The frustration slipped its leash. Just for a moment.
"I've no quarrel with you," Palpatine said.
The Mandalorian laughed. It was an ugly sound through the vocoder. "You're a politician. Everyone has a quarrel with you."
Palpatine stepped back. The Mandalorian's blaster cleared the holster and fired in a single motion, faster than any unaugmented human reflex should have allowed. The bolt scorched the air where Palpatine's head had been a quarter second earlier. He'd already moved, the Force accelerating his reaction before his conscious mind registered the draw, throwing his body sideways and low.
The wall behind him smoked where the bolt struck. Senate-grade duracrete, scarred black.
The Mandalorian was already raising the blaster for a center-mass shot, compensating for the dodge. The man's focus came through the Force like a blade pressed flat against skin. Cold. Professional. This was not the Trandoshans. This was something considerably more dangerous.
The security droids came around the far corner in a wedge formation, four units, Senate Guard models with heavy blaster rifles locked to their shoulder mounts. Their photoreceptors fixed on the Mandalorian and their targeting systems painted him in overlapping fields of fire.
"Drop your weapon, bounty hunter," the lead droid ordered.
The Mandalorian held his aim on Palpatine for one long second. Then the blaster lowered, slowly, the barrel tracking down through a careful arc until it pointed at the floor.
Palpatine straightened his cloak. His pulse was elevated. He made sure it didn't show.
"Looks like luck is on my side this time," he said.
The Mandalorian turned to face the droids. The helmet swiveled back toward Palpatine one last time.
"I'll see you around, Senator."
The jetpack ignited with a roar that filled the corridor. The Mandalorian rocketed upward through an open maintenance shaft and was gone, swallowed by Coruscant's endless sky.
Palpatine entered the Senate chambers and knew immediately that he was too late.
Hundreds of repulsorpods drifted back toward their docking positions, their occupants filing out through the tiered exits in clusters of two and three, voices carrying across the vast space in overlapping waves of a dozen languages. The Chancellor's podium stood empty. The central display had already been powered down.
He found Senator Orn Free Taa near the Ryloth delegation's pod, the Twi'lek's bulk wedged into conversation with a pair of Sullustan trade representatives. Palpatine caught his arm.
"The Naboo petition," he said. "What happened?"
Taa blinked at him, then at the state of his robes. "Sheev, you look terrible. Were you in an accident?"
"The petition, Orn."
"Tabled. The Trade Federation's delegation called for a commission to verify the Queen's claims. Valorum accepted the motion." Taa shrugged, his lekku swaying. "The Queen was furious. She left with her Jedi escort twenty minutes ago. I assumed you knew."
Palpatine thanked him and walked away before the Twi'lek could ask more questions.
Twenty minutes. He had missed her by twenty minutes.
The rage came up through his chest like bile. He swallowed it, held it, felt it burn as he crossed the emptying rotunda floor. His plan had been precise. Amidala arrives, shaken and angry. He meets her at the landing pad, the concerned mentor, the sympathetic ear. He walks her through the political landscape, names the obstacles, lets her see for herself that Valorum is weak, that the system has failed her, that the only path forward is a vote of no confidence. She reaches the conclusion on her own. He simply lights the way.
Instead, she had faced the Senate alone. No friendly guide. No whispered counsel. She had watched Valorum fold to the Trade Federation procedure, and she had left. Where? Back to her ship? Back to Naboo? He didn't know, and not knowing was intolerable.
Palpatine walked the corridor toward the eastern wing. The halls were thinning out as the session's crowd dispersed. He passed a maintenance crew, a pair of Rodian journalists arguing over a datapad, a protocol droid ferrying documents. None of them warranted attention. He churned through contingencies, discarding options, searching for the thread he could still pull.
The vote of no confidence was essential. Without it, Valorum remained Chancellor. Without Valorum's removal, there was no vacancy. Without the vacancy, there was no election. Without the election—
He stopped that line of thought. One problem at a time.
He turned the corner and walked directly into a group of children.
There were eight of them, small bodies in matching beige tunics, ages ranging from perhaps four to seven standard years. Younglings. A Nautolan woman in Jedi robes walked behind them, her large dark eyes watchful, one hand resting on the shoulder of a tiny Rodian who had fallen behind the group.
The children stopped when they saw him. Several of them stared openly at his disheveled appearance, the torn underlayers visible beneath his fresh cloak, the smudge of soot he'd missed along his jawline.
A Togruta girl at the front of the group stepped forward. She was small, her montrals barely developed, her face striped in the orange and white markings of her species. She looked up at him with the unguarded directness that only children and fools possessed.
"Senator, is everything all right? Can we help you in any way?"
The Dark Side surged. It came from nowhere and everywhere, from the furnace he kept sealed beneath thirty years of discipline, and for one white-hot instant, Palpatine felt his fingers twitch with the impulse to close them into a fist and crush. The girl's throat was so small. It would take nothing. A thought. Less than a thought.
The Nautolan guardian shifted her weight. She had felt something. Not enough to identify, but enough to put her hand closer to the lightsaber on her belt.
Palpatine smiled. It was one of his best, warm and slightly weary, the expression of a dedicated public servant at the end of a long day.
