“Flame” was the only thing she said before she disappeared.
It was one of the first codes they had devised. Rather than have a single word that would call them all to action in case of an emergency, they had a few different ones to help indicate what sort of emergency it was. The color of the robes Saché had been wearing that morning—the ombré orange to yellow, in this case—meant that they all needed to appear as handmaidens in the throne room, as soon as humanly possible.
They didn’t bother to braid their hair. Instead, robes were thrown on and pulled straight, and everyone was left to tuck her hair in as best she could. Sabé led the way through the corridors at a fast walk. No one else seemed to be responding, so Amidala still required their discretion. They reached the throne room doors and saw the Queen was already sitting, with Saché at her side. The rest of them hurried to their places.
“Governor Bibble, thank you,” Amidala was saying as the governor entered from the other side of the room. “We know you meant to depart this morning, but Captain Panaka wished you to be present.”
“Of course, Your Highness.” Bibble was too practiced a politician to show his annoyance openly, but he could hardly be blamed for wanting to be elsewhere. He’d had a long week, too.
“Your Highness, Governor Bibble.” Panaka strode into the room, his boots ringing on the marble, and stood in the center of the floor. “Just as Governor Kelma’s ship was leaving orbit, our external buoys were buzzed by a small craft of unknown design. We assume they scanned us for planetary defenses, but everyone knows we have none. We do not know—”
A holo blurred over him, and he stepped aside to let the image clear. Even though he knew the person wasn’t really there, he couldn’t help reaching for his blaster.
“Your Highness,” said the figure. “I am Viceroy Nute Gunray of the Trade Federation. I require you to sign a treaty.”
“Viceroy, this is highly unorthodox,” Amidala said. “We are not in the habit of signing treaties with people we have only just met.”
“Nevertheless, you will sign this one,” Gunray said. “It is being delivered to you as we speak.”
Sabé went to the console and nodded. Whatever document the viceroy meant had appeared in the Queen’s database. Her hand hovered over the disconnect switch, but she waited for the signal.
“We will have it added to our schedule,” Amidala said, “and contact you in due time when full consideration has been given.”
“You will sign it,” Gunray said. “Or you will suffer.”
He disappeared.
“Your Highness,” began Panaka, but Padmé held up her hand.
“Captain,” she said. “Please ready your guards and the rest of the Security Forces. I know we do not have much in the way of planetary defense, but I will not sit idly by until we have determined what this Viceroy Gunray is after.
“Governor.” She turned to Bibble. “I am sorry, but I will need you to stay in the palace for a bit longer.”
“It won’t be a real treaty,” Bibble said. “They expect you to capitulate without a fight.”
“They expect incorrectly,” Padmé said. “But there may be hints in the document as to what their game is. I recommend you and your staff read quickly.”
“I will make arrangements,” he said. He stood to go, but Padmé raised her hand again to stop him.
“Governor, who on Naboo is empowered to sign treaties with offworlders?” she asked. “I must confess, I am unfamiliar with the exact chain of precedence, and I would like that clarified as soon as possible.”
“The Queen is the only person with that power,” Bibble told her.
“And if the Queen is absent or incapacitated?”
“They must wait for her recovery or return.”
“And if the Queen is dead?” She didn’t flinch.
“Then there must be an election, Your Highness,” Bibble said, his discomfort obvious in his tone and the way he twisted his hands. “It has never happened.”
“Thank you, Governor,” Padmé said. “We will reconvene in two hours.”
The treaty was, in Sio Bibble’s professional opinion, a pile of shaak shit. Naboo would be indenturing itself to the Trade Federation’s whims and stood to gain absolutely nothing from the arrangement. They couldn’t possibly expect the Queen to sign it.
They must have some darker purpose. Bibble went through every note he could find about who had signatory power in case of emergency to see whether his original statement to the Queen had been incorrect. If the Trade Federation sought to install a puppet queen who would be more amenable to their demands, that would be another matter. Everything he found indicated the same thing: he’d been correct. Only the Queen could sign, nothing short of her death would change that, and even should the worst come to pass, nothing could happen until they had another election. Legally, they were going to be fine.
Bibble started to worry about all the less than legal ways that this could end poorly as he headed back to the throne room.
“I need to contact Senator Palpatine,” Padmé said. “Use his emergency channel, if you can find it.”
“If I can find it,” muttered Eirtaé. Within seconds, she had set the comm up and ushered Padmé into the right place to stand for the holoemitter.
Whatever time it was on Coruscant, Palpatine must have been awake, because he answered her immediately.
“Queen Amidala?” he said, shimmering blue in front of her. “This is an unexpected surprise.”
“I’m afraid I have bad news, Senator,” Padmé said. “And no time for pleasantries.”
“Oh dear.” Palpatine sounded a little out of breath. Maybe he’d come running when he heard the emergency channel. “Please, go on.”
“We received a threatening communication from Viceroy Nute Gunray of the Trade Federation,” Padmé informed him. “He demanded that I sign a treaty. I refused, of course. And I will refuse again. We’ve had time to read it, and he’s asking me to sign over the whole planet.”
