Queen's Peril

by E. K. Johnston

  The accident was definitely his fault. Usually the mayhem he caused was more a case of inadvertent bad luck, but this time he had really messed up. Forced to leave Otoh Gunga and too afraid to stay in the deep water by himself, Jar Jar made what he thought was a pretty clever move. He’d gone up to the surface. He’d scrabble out a living there, he decided, until Boss Nass’s temper had cooled, and then he’d try going back. It was nothing a little time wouldn’t fix. He’d just stay out of the way for a while.

  He was not expecting his first week in above-water Naboo to include a fleet of ships descending to the planet’s surface. The ships were ugly; there was no grace to their design at all. Instead, they were blocky and brown and altogether unpleasant.

  Also, they deposited large hovering tanks that didn’t watch where they were going and didn’t care whom they crushed.

  The upside was that someone rescued Jar Jar, and that rescuer was a Jedi. Gungans were an insular people, but they knew what the Jedi were, and if there was going to be a mess on the surface, Jar Jar was in good company. The downside was that the Jedi and his apprentice wanted Jar Jar to take them to the underwater city, even though he’d only just been banished. They even had little breathing devices so that they could handle the depth with him.

  And then they all ended up in the planet core. It was the worst day ever.

  When the bubbles of the bongo popped open in the Theed estuary, Jar Jar didn’t think he’d ever been so glad to see something that wasn’t water. He’d heard stories about how uncivilized the Naboo were all his life, but the buildings he saw indicated that they must be at least reasonably intelligent. They were pretty enough, even though they were straight and domed instead of being fluid and curved, and there was even some art he thought wouldn’t be too out of place in a Gungan exhibit. The only problem was that the city was covered in more of those ugly brown ships.

  By the time they had gotten safely out of the water, they had to move carefully through the city to avoid droid patrols, which was not really something Jar Jar was very good at. He managed to keep his mishaps mostly small, only tripping once, and then into a very quiet pile of rugs. At last, they were in a small walkway over the street, and the Jedi named Qui-Gon called a halt.

  “Down there,” he said.

  They looked carefully over the foliage and saw a strange procession. Several droids were escorting almost a dozen people dressed in various uniforms. In the middle was a short human female in a black dress and makeup Jar Jar would have recognized anywhere.

  The Jedi leapt down to attack the droids, and Jar Jar Binks followed them, straight into the arms of his destiny.

  “We are brave, Your Highness.”

  The Jedi’s choice was a hard one, and everything inside Padmé screamed to stay with their people. She wasn’t entirely sure she trusted Qui-Gon Jinn yet, but she knew Panaka would probably get himself killed if they stayed, and Governor Bibble seemed to think that going to Palpatine was their best chance now that they’d been overrun, and Padmé agreed with him.

  They couldn’t all go on the ship. Space was full of hard limits that no amount of clever negotiation could cross. There was only a moment to choose who would stay and who would go, and Padmé didn’t even get to make the final call. Everyone looked to the Queen, and Sabé declared they would go to Coruscant. Yané took Saché’s hand and walked over to stand with Bibble. There wasn’t even time for a proper good-bye. They had to get to the hangar, and then it was all blaster fire and carbon scoring until they were free of the blockade.

  As Naboo disappeared behind them, neither Padmé nor Sabé could shake the feeling that they had only just begun to encounter things that were beyond their control.

  The first thing the droids did was scan them. This was mostly painless, except for the small prick that accompanied the blood test, and then they were all shoved into a small house off the courtyard where they’d been captured.

  “You will remain here until you have been designated,” said the droid who seemed to be in charge. “Any attempt to escape will be met with violence.”

  Saché had no plans to escape.

  She and Yané sat together. Several of the guards paced restlessly, but the girls were deep in their thoughts. Even now, the Queen was running the blockade, and they would have no real way of knowing if she’d been successful unless their enemies decided to tell them. After half an hour, a droid came with an order to remove Governor Bibble and take him back to the palace. He left alone, and Saché could only hope that he would be all right.

