Queen''s Shadow

by E. K. Johnston

  “I’ll ship it to your parents’ house,” Eirtaé told her.

  Padmé went out onto the balcony after sunset, with Sabé giving her some distance as she followed behind. For once, there was no security issue to be considered. The entire trip had been without incident, and Padmé was deeply glad of it. She knew it was their job, and she knew it was her position, but she hated it every time people risked themselves for her, especially when it was her friends.

  It was quiet on Naboo in a way that Coruscant could never be. The city-planet had a constant hum: generators, traffic, the buzz of millions of simultaneous conversations. Naboo’s hum was much quieter, but it was still there if you knew what to listen for. Padmé had loved Theed’s waterfalls since the first time she had laid eyes on them, and being away from the planet had only made her fondness grow stronger. She stood still, leaning out over the city that her heart loved best, listening to the far-off sound of rushing water.

  “We’ll come back here, you and I,” she said to Sabé. “We’ll do what we need to do out there, and then we’ll come home.”

  Sabé rested her head on Padmé’s shoulder—felt the press of Padmé’s cheek against her hair—and neither of them doubted it for a moment.

  Shipments throughout the Mid Rim have come under attack by vicious pirates set to steal anything that’s not welded to the hull. Millions of credits’ worth of investments have gone missing as stripped ships are left to make their way back to the Core. How much longer will the Senate ignore the Mid Rim’s plight? How much money will investors like the Trade Federation be forced to risk? And will Chancellor Palpatine convince the galactic government to intercede before it is too late?

  —TriNebulon News

  Coruscant was loud and crowded, and the air smelled terrible, even as high up as the balcony of Padmé’s senatorial residence, but she found that some small part of her had missed it, in spite of her best efforts. She acknowledged that she enjoyed the intellectual challenges that came with being a member of the Galactic Senate, and she quietly reminded herself not to get so caught up in the theoreticals of power that she would forget how her actions—or inaction—affected other beings.

  They had returned a day early in order to settle into the apartment and unpack, but no sooner had the carry cases been stacked in her room than her official comm chimed, demanding her attention. Padmé went to read the message and then sat down as she realized what was about to happen.

  “Dormé!” she called. The handmaiden appeared in seconds. “Dig up something senatorial that we don’t have to press, as quickly as you can. I have to go to the Senate floor immediately.”

  “What’s happened?” Dormé was already moving. She knew

  exactly what case she was after, and before long she had assembled everything she would need.

  “There’s been an emergency session called,” Padmé said, beginning to strip out of her travel clothes. “Something about the planetary aqueducts on Bromlarch. There aren’t many details in the report, but it must be important to call everyone in a day early. I’m glad we made it in time. What do you want me to do with my hair?”

  “Leave it for now,” Dormé said. “And keep that undersuit on. It’ll be fine for under this.”

  Padmé let Dormé dress her in one of the new outfits. The brown undergown was topped by a ruffled green overdress that wouldn’t get wrinkled, and then a brown tabard went over top of that, in place of a cape or cloak. Dormé took the braids that were hanging down Padmé’s back and coiled them around her head in a manner reminiscent of Queen Breha’s crown, though Padmé’s hair was only held in place with pins.

  “That will have to do,” Dormé said critically.

  “Thank you,” Padmé said. “Please tell Typho and Mariek to meet me on the platform. Everyone else can stay here and try to recover from the trip.”

  Dormé left, and Padmé took a moment to collect herself. A thousand what-ifs crossed her mind, and she ruthlessly dismissed them all. There was no point in planning anything or worrying too much before she knew what the issues were and how she could best approach them. She took one more deep breath and headed out to her guards, becoming Senator Amidala to her fingertips.

  Typho drove the speeder himself because there wasn’t time to wait for senatorial transportation to arrive. Amidala’s office had the clearance to fly off of the main city routes, so it didn’t take them very long to get to the Senate building. Typho dropped off Mariek and Padmé, and promised to meet them at the pod.