“I was afraid something like this might happen,” Palpatine said. “But never in my wildest dreams did I think it actually would! Your Highness, the Trade Federation is behind a conspiracy in the Senate to shift the tax on trade routes, and Naboo is right in the middle of their proposed operation.”
“We kept hearing that the bills had failed,” Padmé said.
“They have,” Palpatine said. “It looks like the Trade Federation is taking a more extreme approach.”
“Captain Panaka and the other officers are taking what measures they can,” Padmé said. “For now, there is nothing we can do but wait. I wanted to inform you in case you had any suggestions.”
“I will take it to the chancellor,” Palpatine said. “It’s always best to go straight to the top.”
“Thank you, Senator,” Padmé said. “Now I’m afraid I must go.”
“Be safe, Your Highness,” Palpatine said. “You are far too important to lose.”
Rabé cut the connection.
“It’s time to go back to the throne room,” she said.
“Are all of you all right?” Padmé asked before they set out again. “I know these past few days have been a lot.”
“We’re fine,” Sabé answered for everyone. It was more or less the truth.
The door to the sitting room burst open and they all jumped.
“Your Highness,” Panaka said. “The Trade Federation is here. In orbit. They’ve blockaded the planet.”
Darth Sidious looked at the hologram of Naboo that hovered over his desk. It was a beautiful world. Clear waters and green trees, yellow stone and blue skies. People who wanted nothing from life other than to make pretty things that made other people happy.
He wanted to make sure its legacy was never forgotten.
And now he had the means. Orbiting the planet in a perfect circle were dozens of ring-shaped blockade ships. Each was heavily armed and even more heavily shielded. And all of them were packed with droids.
; He’d been pleasantly surprised by the ingenuity the Geonosian engineers had shown in designing the invasion force. There were droids for every rank and every task, just like in a regular army. They would be able to overwhelm the Naboo completely, and they might not even damage the planet all that much. Not at first, anyway. Sidious preferred complete destruction, but desecration would do in a pinch. The hologram glowed, and he reached out to put a fingertip to where Theed would be, as if he could crush it.
The other console, the one in his public office, chimed loudly enough that he heard it through the closed door. It was probably Chancellor Valorum. Right on schedule.
The first week under the Trade Federation blockade was both extremely tense and incredibly boring. Most of the time, there was nothing to do but wait. Padmé spent hours in the throne room with various government officials, theorizing how Naboo could defend itself and wondering which allies they could ask for help. Any communications they sent out were answered more than a little vaguely. There was no doubt that the Trade Federation was listening.
She was never without her handmaidens. At least two were beside her all the time, while the others cycled in and out of the room on various errands. She began to give them their own assignments, rather than waiting until they had retired for the evening and running a debrief as a group. It was not how the system was supposed to work, but they had to adapt.
She was no closer to patching things up with Sabé, but the other girl seemed to have pushed all emotion aside and thrown herself into her duties as though there was nothing else to be done. Padmé couldn’t do anything but wait her out, too, even though all the waiting was starting to make her a bit short-tempered.
The viceroy refused to come down to the planet, nor would he send a live representative. He insisted that Amidala join him in his headquarters in one of the orbital ships, but that was obviously out of the question. Since she wouldn’t cede to his demands, he began sending down droid emissaries, all of which carried a variation of the same message. Padmé returned every one of them, unanswered and unsigned.
No ship was allowed to enter or leave planetary atmosphere. The Naboo Royal Space Fighter Corps hadn’t pressed the Trade Federation to see if they would actually shoot exiting vessels down. They had run a few drills in low atmosphere and received an automated warning from a droid not to fly too high, but they hadn’t seen any enemy ships flying in formation. The stalemate made no one happy, but it was better than an all-out war.
On the seventh day of the blockade, an agricultural transport from Karlinus approached the orbital line. Governor Kelma had sent the shipment as a sign of good faith, a thank-you for reopening lines of communication between the two worlds. It was a relatively small amount of grain, but the symbolic gesture was unmistakable. The ship was refused passage and forced to divert to Enarc, where the cargo was put into cold storage. It was the first real test of the blockade, and the Trade Federation had won.
“How much of the crop did we actually harvest?” Amidala asked her agricultural advisor, several hours after the standoff was over and they’d all accepted the ship wasn’t coming.
“It’s more complicated than that, Your Highness,” Graf Zapalo said. “The first yield is always weaker, so we elected to turn most of it into fertilizer. We harvested maybe an eighth, and that has already been replanted for the second half of the growing season.”
“So when the legislature decided on half, they meant the second half?” Amidala asked. She should have known that. There were too many details to keep straight.
“Such as it is, Your Highness,” Zapalo said. “We were expecting the first shipment of offworld grain two days after the blockade was implemented, but it’s from a planet allied with the Trade Federation, so we started looking elsewhere. The Karlini grain would have held us over, but it won’t make a difference if nothing can get through.”