"No, no, my young friends. Everything is under control. I simply had a minor setback in the Senate chambers." He looked at the Togruta girl and let the warmth reach his eyes. "But I will recover. I always do."
The guardian relaxed. She gathered her charges with a gentle word and ushered them past him down the corridor. The Togruta girl glanced back once, then disappeared around the corner with the rest.
He stood alone in the hallway. The smile dropped from his face like a mask cut from its strings.
He needed the lightsaber.
His secondary office was three floors below the main Senate level, a modest suite he maintained for private meetings and sensitive communications. He entered, sealed the door, and crossed to the far wall. The hidden compartment responded to a combination of pressure points and a whisper of Force energy too subtle for any external sensor to detect. The panel slid open. The lightsaber sat in its cradle, unremarkable in appearance. He had built it himself, decades ago, and it had tasted blood on four worlds. The hilt was cool in his palm. He did not ignite it. There was no need. The weight of it was enough, a reminder of what he was beneath the Senate robes and the practiced smile.
He tucked it into the inner fold of his cloak, where it settled against his ribs. Then he sealed the compartment and left.
Queen Amidala's temporary quarters were in the diplomatic wing, a suite assigned to visiting heads of state. Palpatine walked there with purpose, his stride measured, his composure rebuilt layer by careful layer. He had a new approach forming in his thoughts. If she were still here, still on Coruscant, he could salvage this. The Senate's failure to act was itself a weapon. He simply needed to place it in her hands and let her swing it.
The door to her suite stood open. That was wrong.
He stepped inside. The receiving room was bare. The personal effects that should have cluttered the surfaces of any occupied diplomatic suite were gone. No travel cases. No handmaiden robes draped over chairs. No datapads, no cosmetics, no half-eaten meals from the Senate commissary. The bed in the adjoining room was made, its sheets untouched.
She was gone. All of them were gone. The Queen, her handmaidens, her security detail. They had packed and left, and no one had thought to inform the senior Senator from their own planet.
Palpatine stood in the empty room. His hand found the lightsaber through his cloak and gripped it until his knuckles ached.
He held the rage for three seconds. Then he folded it up, pressed it down into the place where it lived, and let his mind do what it had always done. Rage was useful. He had learned that long ago, that rage was fuel. The trick was never to let it burn uncontrolled. You fed it into the furnace, you directed the heat, and you used it to forge whatever came next.
What came next required information. Who had placed the bounty that sent Cad Bane into his office? That had led to the attack on his hovercraft? The two events were connected; they had to be. Someone was targeting him specifically, someone with resources and knowledge of his schedule, and they had done so on the same day Amidala arrived on Coruscant. That was not a coincidence. That was orchestration.
Adapt.
Amidala had left for Naboo without him. Without his guidance, without his carefully calibrated whisper in her ear, without the vote of no confidence that he had spent months preparing her to deliver. That sequence was dead. The Senate path, the elegant political solution that would have placed him in the Chancellor's office with clean hands and a sympathetic electorate, was no longer viable on the original timeline. Unless he could catch her before she left the planet.
The invasion was still happening regardless. The Trade Federation's droid armies were still on the ground. And a fourteen-year-old girl was flying back into a military occupation with a handful of Jedi and a security detail barely large enough to staff a checkpoint. She would fight. She had that much steel in her. And she would either win, which would make her a symbol he could claim credit for supporting, or she would lose, which would make her a martyr whose memory he could weaponize from the Senate floor.
Either way, he could work with this. He could always work with this.
He released the lightsaber. Smoothed his cloak. Straightened the line of his shoulders and made his way to the landing pad, where he would have been before all this had started if it weren't for those bounty hunters.
— Star Jumper —
Tyson entered the Jedi Council chamber, high in one of the Temple's spires, its curved windows offering a panoramic view of Coruscant's skyline. He recognized Yoda and Mace Windu, Ki-Adi-Mundi with his tall, elongated skull; Plo Koon behind his antiox mask. The rest were faces he'd have to put names to later.
He stood in the center of the circle. The arrangement was deliberate. Anyone standing where he stood was meant to feel exposed.
Anakin had just been escorted out by Qui-Gon. The boy had done well enough on the tests, from what Tyson could gather, though the Council's collective mood was difficult to read. Trained Force users who had spent decades mastering emotional discipline didn't leak much, even to his empathic sense. What he caught were surface impressions: guarded curiosity, caution, and from Windu specifically, suspicion.
Yoda regarded him from his seat, clawed hands resting on his stick. "Tell us, you will, of your origins."
Tyson cleared his throat. He'd rehearsed this in his head, trimming the truth into something the Council could digest without choking on it.
"I come from beyond what could be considered the known regions," he said. "I am human, with a secondary heritage from a planet called Betazed. As such, I have an inherent empathy which synergizes with the Force."
Several of the Masters shifted at that. He felt a gentle probe against his mental shields, testing rather than intrusive. He let it slide off without reacting.
"And how did you come to be here, fighting for the Republic?" Windu asked.
"I was on a vessel that was pulled into some kind of anomaly. We were rescued by the Endar Spire. But that vessel, in turn, was under attack by the Sith when I regained consciousness. I escaped that ship, encountering a Jedi Knight, Alysia Rahn, and a man named Avner, whom I later discovered was the Sith Lord Revan. We were trapped on Taris during the blockade, eventually retrieving a Padawan with the unique Force ability, battle meditation. Bastila Shan."