  Padmé didn’t stop at her office but went straight out to the floor and took her seat. She turned on her translator in case she would need it and settled in to listen.

  “—potential for tragedy looms,” the senator from Bromlarch, a spindly humanoid male named Caelor Gaans was saying. “We had no way of predicting the seismic activity would be that severe. Our aqueduct system is capable of withstanding considerable pressure and stress, but this was far beyond anything the planet has ever experienced.”

  “What of your houses and population centers?” Mon Mothma asked. Padmé was relieved to hear her voice.

  “They fared a little better, Senator, thank you,” Gaans said. “The houses are made of a more flexible material and they are lower to the ground. We build our houses to be replaceable, and we thought the aqueduct would endure.”

  “It sounds as though you have done what you could,” Mon Mothma said.

  “It won’t be enough,” Gaans said. “Without the aqueduct, our agricultural system is all but annihilated. We can get water to less than ten percent of our fields, and the shaking has caused many private wells to run dry. We don’t have time to dig new ones while we figure out how to rebuild. We just finished planting season. If we can’t get water to the crops, the whole planet will starve.”

  At this dire prediction, Gaans took his seat. It was almost as though his legs would no longer carry him upright. Padmé’s heart went out to him. She knew what it was like to stay on Coruscant while her planet suffered.

  “Can the citizens of Bromlarch be relocated?” asked the senator from Malastare.

  “There are millions of us,” Gaans said, struggling to his feet again. “It would be impractical. And many have nowhere to go.”

  “Senators, senators,” Chancellor Palpatine finally made his voice heard. Silence, or the nearest thing to it, fell over the Senate chamber. “We must move as quickly as we can to allay the suffering on Bromlarch. Relocation will only be considered as an absolute last resort. The chair now recognizes the senator from Scipio.”

  Padmé sat up straight. She felt the sharp and unfamiliar stab of jealousy coursing through her at the idea that Rush Clovis would make a solo address before she would, but she quickly squashed the ugly feeling. She did wonder what he could possibly offer, though. She hadn’t come up with anything beyond basic food aid yet—an obvious and short-term solution at best.

  “Senators,” Clovis said, “I propose that an auditing team be sent to Bromlarch. They can assess the damage and provide a cost estimate of the repairs. I understand that Bromlarch is too overwhelmed to conduct the survey themselves right now, but this body can handle the task, and then once we have the reports, we can make further decisions.”

  Credits, of course. Clovis wanted to know what everything was going to cost. Still, it wasn’t a bad plan. Padmé’s only hesitation was that she knew from firsthand experience how long this sort of survey could take.

  “Onderon seconds the motion,” Mina Bonteri said. Padmé was surprised. Bonteri hadn’t spoken up very often toward the end of the last session. Perhaps her furlough had revitalized her.

  Palpatine conferred with his advisors, which still included Mas Amedda. Padmé had no love for the Chagrian councilor and wished Palpatine had chosen someone else now that he was more established as chancellor. She had not been consulted of course, but Palpatine knew of her dislike. As with so many other topics, he had dismissed her opinion the moment it failed to align with his. As Mas leaned forward again t
o speak, Padmé felt the chill of history repeating itself.

  “Very well,” he said. “We will send the survey team. I will ask our friends the Jedi if they will also send someone. They are excellent ambassadors during humanitarian crises and often provide a less policy-driven point of view for any proposed solutions. Senator Clovis, Senator Bonteri, you may bring whichever of your colleagues that you like.”

  Padmé’s comm chimed, and she knew it would be Organa before she even looked down. The message was only one word:

  “Go.”

  Padmé was on her feet with Typho and Mariek on her heels as Chancellor Palpatine began to say the formulas that wound down the session. She walked briskly, heading for the spot where Mina Bonteri’s pod would dock. Hopefully, she would be able to talk the Onderon senator into letting her come, even though they had drifted apart since Padmé had begun taking meetings with Mon Mothma. If she was desperate, she supposed, she would approach Clovis, but she would rather take her chances with Bonteri first.