“How much food do we have in reserve?” The Queen’s voice made the question seem cold, which covered Padmé’s rising concern.
“Onworld?” Zapalo paused to do some calculations. “We can support the city of Theed for a month.”
“There’s more to Naboo than the city of Theed,” Amidala said, a gentle rebuke.
“Of course, Your Highness,” he said. “If we are feeding the whole planet, our supplies would last a week. Each population base has their own storage facilities, but we would have to supplement them from the capital.”
“You’re saying we have enough food for a week?” Amidala asked. It seemed a very small amount of time.
“Public food, Your Highness,” Zapalo said. “That doesn’t take into account any food on the general market, or what the farmers have in their private stores.”
Padmé was about to ask if there was a census of that sort of thing, but stopped herself. Either there was, and she should have already looked it up, or there wasn’t, and she’d only make Zapalo look foolish when he had to admit it.
“Do you have an emergency plan for this sort of situation?” Amidala asked instead.
“By region, yes. But the response is tailored toward natural disaster, not foreign blockades. We don’t have one plan for the entire planet at the same time,” came the reply.
“Eirtaé will accompany you and help you draft one,” Amidala said. “We want something we can implement by the end of the day.”
The agricultural advisor looked like he wanted to protest, but Eirtaé gently guided him from the room.
“Has anything else changed?” Amidala asked.
“Chancellor Valorum’s ambassadors should be here tomorrow,” Bibble said. “His office indicated they will meet with the viceroy first, but with the blockade, that was probably inevitable anyway.”
“We must put our faith in the ambassadors,” Amidala said. “Yané, please inform the kitchen that we are switching to rations, starting as soon as possible. If we have to make an announcement to the general populace, we wish to be leading by example.”
Yané curtseyed and left the room.
“I don’t suppose you would consider going into hiding until all of this is over?” Panaka asked.
“No, Captain,” Amidala said. “But as always, we appreciate your concern for our safety.”
“It was worth a try,” he said.
Padmé dressed for the chancellor’s ambassadors with as much care as she might have under better circumstances. She wore the red dress with the wide skirt and shoulders again. It was the most wearable dress she had that was suitably regal, made so by careful design and potolli-fur trim. Yané had tweaked the outfit so that Padmé no longer required an underdress. She had just a jumpsuit on, and the dress supported itself. That made the outfit lighter and easier to move in. Yané did an impeccable job of her makeup, and by the time the headpiece slid on, the jewel of Zenda pressing against her forehead, Padmé was feeling almost confident.
They all trooped into the throne room to wait, and passed the time by organizing ration plans. When two hours had gone by, Padmé sent a message to Nute Gunray, reminding him that she knew the ambassadors were due. The viceroy seemed too smug.
“Do you think Republic ambassadors would be susceptible to bribery?” she asked the room in general when the call was completed.
“I would hate to jump to conclusions,” Bibble said. “But nothing is impossible.”
“Contact Senator Palpatine,” Padmé said. “Maybe he can at least tell us who was sent.”
Senator Palpatine was available, but his image flickered out before they could have any real discussion. Bibble immediately declared what everyone was thinking: invasion was nigh. Panaka and the governor quibbled about how to respond, and before they could make any real decision, it was made for them: the Trade Federation ships were already landing.
It was not enough time to scramble their ships. The pilots in the Theed hangar were the first targets, and they lost contact with them immediately. The few ships that made it to the sky were shot down before they could do any damage. It was only a matter of time b
efore troops reached the palace.
Panaka ordered them out of the throne room immediately: there were too many windows and it was not a good place to stage a defense.
“Governor, I recommend you go to your office,” Panaka said. “The palace guard will do what they can to secure you there. Your Highness, it’s time to go.”
Bibble looked terrified, but he went. Padmé followed her guards back up to the suite. She was so busy trying to calculate the exact amount of time it would take to breach the palace doors that she didn’t realize why they were headed there until just before they arrived. Then she turned and caught Sabé’s hand.
“Anything we have to sort out, we can do it later,” Sabé said. “From this point on, I’m yours.”
It was an incredible gift. Padmé didn’t think she’d ever be able to swallow her pride like that, and she admired Sabé tremendously for it. This, she knew, was why Panaka had recruited her, but it was still remarkable to see.
The changeover would have to happen more quickly than they’d ever managed it. Sabé shed orange robes for a black dress, all of the handmaidens focusing on her for the time being. Alone for one last precious moment, Padmé drifted over to the window in the corridor. The guards gave her space to think. Face solemn, she looked out over the city, committing the architecture to memory even as the droid army marred it, and making silent promises she wasn’t entirely sure she could keep.
Padmé wiped the Queen’s face off before getting a set of robes for herself. She made sure the handmaidens looked to Sabé, not to her, for guidance. This was the real test—the first time they’d ever done it when there was real, personal danger involved.
Sabé led them out onto the terrace, bidding the guards to join them, and they waited for the inevitable.
Jar Jar Binks was having a terrible afternoon. Disaster had always plagued him, it was true, but today the galaxy seemed to be taking it to extremes.
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