He paused. The Council was listening, cataloging every word for later dissection.
"I created a distraction to allow the others to escape the blockade, and drew the attention of Darth Malak. I pretended to be his apprentice, and shortly afterward defeated him." He said it plainly, without emphasis, which was the only way to say it. Any dramatic inflection would have made it sound like a lie. "Later, I was reunited with Avner. I used my position posing as Malak's apprentice to determine the location of the Star Forge, the source of the Sith Fleet. The Star Forge was a tool of the dark side. Standing in it, Revan succumbed to the Dark Side." A beat. "He died with the station's destruction."
The murmuring started before he finished the last sentence. Tyson caught fragments of it through the Force, not words but emotional textures. Skepticism from Mundi. Something more complex from Yoda. Windu's suspicion had sharpened into something analytical, the man turning Tyson's account over like a gemstone, looking for flaws in the cut.
He didn't blame them. A self-taught Force sensitive who had defeated two Sith Lords was either a dangerous person or a prolific liar. Possibly both.
"And you've never been trained as a Jedi?" Windu asked.
"I was taught some of the principles of the Jedi Order by Knight Alysia, as well as the basics of Shii-Cho," Tyson said. "Most recently I encountered Meetra Surik and learned the foundations of Ataru."
"Two Sith Lords," Windu repeated, the statement dressed as a question.
"Darth Malak and Darth Revan, yes," Tyson confirmed.
"And your training amounts to basic instruction from a single Knight and a few sessions with the Exile."
"That's correct."
The silence that followed was the Council communicating without speaking. Tyson could feel the currents of it, impressions passed between their minds. He wasn't privy to the content, but the rhythm was unmistakable. They were deliberating.
Ki-Adi-Mundi spoke first. "The blockade of Taris is a matter of record." His tone was measured, clinical. A man who dealt in facts and found comfort in them. "The timeline you describe is consistent."
"Consistent," Windu said, "is not the same as confirmed."
"No," Mundi agreed. "But Knight Shan's own accounting to the Dantooine Council, following the destruction of the Star Forge, corroborates significant portions of this man's story. She reported the presence of a Force-sensitive human male aboard the Endar Spire who assisted in the escape from Taris. She reported his role in the infiltration of Malak's forces." He paused, consulting something in his memory. "She also reported that this individual was involved in the Battle of the Star Forge and was responsible for Revan's death."
"Presumed," Plo Koon said from behind his mask. "Not confirmed."
"Knight Shan has not reported to this Council since her initial debriefing on Dantooine," Mundi continued. "Her current location is unknown. She was given leave to pursue her own path following the Star Forge's destruction, given the... unique circumstances of her service."
Tyson kept his expression neutral. Bastila's absence from the Order was because she'd been living inside the Personal Reality.
"There is another detail," Windu said, and Tyson felt the shift in the room's emotional temperature. "Following Malak's defeat, Republic Intelligence flagged reports of a new figure within the remnants of the Sith command structure. An apprentice by the name of Darth Typhon. Typhon. Tyson. You said you posed as Malak's apprentice."
"I did."
"And the Sith name you used?"
"Darth Typhon."
More silence. Tyson could feel the recalculation happening across the room. The story had shifted from improbable to something worse; plausible in a way that raised harder questions than a simple lie would have.
"Bold, that admission is," Yoda said. The old Master hadn't moved, hadn't shifted his posture or his grip on his stick. He regarded Tyson, giving away nothing. "Many would hide such a thing."
"Hiding it would be pointless," Tyson said. "Master Windu just connected the name in under a minute. Anyone with access to Republic Intelligence files could do the same. I'd rather you heard it from me than discovered it and wondered what else I was concealing. I admitted as much to Qui-Gon."
Yoda made a small sound. Not quite agreement, not quite dismissal. An acknowledgment that the logic was sound, even if the trust wasn't yet earned.
"A more pressing concern, there is," Yoda said, redirecting the chamber's focus with the ease of someone who had been steering conversations for eight centuries. "The Exile. Meetra Surik."
The mood shifted again. Tyson caught it clearly with his empathy this time. Unease, and not the guarded kind the Council had maintained throughout his testimony.
"Surik was exiled from the Order following the Mandalorian Wars," Mundi said, and the recitation was as much for the Council's collective framing as for Tyson's benefit. "She surrendered herself voluntarily and accepted the Council's judgment. Her return now, after years of absence, raises questions."
"Questions compounded by what she brought with her," Windu added. "Reports from the Outer Rim indicate the emergence of a new Sith Lord operating, remnants of the Sith Triumvirate..."
He trailed off, but the implication was clear enough. The Sith weren't gone. They'd fractured, and the pieces were still dangerous.
"The fleet that served under Malak," Plo Koon said. "It did not dissolve with the Star Forge's destruction. A significant portion of those vessels remain operational, now following this new Sith Lord. Our resources in the Outer Rim are stretched thin attempting to monitor their movements."
"And now the Trade Federation blockades Naboo," Mundi said. "A sovereign Republic system, besieged by a commercial entity with a private army. The Senate debates while the people of Naboo suffer."