  “Senator Amidala,” Bonteri said as she stepped into the hallway, “I am not at all surprised to see you.”

  “I would like to accompany you to Bromlarch, Senator,” Padmé said. “My past experience with disaster relief makes

  me—”

  “Yes, my dear, I know,” Bonteri said. “That’s why I am not surprised to see you. Walk with me?”

  Padmé fell into step beside her. At least Bonteri wasn’t moving slowly. They went down the corridor to an alcove in the wall where a small bench was tucked out of the path of foot traffic. Bonteri sat, and so did Padmé.

  “You were one of the first people I thought of, Senator,” Bonteri said. “I knew that the Senate’s first act would be to send people to observe the damage. They cannot trust reports, even when visuals have been provided. They must see everything with their own eyes.”

  “I remember,” Padmé said. She felt the old familiar bitterness swell in her stomach.

  “You will ensure a speedy trip, I am certain,” Bonteri continued. “And I will be able to give your observations the weight they need to move the Senate. But I warn you, we may not carry the day, in the end. Even after your recommendations, the Senate may still do something you do not approve of, and since you submitted the report, you will almost surely have to vote for it.”

  Padmé was digesting that when Clovis arrived.

  “Senator Bonteri, Senator Amidala,” he said. His eyes widened and he smiled despite the severity of the situation. “Do we have our first volunteer?”

  “It would seem so,” Bonteri said coolly. Apparently, she appreciated Clovis’s attitude as much as Padmé did.

  “Excellent,” Clovis said. “I will put my ship and its crew at our immediate disposal. Will you be bringing anyone else?”

  “I have a droid,” Padmé said. Mariek was going to be furious, but as Clovis was in charge, she could hardly bring her guards.

  “My secretary can take care of the rest of the recording,” Bonteri offered. “And we will have Senator Gaans with us, of course. I think that is a sufficient number.”

  Clovis might have proposed the survey, but Bonteri was making it very clear who was in charge, and Padmé appreciated that. She had not been looking forward to a week or two of doing whatever Clovis deemed appropriate. Bonteri was a much better leader for the venture and someone Padmé was much more comfortable working with and taking orders from.

  “All right, then.” If Clovis was offended, he didn’t show it. “Will you be ready to depart tonight? Say, four hours from now?”

  That would give Typho enough time to yell at her, Dormé enough to repack, and Padmé enough to comm Sabé with an update.

  “Yes, it is,” she said.

  “I will send my shuttle for you both,” Clovis said. “Now if you will excuse me, I have my own preparations to make.”

  He departed, and Bonteri sighed deeply before getting to her feet.

  “He’s a strange boy,” she said. “But he’s honest.”

  “Do you think?” Padmé said. That wouldn’t have been the first word she came up with to describe him.

  “I meant that he has no guile. You know exactly what you’re getting with him.” Bonteri looked at her shrewdly. “You are very similar, in that regard, though the manifestation of your honesty is different.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” Padmé said quietly but loud enough for Bonteri to hear. The older woman laughed, and Padmé smiled. Perhaps they had not grown so far apart afterall.

  “I have some messages to send,” Bonteri said. “And I imagine you do, as well. I will see you in a few hours, Senator.”

  Padmé got to her feet.

  “Thank you for including me, Senator,” she said. “Causes like this mean a lot to me.”

  “I know,” Bonteri said. “I will do my best not to take advantage of that.”

  While Padmé considered the oddness of that remark, Bonteri walked back to her office. Eventually, Padmé turned and made her way back to where she had left Typho and Mariek.

  “You’re going.” Mariek did not present it as a question.

  “I am,” Padmé said. “Come on. We need to go back to the residence so that I can pack, and it’s going to take some time for you both to finish yelling at me.”

  “Why are we yelling at you?” Typho asked.

  “Because you can’t come,” Padmé said.

  “Now, just a minute,” Typho began.