  They waited another hour. Even the most restless of the guards stopped pacing and sat down. Yané moved closer, and for the first time, Saché didn’t care. She wasn’t alone, and even if her feelings were complicated, at least they would have each other. Finally, the door opened.

  “On your feet, humans,” said the droid. “Come with me.”

  They were marched through the center of Theed and into the largest market square. Everything in the square had been flattened: the fountains, the benches, the statues. Usually the market hummed with life and commerce, but right now the only sounds were the clank of droid feet and assorted noises that accompanied the hasty erection of a small tent city.

  “You have been designated for camp four,” the droid informed them. “Prepare for incarceration.”

  They were escorted to one of the new tents and pushed through the flap. Inside were two rows of cots and what appeared to be a shared toilet at the back. A few guards were already waiting inside, and Saché was relieved to see Mariek Panaka among them. Mariek pushed her way toward them and looked closely at their faces.

  “Did she get away?” she asked, her voice low.

  “Two Jedi found us,” Saché said quietly. “If they can’t get her off planet, no one can.”

  Yané was examining the setup inside the tent with a critical expression. It was easy to tell that there weren’t enough beds. She doubted the droids would be taking requisitions. The earliest Padmé could make it back was three days, and that was if everything went perfectly on the trip, in the Senate, and on the trip back. If she took much more than a week, they’d all be uncomfortably hungry and thirsty, unless the Trade Federation decided to do something to keep them alive. The perfect storm of Naboo’s food shortage and the planetary blockade would get even worse if there was a water shortage as well. It was the hot season, and the camp was definitely overcrowded.

  Mariek spoke quietly to a young guard with a wide face and dark hair. He nodded and went to the opening of the tent. It was clear he had been assigned to keep watch. Mariek gestured to the girls to come close. They had no idea how well the droids could hear.

  “Report,” Mariek said. She could tell Yané had been running logistics.

  “We should be all right for a few days,” Yané said. “Much longer, and food will be a major issue. I haven’t located a water source yet, but there used to be four fountains in this market, so there must be something somewhere.”

  “That takes care of this tent,” said a guard Saché didn’t recognize. “What about the rest of them?”

  “We’ll do a survey once the building stops,” Mariek said. “There’s no point in taking inventory when the droids are still moving things around.”

  “We should find out how many camps there are,” said the guard at the tent flap. He had a nice voice.

  “The droids said this was camp four,” Saché said.

  “They appear to be concentrating people based on their jobs,” said the guard by the door. “Everyone I’ve seen in this camp so far has been in some kind of government uniform.”

  “Where’s Bibble?” Mariek asked.

  “They took him back to the palace,” Yané said. “They probably want him around in case they need someone to send a transmission.”

  Outside the tent, the construction noises stopped. Mariek went to the entrance and lifted the flap. The whole market was covered with canvas, and she could hear the confused hum of scared citizens. There were dro
ids about, but they didn’t seem to care if their prisoners wandered around as long as they stayed away from the charged boundary markers.

  “All right,” Mariek said. “The camp is set up on a grid system, which makes it easy to divide into quadrants. See if you can get a headcount of each area and a general idea of who’s here, and then report back. Oh, and find the water source, too.”

  “What about the droids? Shouldn’t we monitor their patrol patterns and see what we can tell about the defenses?”

  “One thing at a time, Sergeant Tonra,” Mariek said. “People first, and then we’ll worry about the droids.”

  Saché started toward the tent flap, but Mariek caught her by the collar and pulled her back.

  “Not you two,” she said. Yané started to protest, and Mariek held up a hand. “I know what you’re capable of. I need you to come up with a way to record everything in such a way that the droids won’t notice it. You two are going to be the ones to sort through all the information we gather and figure out what we can do with it.”