"Connected, these events may be," Yoda said quietly. "Or connected, they may not be. Difficult to see, the future is. The dark side clouds everything."
sFor Yoda to acknowledge the limits of the Council's foresight in front of an outsider was not a casual statement. It was a warning.
"Clouded how?" Tyson asked, then caught himself. He was being questioned, not conducting the interview.
But Yoda didn't rebuke him. The old Master's ears twitched, and he regarded Tyson for a long moment. "A shadow, there is. Over the future. Over the present. Grown stronger, it has, in recent years. See clearly, we cannot. Trust in the Force, we must, yet the Force itself feels... muddied."
Windu's jaw tightened. He didn't like that admission any more than Yoda liked making it. "What Master Yoda is saying is that we are operating with incomplete information on multiple fronts. The Sith remnant fleet. This new Sith Lord. The Triumvirate. The Trade Federation's aggression. And now a self-taught Force user who claims to have defeated two Sith Lords walks into our Temple having encountered the Exile and a nine-year-old boy who may be the Chosen One."
He looked at Tyson. "You can understand our caution."
"I'd be concerned if you weren't cautious," Tyson said.
"Caution alone, sufficient it is not," Yoda murmured, almost to himself. He tapped his stick once against the floor, a soft sound that nonetheless drew every eye in the chamber. "Too many threats. Too few answers. Stretched thin, the Order is. Stretched thin, the Republic is."
"The question before us is not merely whether this man's account is truthful," Plo Koon said. "It is whether the convergence of these events is a coincidence or design. The Sith have always been patient."
"The Sith we knew were not patient," Mundi countered. "Malak was aggressive. Revan was strategic but direct. This new threat operates differently."
"Which is precisely what concerns me," Windu said. "Which leads us to the question of what to do with you."
Tyson said nothing. The smart move was to let them talk.
"Too old for traditional training, he is," Yoda said. "This, we have established. Yet strong in the Force, he is. Undeniably so."
"Strong and untrained is not a combination that inspires confidence," Windu said. "History has shown us what happens when powerful Force sensitives develop without guidance. We are discussing one such case in the Outer Rim right now."
"With respect, Master Windu," Plo Koon said, "this man came to us voluntarily. He disclosed his use of a Sith identity without prompting. That suggests a different temperament than the examples you're alluding to."
"Or better instincts for self-preservation," Windu replied.
Ki-Adi-Mundi considered. "The practical reality is difficult to ignore. He has defeated Darth Malak. He has, by his own account, and corroborated by Knight Shan, been instrumental in the destruction of the Star Forge. Whether we approve of his methods or not, these are accomplishments that most trained Knights could not claim."
"Accomplishments achieved through deception," said Adi Gallia from across the circle. "He infiltrated the Sith by pretending to be one of them. That required drawing on the dark side, or at minimum presenting a convincing imitation of it."
"I won't pretend the dark side wasn't present in that environment," Tyson said. Every head turned back to him. "I used what I had to accomplish what needed doing. I won't presume to understand the Force as you do, but I've observed that the presence of the Dark Side doesn't affect me as it does other Jedi I've encountered. Could I stand in front of you, as a student of the Dark Side, without you being able to sense it?"
Yoda closed his eyes. The others waited. When the Grand Master reached out through the Force, the rest of the Council followed, all minds turning their collective perception toward the man standing in their center.
Tyson held still and let them look.
Mace Windu was the first to speak, and he did so reluctantly. "I see no corruption." The words came out clipped, almost annoyed, as though the absence of darkness was itself an inconvenience. "His shatterpoint reads clean. Unusual for someone who spent time embedded with the Sith. Unusual for anyone, frankly."
"Agreed," Plo Koon said. "His presence in the Force is... clear. Remarkably so. I have interrogated captured Dark Side acolytes before. There is always a residue. A stain that lingers in their connection to the Force, regardless of their intentions. I sense nothing of the kind here."
Ki-Adi-Mundi tilted his elongated head. "The Cerean binary brain offers certain advantages in detecting Force deception. I can confirm what Masters Windu and Koon have stated. There is no dark side signature. However, I would note that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Novel methods of concealment cannot be ruled out."
"Always the scientist," Adi Gallia said, though not unkindly. "I sense no concealment either, Ki-Adi. What I sense is something I cannot easily categorize. His connection to the Force is genuine, but it feels... different. Not dark. Not precisely light, either."
"Hmm," Yoda murmured, opening his eyes. "Sense this too, I do."
"Your Force presence is unusually dense for someone with no formal training," Windu said slowly. "Events cluster around you. The Endar Spire. Taris. The Star Forge. Revan. The Exile. And now Qui-Gon's discovery on Tatooine. You are either the unluckiest man in the galaxy or something in the Force keeps placing you at the center of things."
"Perhaps both," Tyson said.
Yoda's stick tapped the floor again. "Test him, we should."
Windu looked at the Grand Master. Whatever passed between them was invisible to Tyson, but he caught the reluctant shift in Windu's posture.
"The standard trials are designed for younglings," Mundi noted.
