Chapter Text
- Excerpt from Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace Novelization by Terry Brooks
They were close to the throne room now; it lay only another story up and several corridors back. Padmé felt a fierce exultation. She would have the Neimoidian viceroy as her prisoner yet!
But the thought was no sooner completed than a pair of destroyer droids wheeled around one end of the hallway, swiftly transforming into battle mode. Mere seconds later, a second pair appeared at the other end, weapons held at the ready.
In a hollow, mechanical monotone, the foremost of the droids ordered them to throw down their weapons.
Padmé hesitated. There was no possibility for an escape unless they went back out the window, and if they did that, they would be trapped on the ledge and rendered helpless. They could try to fight their way free, but while they stood a reasonable chance against battle droids, they were seriously overmatched by their more powerful cousins.
In the wake of this chilling assessment, an inspired thought occurred to her, a solution that might give them the victory they sought in spite of their situation. She straightened, held out her arms in surrender, and tossed aside her blaster.
“Throw down your weapons,” she ordered Captain Panaka and his soldiers. “They win this round.”
Panaka blanched. “But, Your Majesty, we can’t—”
“Captain,” Padmé interrupted, her eyes locking with his. “I said to throw down your weapons.”
Panaka gave her a look that suggested he clearly thought she had lost her mind. Then he dropped his blaster to the floor and motioned for his men to do the same.
The destroyer droids skittered forward to take them prisoner. But before they reached the Naboo, Padmé was able to complete a quick transmission on her comlink.
“Have faith, Captain,” she urged a bewildered Panaka, her voice cool and collected as she slipped the comlink out of sight again.”
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Nine hundred and sixty-eight galactic standard years After the Ruusan Reformations (ARR) and thirty-two Before the Battle of Yavin (BBY) if fate had remained unchanged.
Tenth Month, 968 ARR (32 BBY)
Padmé Amidala
Ultimately, and probably much to Captain Panaka’s relief, Padmé’s impromptu plan to trick the Viceroy with the confusion on who the true queen was between her and Sabé turned out to not be needed as the destroyer droids suddenly shut down.
The men all cheered. “They did it! Our pilots did it!” Panaka said, a rare grin on his face.
Even Padmé couldn’t help but smile. The faith they had put in their pilots hadn’t been let down. The droid control ship had been destroyed and between them and the Gungan Grand Army now advancing on Theed with no opposition, Naboo would surely be saved!
Yet… as they linked up with Sabé and her team to rush past scores of disabled battle droids and make their way up to where Gunray was hiding, Padmé couldn’t help but feel that something was wrong.
She was alert, more alert than she had ever been, even more than in the fighting before. Something deep inside her felt a sense of foreboding, a warning for some unseen danger, almost as if something was pressing against her mind and telling her things were about to go very, very wrong.
A sudden rumbling shook the palace then, the walls and floor shook violently as if in an earthquake, throwing them all off their balance as they struggled to stay on their feet. In the corner of her eye, she could see vivid streaks of red flashing in the distance through the window like lightning bolts.
A deafening roar sounded through the palace then, like the bursting of a thousand thunderclaps. The windows shattered, forcing them all to duck to avoid the shards.
Briefly, Padmé remembered a long-forgotten night in her childhood staying at her family’s lake estate in Varykino. She couldn’t have been any older than five at the time and terrified of a thunderstorm. She’d hid in her parents’ room, hiding under the dresser until her mother had pulled her out and into her arms to console her and tell her that everything was alright.
Whatever was happening now reminded her of how scared she’d felt then, yet so much worse. She didn’t understand what was going on, still struggling to get to her feet or even think with the ceaseless shaking and the endless mind-numbingly loud thunderclaps.
Panaka pulled her to her feet, helping her to steady her footing. She could barely hear the words he was saying.
“Your Majesty! Your Majesty we have to go now! We have to stop Gunray before it’s too late!” he shouted.
“What’s happening Captain!?” Padmé screamed as loud as she could, desperate to be heard over the roars of the supposed thunder.
“They’re bombing us from orbit!” he said, out of breath. “That coward Gunray must have ordered it after we knocked out his command ship!” Panaka explained hurriedly.
“By Shiraya…” Padmé was horrified. “We must leave immediately!” she cried as they pulled the rest of their party to their feet and set off at once. Too much valuable time had already been lost.
She had learnt of orbital bombardments in her studies before she had become Queen. They had always been horrifying and brutal tactics, relics of a bygone era of war and devastation before the Ruusan Reformations. A strong example cited by her instructors on why their people believed in peace over war. Never in her worst nightmares had she ever imagined that even the Trade Federation would stoop so low.
Her anxiety deepened with every step they took closer to the throne room as the flashes of red and thunderclaps continued outside. Turbolaser shots and their impact shockwaves she knew now and knowing what they truly were only made them more terrifying.
What was happening to Jar Jar and the rest of the Gungans? What about their people imprisoned in the camps? Her family? Her friends? A cold shiver ran down her spine as she thought of those red blasts vaporizing them all. She couldn’t help but worry, her mind consumed by dark thoughts as sweat began to pour down her brow.
The cold shiver only became more intense when they finally reached the throne room and Gunray was nowhere to be seen. Padmé almost felt like her soul was freezing.
“Where is he!?” she demanded, her stress overpowering the calm composure she had always tried to carry as Queen. Her teeth chattered.
Panaka, ever reliable, was quick to determine the answer. “To the shuttles. Quickly!”