  With that, she left them. The two handmaidens stared at each other for a moment.

  “Please tell me you put on the under-robe this morning,” Yané said. The flame-colored fabric was painstaking to clean, though that seemed less important now. To combat sweat stains, Yané had designed an under-robe of orange Karlini silk. Sometimes the girls went without it, though, because adding an extra layer was too warm.

  “I did,” Saché said.

  “Good,” Yané said, pulling her outer robe over her head. “I’m going to need your clothes.”

  Cleaning carbon scoring off of a droid was nobody’s idea of a good time, but Padmé didn’t mind. It was worth it to have a reason to hang around the busier parts of the ship, rather than being sequestered with the Queen. That was why Sabé had given her the job, of course, though Padmé didn’t for a second doubt that her double was also deeply amused at the situation. They’d all been hired because they could multitask, after all, and if they let despair overwhelm them they would be in real trouble.

  Padmé scraped away at the metal for a while before she became aware that she wasn’t alone. The Gungan, Jar Jar Binks, seemed amiable enough. She had never met a Gungan before, and she doubted that Jar Jar could be representative of his whole race any more than she could be of hers, but one ally was a good place to start.

  “What do you think, little guy?” she asked the droid that had saved all their lives not that long ago. She spoke too low for Jar Jar to hear her. “Once we’re done freeing our planet from the Trade Federation, should the Queen try to make peace with the Gungans? They’ll definitely remember her for that.”

  The blue astromech beeped what sounded like an affirmation, and Padmé smiled at it.

  “All right, then,” she said. “I’ll add it to the list.”

  It was nothing personal, but Sabé was really starting to hate Tatooine. The planet was dry, and even with the environmental controls inside the ship, Sabé would swear she could taste the dust. The worst part was that she had to stay in the gigantic black dress, and she could only watch as Rabé and Eirtaé helped Padmé into the plainest outfit they had available: blue trousers and a tunic.

  “Do you think the Jedi know?” Sabé asked. “They’re supposed to be able to sense things.”

  “I’m pretty sure Master Qui-Gon is close to figuring it out,” Padmé said. “But he hasn’t given any indication that he’ll stop us.”

  “He might when you throw yourself into danger,” Rabé said.

  None of the handmaidens was particularly thrilled with Padmé’s plan, and each of them had been sure Panaka would shoot it down. Padmé insisted that he be consulted anyway. Since this involved getting him alone on a very crowded ship, it took some doing, but there wasn’t time for any infighting right now.

  “Obviously I am not happy about being here,” Panaka had said when she asked him. “But you’ve told me about it instead of just going ahead, and I appreciate that.”

  “The Jedi might figure it out,” Padmé said.

  “We can trust their discretion after the fact,” Panaka said. “And I understand why you need to see this for yourself. I would feel the same way in your shoes. I do, actually, but there’s no way I can get home any sooner without you, so what I’m saying is: please be careful, but I’m in.”

  “Someone’s on the ramp,” Eirtaé said, reminding them all of the immediacy of the moment. “We’d better hurry up.”

  They left Padmé’s hair down, lacking the time to finish pinning her braids up. Sabé thought of about a million things to say, and couldn’t find the exact words for any of them. She wanted to apologize, wanted to make it right, but they never seemed to have the time. All she could do was accept her place, as she had always done.

  “I’ll be careful,” Padmé promised. “Try to keep busy when I’m gone. It’ll make the time go faster.”

  “I was going to have a chat with that astromech, but they took him along,” Eirtaé complained.

  “See if you can get the pilot to set up a flight simulator,” Padmé suggested. “That won’t take too much power.”

  The girls brightened at the thought of having something to do, but Sabé still reached out for Padmé’s hand when she walked by.

  “I’ll be careful,” Padmé promised again, for Sabé’s ears alone.

  “You better,” Sabé said. “This wig itches, and I don’t want to wear it forever.”

  It was almost like normal.