"Then standard, the trials will not be," Yoda said simply. "Appropriate tests, we will devise. His strength, his control, his temperament. If worthy of further training he is, reveal it, the tests will. If not..." The old Master left the sentence unfinished, which said more than any conclusion would have.
— Star Jumper —
The Council's deliberation dragged on behind sealed doors, and Tyson had used the time to settle his thoughts within the Personal Reality before stepping back into the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Now he stood in the corridor outside the Council chambers, arms folded, leaning against the wall. Bastila stood to his left with her hands clasped behind her back in that rigid posture she never quite abandoned. Meetra was to his right, quieter, her presence in the Force carrying that strange hollow resonance. Limited Party only allowed him two others. Meetra and Bastila were the ones the Council had mentioned and had agreed to join him.
"The Order will welcome you," Bastila said. She spoke with the certainty of having already decided the matter and was simply waiting for the reveal. "With the Mandalorian Wars and the Jedi Civil War, our numbers are significantly depleted. We've lost entire enclaves. Despite your age, the Council cannot afford to turn away someone with your abilities. It would be foolish."
"You sound pretty confident for someone who recently graduated from being a Padawan."
"I am confident because it is the logical conclusion," Bastila said. "The Order needs strength. You have demonstrated that in abundance."
Meetra let out a quiet breath. "They turned me away."
Bastila's mouth opened, then closed. She looked straight ahead at the chamber doors.
"I came back from the Mandalorian Wars. I was the only Jedi who returned to face the Council's judgment. And they cast me out. Stripped my connection to the Force, or so they believed, and sent me into exile." She paused. "So you'll forgive me if I don't share your optimism about what the Council can and cannot afford to do."
Bastila said nothing for a long moment. Then, carefully replied, "The circumstances were different."
"Were they?"
The chamber doors opened before Bastila could answer. A Temple attendant gestured them forward.
The seats were arranged in the same manner, and the Masters who occupied them watched the three of them enter.
Yoda sat at the center of the arc. His attention moved between the three of them with that deceptive slowness that Tyson had learned to stop underestimating.
"Knight Shan," Yoda said. "Knight Surik."
Bastila bowed. "Masters."
Meetra's bow came a half-second later, stiffer. "Masters." She straightened and looked across the assembled Council. "It's strange to stand before the High Council again. After everything."
Master Windu regarded her, looking even more serious than usual. "You stand here because the Force wills it, Surik. Not because this Council has forgotten what transpired."
"I haven't forgotten either, Master Windu," Meetra said. "I remember it clearly."
"Peace," said Master Plo Koon from his seat. "Knight Surik has returned from exile. She has regained her connection to the Force through her own trials. That alone speaks to the will of the Force."
Windu's jaw tightened, but he did not press the point.
Yoda tapped his stick once against the floor. The sound was small but it silenced the room completely. "Much has changed since last you stood here, Knight Surik. Suffered greatly, the Order has. Suffered greatly, the galaxy has." His ears shifted slightly. "Report you have for this Council, yes?"
Meetra nodded. "I do. I recently encountered a member of the Sith Triumvirate. Darth Sion. Sion was a being who sustained himself through the dark side, refusing death through sheer hatred and pain. He could not be killed by conventional means."
She paused and glanced at Tyson.
"He was killed by Tyson."
Several of the Masters exchanged glances.
"Certain of this, you are," Yoda said.
"I witnessed Sion engage Master Kae," Meetra said. "We engaged in the Peragus system. Sion was jettisoned in space, and the volatile fuel ignited. The mining station and large swaths of what remained of the planet were destroyed."
"If what Knight Surik says is true," Ki-Adi-Mundi said, "then this man has killed Darth Sion, Darth Malak, and Darth Revan. Three Sith Lords. Each of them among the most dangerous in recent memory."
"Dangerous, such power is," Yoda said quietly. "In any hands."
Windu turned from Meetra to Tyson. His face hardened. "I'm also troubled by another detail in your report, Knight Surik. You mentioned Master Arren Kae. Master Kae was Revan's first teacher. She was exiled from this Order for having a secret child with an Echani General, and for her radical teachings regarding the nature of the Force. Teachings this Council deemed dangerous."
"Wait. She was exiled for having a kid?" Tyson asked. They were talking about Kreia. They referred to her as Arren Kae, she went by Kreia now, but Tyson knew she was the Sith Lord, Darth Treya, the Betrayer.
Windu's attention fixed on him. "She was exiled for violating the Code. For deception. For—"
"For having a family." Tyson let the words sit for a beat, then turned his head toward the Cerean Master seated three chairs down. He drew on his metaknowledge to point out something that always bothered him about the Jedi. "Doesn't Master Mundi have a family? Wives, even? I'm not judging, genuinely, good for him. But I want to make sure I'm understanding the rules correctly, because from where I'm standing, they seem to apply selectively."
Ki-Adi-Mundi straightened in his seat. "My circumstances are unique. The Cerean species faces a significant population crisis. The Council granted a specific exception—"
"An exception," Tyson repeated. "So the rule against attachment is absolute and inviolable, except when it isn't."
"You oversimplify the matter," Mundi said, and there was an edge to his tone.
"Do I? A woman had a child and loved someone, and you threw her out. A man has multiple wives and children, and he sits on your Council. The only difference I can see is that one of them got permission first." Tyson shrugged. "Seems like the sin wasn't attachment. It was not asking."