  “At the residence, Sergeant,” Padmé said. “I need a united front here, but when we get home you can yell at me all you want.”

  In the end, it took Padmé only an hour to change and pack. Dormé had organized the closet so that all her offworld clothes were together, which simplified the whole matter. Padmé commed Sabé, but she was out, so Padmé was forced to leave a message. Typho expended his vocabulary over the course of thirty minutes, while Mariek took another fifteen. By then, Varbarós had arrived to drop off R2-D2, and Padmé was ready to go.

  As she boarded Clovis’s shuttle, she felt a thrill of excitement that she was more than a little ashamed of, given the circumstances. This would be the most alone she had been in a very, very long time.

  From orbit, the aqueduct system that sustained life on the planet of Bromlarch looked like unusually straight rivers branching out across the surface of the planet. Clovis’s pilot had set their ship so they could watch the planet spin beneath them, and as the night side came up, the rivers disappeared completely. Only the lights of the settlements were visible. At least the planetary power grid had been partially restored.

  “You should still be able to see them,” Senator Gaans said sadly. He put a long-fingered hand up to the viewport, each of his nine digits splayed along the transparisteel as though he could reach through and hold the pieces of his broken world. “Their lights should be viewable from here. It was always one of my favorite parts of coming home.”

  “How much of the system sustained damage?” Padmé asked.

  “Almost eighty percent in total,” Gaans said. “The critically affected areas were right by the epicenter of the quake, but the damage radiated out, just like the water usually does.”

  Jedi Master Depa Billaba joined Padmé at the viewport. Padmé had known her by sight, as she was one of the Jedi who had come to Naboo for the funeral of Qui-Gon Jinn, but they had not spoken very much on the journey so far. Padmé liked her well enough, but it was strange to interact with a Jedi again after so long. Padmé knew better than to expect all individuals within a culture to be the same, but there were stark differences between the way Qui-Gon had carried himself and the way Billaba did, and Padmé found it distinctly strange in a way she couldn’t quite identify or explain, except to say that Qui-Gon had looked at her—too deeply sometimes—whereas she got the impression that Billaba was looking through her.

  “I sense fear and pain on your planet, Senator Gaans,” Billaba said. “But not in any specific concentrations. Your world is hurting, but the hurt is not yet critic
al.”

  “Thank you, Master Jedi,” Gaans said. “It is cold comfort, but it is still comfort.”

  Clovis came into the room where they had gathered to watch the landing. His ship design was quite different from that of Padmé’s silver craft, but the Naboo prided themselves on making everything look beautiful as well as serve a function. Clovis’s ship was blocky, its dull gray exterior betraying none of the absurd luxuries contained inside it. Everyone had their own quarters, which explained why they were limited as to whom they were allowed to bring with them. R2-D2 had accessed the ship’s blueprints almost as soon as they came on board, and Padmé didn’t need to understand binary to understand his low opinion of the layout. It was nice not to be crammed in on top of one another—even the Naboo ship felt that way sometimes—but the ship presented itself as a target to anyone who got close enough to scan them.

  “We should be landing as soon as our clearance comes in,” Clovis said. “My pilot is double-checking to make sure the coordinates haven’t changed due to an emergency shipment or something. We’ll be on the ground shortly, if you would like to get ready.”

  Padmé went to fetch R2-D2, but everyone else remained behind to watch the landing procedures. Clovis’s pilot was almost as good as Varbarós, but no one could land as smoothly as she did, and Padmé felt the jolt as they made contact with the ground. R2-D2 whirred dismissively.

  “I know,” Padmé said. “But they did fly us all the way here, so maybe be polite?”

  The planetary council was waiting on the platform when they debarked. They all looked absolutely exhausted, and Padmé couldn’t blame them. Recovering from a natural disaster was enough work, without taking into account the concerns over the aqueduct. She followed Bonteri and Gaans down the ramp. Clovis tried to fall into step beside her, but with R2-D2 there, he had no choice but to walk by himself. Master Billaba brought up the rear.