  There were about three thousand people crammed into the market square, all of them security or palace personnel. None of the kitchen staff was present, which was alarming, but the droids distributed rations as the sun set, and that was better than nothing. Mariek and Sergeant Tonra put their heads together and came up with something like a duty schedule, since they couldn’t all sleep at the same time. Yané and Saché shared a cot.

  “I’m sorry,” Yané said. There was nothing to unpack, so they just sat awkwardly in the piles of fabric Yané had already salvaged. “I know this makes you uncomfortable.”

  “I’ve never . . .” Saché hesitated. Then she bit her lip and kept going. “I’ve never had to spend this much time with someone I—I mean, I wanted to be professional.”

  “I understand completely,” Yané told her. “But it does feel good to finally talk about this in the open.”

  “I could have done without the invasion,” Saché said. “But yes.”

  Yané spent the afternoon shredding silk. Even though Saché did what she could to help, Yané made a mess of her hands in the process. The repetitive pressure of tearing silk raised angry red welts in the soft skin between finger and thumb. She washed them as clean as she could and left them open to the air because the only scraps she had to wrap them with were already spoken for. She pushed the thin mattress off their cot, exposing the metal frame, and tied about one-third of the strips longwise, from head to foot.

  “It’s not much of a loom,” she said when she was done. “But it will do.”

  She put the mattress back on the cot, covering her work, and shoved the leftover strips of silk underneath the bed. It wasn’t much of a hiding place either, but this was a time for doing the best you could.

  “We’ll weave a code with the rest of the pieces,” she explained as she and Saché tried to fall asleep. They were both exhausted from the events of the day, but sleep was hard to come by. “It’ll be something simple, like that old comm code we all learned as a memory game when we were kids. Something that the people will understand and the droids will overlook. And because it’s under the mattress, it will always be hidden if someone comes into the tent.”

  It was a good idea, and better than anything Saché had come up with. The stone cobbles were too hard to scratch into, and they didn’t even have any chalk, much less a personal device.

  “Are you scared?” Yané asked. “You’ve barely said anything.”

  “There isn’t really anything to say,” Saché said. “And ye
s, I am scared. I don’t know what’s happened to my family or my friends, and we still don’t know if the Queen made if off the planet. I just . . . get quiet sometimes, that’s all.”

  “I know,” Yané said. “It’s one of the things I like about you.”

  Saché blushed. In her twelve years, she had never talked so openly about her affections before.

  “I know you like to keep your feelings to yourself,” Yané said. “We don’t get a lot of privacy, and I respect yours. But I wanted you to know. I do like you.”

  “I like you, too,” Saché said, mostly to the uncaring mattress.

  On a dusty world with two bright suns, a little boy looked up from his work and saw an angel.

  Saché was sitting near the front of the tent, keeping an eye out while Yané worked, when the Neimoidians came. The situation at the camp had deteriorated rapidly. There was a distinct lack of sanitation and there was never enough fresh water. No one was sick yet, but it was only a matter of time. As expected, food supplies in the city had run low, and the Trade Federation was in no hurry to distribute their own resources. Yané had been weaving nonstop since Mariek started receiving reports, and soon she would have a complete map and guard rotation woven into the silk under their bed.

  Saché coughed twice, their prearranged signal, and heard the thump of the mattress landing back on the frame before she breathed again. She didn’t look over her shoulder. The tent flap was thrown open, and a droid came in.

  “You will come with me,” it said. Saché went.

  Outside the tent were three Neimoidians. Two she recognized from the initial time Amidala had been captured. Standing behind them, looking dejected, was Governor Bibble. He brightened considerably when he saw that Saché was clearly not injured.

  “You Naboo claim to take great pride and care with your children, and yet this one was in the palace when we attacked, and now she is here. It is your fault.” Nute Gunray did not become any more impressive the longer he talked. “Will you tell your queen that you cannot protect even a single child in her absence?”