Bastila's lips pressed into a thin line. She looked like she wanted to say something corrective, but couldn't quite find the angle.
Plo Koon tilted his head slightly. "There is some merit to the observation, uncomfortable as it may be."
"Merit or not," Windu said, in the particular flat tone of a man who refused to be derailed, "the matter of Kae's exile was decided by this Council, and it stands. What concerns me now is what followed." He looked back at Meetra. "After her exile, Kae left the Order entirely and followed in Revan's footsteps. She returned to Malachor V. A world this Council has expressly forbidden any Jedi from approaching. The mass shadow generator's activation there created a wound in the Force that persists to this day."
"Where is Kae now?" Windu asked.
Bastila shifted slightly, drawing a breath. Meetra opened her mouth.
"She's recovering," Tyson said, before either of them could speak. "The fight with Sion cost her. She lost a hand. She's alive, but she's in no condition to travel."
It was true. Kreia had lost the hand. She had also recovered remarkably fast thanks to the Medical Bay in his Personal Reality, but Tyson saw no reason to volunteer that information.
Bastila glanced at him. Meetra did the same. Neither corrected him.
"Does Master Kae know that you were the one who killed her former Padawan?" Plo Koon asked.
Tyson considered that for a moment. "I don't believe so."
Plo Koon nodded slowly and settled back.
"Interesting, Kae's path is," Yoda said. He spoke quietly, almost to himself, though every word carried across the chamber. "Revan's first teacher, she was. Yet, follow him to the Mandalorian Wars, she did not. Remained behind, she did, when others chose to go." He glanced at Meetra. "Restraint, she showed. Even after her exile. Even in her grief."
The implication was not subtle. Meetra caught it immediately.
"Master Kae had already been cast out," Meetra said. Her voice was controlled, but something burned underneath it. "She had nothing left to restrain herself for. I was still a Jedi when I made my choice. And I made it because the Republic was dying." She took a step forward. Not aggressively, deliberately. "Billions of people were being slaughtered. Entire worlds were burning. The Mandalorians weren't going to stop, and this Council sat in these chairs and debated philosophy while civilizations were ground to dust. I couldn't stand by. I won't apologize for that."
"No one has asked you to apologize, Knight Surik," Windu said.
"Haven't you? Every time this Council references the Mandalorian Wars, every time you speak of those who 'chose to go' as though it were a failing of character rather than a response to genocide, you ask exactly that."
Bastila shifted uncomfortably. "Meetra—"
"And nothing has changed." Meetra's voice didn't rise, but it sharpened. "Right now, today, the Sith remnants are consolidating under a new Sith Lord. A Republic system is being blockaded by the Trade Federation. And the Jedi Order sits here. Watching. Deliberating. Waiting for the Force to provide clarity while people suffer." She looked across the assembled Masters, one by one. "I was exiled for acting when this Council would not. And standing here now, years later, I see a different Council making the same choice. Little has changed since my exile. Little at all."
The chamber was quiet. Yoda's ears had lowered slightly. Windu's expression was unreadable, carved from stone.
Tyson stood with his arms folded. He said nothing. For once, there was nothing to add.
Plo Koon broke the silence first. "Perhaps we should move on to the matter at hand." He turned his masked face toward Tyson. "Your request to join the Jedi Order."
Windu was already speaking as the other master finished. "He is strong. No one in this chamber disputes that. But there is more to being a Jedi than physical prowess. Strength without discipline, without the philosophical foundation of the Code, is a liability. Not an asset."
"Impressive, for one untrained, Tyson is," Yoda said. One clawed hand rose to stroke his chin. "But too late it is. Too old. In childhood, when the mind is open and the attachments of the world have not yet taken root, the shaping of a Jedi begins. Arbitrary, this is not."
"I agree," Ki-Adi-Mundi said, nodding once. "And beyond the question of age, I sense excitement and hubris within him. A restlessness. He treats the Force as a tool to be wielded rather than a truth to be served."
Tyson tilted his head. "The guy with multiple wives senses hubris within me? Like recognize, like."
Mundi's expression tightened, but he did not take the bait. Windu did not give him the chance. "Why would we even consider this? The connections you have are obvious. Material. Personal. You travel with companions you are clearly attached to. You could not follow our ways. You would not want to."
Tyson opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked across the arc of seated Masters. Some watched him with something close to sympathy. Others with neutrality. Windu with certainty.
The Council turned to Yoda. "Jedi, Tyson cannot be. Rejected, his request to join the Order is."
The disappointment hit harder than Tyson expected. He'd known this was coming. He understood the Council's reasoning before they'd voiced it, and could have written their objections himself. And they didn't even have the full picture; if they did, the discussion would've been much shorter. Still, hearing the words spoken aloud in this chamber hurt him. Like a piece of himself from his original life was rejected by those he very much wanted to accept him. It wasn't the title. He could live without being called a Jedi. It wasn't even the training, though he could have used it. It was the thing the Order represented, or had represented, to a version of himself that felt very far away now but still lived in the back of his mind. The Jedi were the people who saw something in you. Who pulled you out of whatever desert you were stranded in and said, you were meant for more than this. That had been the fantasy. Not the lightsaber, not the robes, not the powers. Well, kinda the powers. But more the idea that somewhere in the universe, there were people who would look at you and see something worth shaping into greatness.
And they had looked at him, and their answer was no.
He let out a slow breath through his nose.
"I understand," he said, and gave a small bow. Deep and respectful enough. "Thank you for your consideration."
He stepped back, settling beside Bastila and Meetra.
Bastila did not step back.
"Masters. With respect, I believe this decision is premature. The Jedi Civil War devastated our ranks. The Mandalorian Wars, before that. We have lost entire enclaves. Katarr is gone. The Sith have hunted us to near-extinction, and we are only now beginning to rebuild." She stood straight, chin raised, every inch the model Knight. "Tyson has killed three Sith Lords. He possesses raw strength in the Force that rivals and perhaps surpasses everyone in this room. Surely you must sense that? Turning him away does not protect the Order. It weakens us further. We cannot afford ideological purity when we lack the numbers to defend the Republic."
Windu regarded her coolly. "The Code is not a luxury we abandon when circumstances become difficult, Knight Shan. It is the foundation upon which the Order stands. Especially when circumstances are difficult."
Bastila's jaw set, but she bowed her head. "Yes, Master."
Meetra spoke from Tyson's other side. Quieter than Bastila. No less pointed. "I'm not surprised," she said. "I'd be lying if I said I was." She looked at the Council with a tired expression. "But I don't agree. For whatever that's worth from an exile."
She said nothing else. She didn't need to. Her earlier words still filled the room.
Yoda tapped his stick against the floor once. "Another matter, there is, before this Council." He looked toward the chamber doors. "Enter, young Skywalker may."
The doors opened.
The boy walked in, sandy-haired and small. His eyes were wide, taking in the seated Masters with barely contained awe. Behind him came two figures. Qui-Gon Jinn, tall and composed, his hand resting lightly on the boy's shoulder. And beside Qui-Gon, half a step back, Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The boy stopped at the center of the chamber and looked up at the ring of Masters surrounding him.
Anakin Skywalker stood at the center of the chamber and tried not to fidget.
His heart hammered against his ribs so hard he was sure the Masters could hear it. Maybe they could. They were Jedi. They could probably hear everything. He kept his hands at his sides the way Master Qui-Gon had told him to, fingers curled against his palms, and he tried to stand tall even though the chamber was enormous and the ceiling was impossibly high, and every single person in every single chair was looking directly at him.
This was it. The moment. He'd dreamed about this on Tatooine, lying on his back in the slave quarters while the twin suns bled through the cracks in the walls. He'd dreamed about Jedi Knights and lightsabers and a life that meant something beyond Watto's junk shop. Master Qui-Gon had told him he was strong in the Force. Stronger than anyone he'd ever tested. And Anakin believed him, because he'd always known there was something different about him, something that hummed in his blood when he closed his eyes, something that let him see things before they happened.
But the faces looking down at him now held nothing warm.
"Correct you were, Qui-Gon," Yoda said.
"His cells contain a high concentration of midichlorians," Mace Windu said.
"The Force is strong with him," Ki-Adi-Mundi added.
Anakin's chest swelled. He looked up at Qui-Gon, who stood just behind him, and the tall Master gave him the smallest nod.
"He's to be trained, then," Qui-Gon said. Not quite a question. Almost a statement.
"No. He will not be trained." Windu declared.
The word punched through Anakin's chest. He blinked. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
"No?!" Qui-Gon stepped forward, and for the first time since Anakin had known him, his composure cracked with frustration. Behind him, Obi-Wan's mouth twitched into something that wasn't quite a smile. Something sad and resigned, like he'd already seen this coming.
"He is too old," Windu said. "There is already too much anger in him."
"He is the Chosen One. You must see it."
"Clouded, this boy's future is," Yoda said. Regret in his voice, but finality in his words.
Anakin didn't know what clouded meant. Not the way they meant it. He knew clouds. He knew sandstorms; the way the sky over Mos Espa turned brown and angry when the winds came, and how you had to seal every crack in the walls, or the sand would get in and ruin everything. Was that what they saw when they looked at him?
He wanted to say something. He wanted to tell them that he wasn't angry, not really, or that the anger he felt was the kind anyone would feel if they'd spent their whole life being owned by someone who didn't care if they lived or died. He wanted to tell them that he was supposed to be here. That the Force, whatever the Force was, had been whispering to him since before he could remember. But his mouth wouldn't work. The words were too big, and he was too small, and the adults were already talking over him as if he'd stopped existing the moment the little green Master said no.
"I will train him, then." Qui-Gon's chin lifted. Defiance, plain and open, in the heart of the Jedi Council chamber. "I take Anakin as my Padawan learner."
"An apprentice you have, Qui-Gon. Impossible, to take on a second."
"We forbid it," Windu added.
"Obi-Wan is ready," Qui-Gon said with certainty.
Obi-Wan stepped forward. "I am ready to face the trials."
"Ready so early, are you? What know you of ready?"
Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan exchanged a look. Anakin watched it happen and understood none of it and all of it at once. His dream was slipping away. He could feel it going, like sand through his fingers back home.
"Headstrong, and he has much to learn about the living Force," Qui-Gon said. "But he is capable. There is little more he will learn from me."
"Our own counsel we will keep on who is ready," Yoda said. "More to learn, he has."
"Now is not the time for this," Windu said, shifting the discussion. "The Senate is voting on the Naboo crisis. Queen Amidala is returning home, which will put pressure on the Trade Federation and could widen the confrontation."
"Events are moving fast," Ki-Adi-Mundi said. "Too fast."
"Go with the Queen to Naboo and protect her from this Darth Maul if he resurfaces," Windu ordered. "If he does, we need clues to unravel this mystery of the Sith."
"Young Skywalker's fate will be decided later," Yoda said.
Qui-Gon's shoulders dropped by a fraction. "I brought Anakin here. He must stay in my charge. He has nowhere else to go."
"He is your ward, Qui-Gon. We will not dispute that."
"Train him not," Yoda said. "Take him with you, but train him not."
"Protect the Queen," Windu continued, "but do not intercede if it comes to war until we have the Senate's approval."
After a pause, Qui-Gon asked, "And what of the other? Tyson?"
Windu's patience, already worn to a thin edge by Qui-Gon's defiance, frayed visibly. "Come now. He's older than most were when they were made Knights. Even Masters. The Council was certainly not going to approve him, and who would take a grown man as a Padawan learner?"
The question was rhetorical and dismissive.
"I will."
Every head turned.
Meetra Surik stood where she had been standing for the entire session, slightly apart from Bastila and Tyson, her arms loose at her sides. She looked entirely calm, like she had been waiting for exactly this moment.
"I'll teach him," she said.
The silence that followed was different from the silences that had come before. This one was pure shock.
Windu recovered first. "You cannot be serious."
Given that tone, Tyson was surprised Windu didn't drop a 'Motherfucker' to punctuate the sentence.
"I'm completely serious. You asked who would take him. I'm answering."
"Knight Surik," Ki-Adi-Mundi said, "you were exiled from this Order. You have only just returned. You do not hold the rank of Master. You cannot take a Padawan."
"I held the rank of Jedi General," Meetra said. "I commanded thousands. I trained soldiers and Force-sensitives alike during the Mandalorian Wars. I've guided others through their connection to the Force when the alternative was death. I may not hold your title, but I have the experience."
"Experience in war," Windu said. "Not in the traditions of this Order."
"The traditions of this Order left me to wander the galaxy alone for years. I learned plenty in that time. About the Force. About myself. About what it actually means to guide someone who's lost."
Bastila stepped forward, and conflict played across her face. "Masters, Knight Surik raises a valid point. She has demonstrated wisdom and capability beyond what her formal rank suggests. And the precedent exists. Qui-Gon himself has argued for exceptions to the age requirement. If the Council is willing to entertain the possibility for young Skywalker, however briefly, then surely—"
"The Council entertained nothing," Windu cut in. "We rejected the request. Both requests. Knight Shan, I would remind you that advocacy is not the same as argument, and neither is appropriate when the Council has already ruled."
Bastila's mouth thinned, but she inclined her head. "Yes, Master Windu."
Tyson stood where he was, arms folded. He should have felt something. Gratitude, maybe, that Meetra had spoken up. Instead, what he felt was the particular absurdity of the situation.
Plo Koon tilted his head. "Knight Surik. Your willingness speaks well of you. But the Council's decision regarding Tyson's admission to the Order has been made. He was not accepted. Without acceptance into the Order, there can be no Master-Padawan relationship to formalize."
"Then don't formalize it," Meetra said. "I'm not asking for your blessing. I'm telling you what I intend to do."
The temperature in the room shifted. Several Masters straightened in their seats.
"Careful, you should be, Knight Surik," Yoda said. His voice was gentle, but beneath the gentleness was something immovable. "Down this path before, you have gone. Acted against the Council's wishes, you did. Remember how that ended, do you?"
Meetra looked back at him. For a long moment, neither of them looked away.
"I remember," she said quietly. "Every day."
Yoda looked at her a moment longer, then tapped his stick against the floor. Once. The sound was small and absolute.
"Discuss this we will no longer." He looked across the chamber, taking in Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, the boy, Meetra, Bastila, and Tyson in a single slow sweep. "Go. Protect the Queen. May the Force be with you."
They filed out of the Council chamber. The doors sealed behind them with a low hiss. Tyson walked between Bastila and Meetra, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan moved ahead with Anakin between them, the boy's head down, his small shoulders tight. Nobody spoke. There was nothing to say that the chamber hadn't already said for them.
He'd expected the Council would reject him. What he hadn't expected was Meetra.
Wise Mentor had been sitting on his sheet since he'd picked it up, and he'd been trying to figure out who it would attach to. Qui-Gon Jinn had been the obvious candidate. The maverick Master who bucked the Council, who saw potential where others saw risk. It fit. When Qui-Gon hadn't worked out as his teacher, Tyson had shifted his thinking to Kreia. That made a different kind of sense. The old woman from the game, manipulative and brilliant, the mentor who taught through deception and hard truths. Who knew both sides of the Force.
He'd been wrong again and again. His Wise Mentor was Meetra Surik, the Jedi Exile.
It seemed he could still be surprised.