By the time they finally reached the hangar, Gunray and his advisors had almost boarded the shuttle. With a precision and aim she hadn’t known she had, Padmé shot at the fuel cells and the entire shuttle exploded, throwing Gunray and the rest of the Neimoidians to the ground.
Soon Padmé and her men had them surrounded on all sides, blasters pointed at their heads.
“Call off the bombardment now or your life is forfeit!” she demanded.
She almost didn’t recognize her own voice. It sounded strange to her. Dark and menacing, with a power greater than anything she had ever wielded as queen and a tone that promised no less than torture if she wasn’t obeyed.
Yet in that moment, with the endless cold seeping into her bones, the dread burrowing into her heart, and the dark thoughts consuming her mind, Padmé couldn’t even bring herself to care.
Gunray, sniveling coward as he was, was quick to comply with her demands. By his order, the Trade Federation fleet stood down and the orbital bombardment ceased. With the Viceroy in their custody and their droid army disabled, they could no longer act against them. The day had been won; Naboo was free.
Yet at what cost?
Even though they had captured Gunray and ended the bombardment, even though Naboo had been saved, the cold feeling did not dissipate. It only strengthened. Dread continued to pool in Padmé’s heart.
“Your Majesty, are you alright?” A voice interrupted her thoughts sharply. It was Sabé. “You’re crying,” she said, worry writ all over her face.
With a jolt, Padmé realized she was. Unbidden and against her will, the tears continued to flow.
She didn’t know how. But somehow, she knew, deep in her very soul. She might have won the battle, but she had just lost everything.
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Anakin Skywalker
Anakin had grown up on Tatooine. Death was no stranger to him. There would always be some poor slave being beaten to death by their master or running away and getting blown up by their transmitter. There was always some nasty Dug, mercenary, or bounty hunter that would murder you just for looking at them wrong. And even if you were free and none of the above got you, the desert itself might kill you as you expired from thirst and heatstroke in the hot binary sun heat, or some sandstorm would roll in and take you unawares as you were travelling.
He might have only been just a month shy of turning ten, but with that kind of childhood he had thought he had known what death was. The Bombardment of Naboo had shown him just how ignorant he truly was.
It had all started when the starfighter he had been hiding in had automatically activated its autopilot and dragged him and Artoo both up to space with no control of their ship, endangering their lives.
Artoo had overridden the autopilot soon enough and Anakin had had little choice but to join the battle just to keep them both alive. All of his pod-racing skills had come in handy for that. Then they had crashed into the hangar of the big battleship and accidentally blown it up from the inside.
Anakin had only found out later that that ship had been the droid command ship controlling all of the Trade Federation’s battle droids, and it had been the mission of the pilots to blow up to begin with. Him doing so was definitely a good thing. At least it should have been.
Everything had gone wrong so fast. One minute the pilots’ cheers for whoever had managed to blow up the droid command ship could be heard through the comms. The next they were all shouting and screaming in horror as the Trade Federation’s remaining battleships had opened fire.
Orbital bombardment, he had learned it was called later. On Viceroy Gunray’s orders, the Lucrelhulk battleships had turned their turbolasers directly upon Naboo.
They had tried to stop it of course. They had immediately throttled all of their starfighters straight for the battleships to try and save Naboo but there were simply too few of them. In the end, they had failed to even lessen the bombardment, dying heroically in a vain attempt to save their homeworld.
Anakin and Artoo were the last survivors out of all the pilots that day. He didn’t know how they survived. Maybe it was luck, chance or the will of the Force as Qui-Gon had always said. He didn’t know if it was a good thing or not that he was still alive when so many weren’t. All he knew was that day above Naboo would forever haunt his dreams.
He still remembered the red-hot glow that could be seen from space as the turbolaser blasts impacted the planet, so hot and powerful that they began melting the very rocks where they hit. He remembered the awful feeling that had consumed him as he’d watched in horror. It had been cold, colder than Anakin had ever felt before, colder than when he’d almost frozen onboard Padmé’s ship and she’d helped him to get warm, colder than even the coldest desert nights on Tatooine.
Some strange sense of alarm had blared at him in pain and horror. Something he’d always associated with his strange instincts when pod-racing, something he knew to be the Force ever since Qui-Gon had freed him. Only this time, the warning it gave him was far stronger and worse than anything it had ever given him before and he had known with a certainty deeper than he was seeing with his own eyes, that something very, very bad was happening.
It was an awful, squirming, writhing feeling. If Anakin had to describe it, he would say that was what death felt like. And then the screams came. Faint, almost like whispers in the distance, but undeniable and present. The screams of everyone who was dying on Naboo.
Jar Jar and the rest of the Gungan Grand Army had been cheering as they had advanced on Theed to help Padmé and the others after the droids facing them had been disabled. They had all died when the bombardment hit, destroying the entire army.
Anakin had always found Jar Jar annoying, but the Gungan had still been his friend and his death had hurt him. It had only been the start though.
Either intentionally or by chance, the Trade Federation’s bombardment had hit some of the major cities of Naboo and the prison camps housing Theed’s population. The death toll was catastrophic, estimated to be in the tens of millions, and they still had yet to get a full count of the casualties.
Anakin’s heart wept for Padmé, his friend, the beautiful girl he was still determined to marry one day. Many of the people she had personally known had been among the dead. Friends she had grown up with, colleagues and advisors who had worked alongside her as Queen, even her family, her parents and older sister. All gone now.
It made Anakin think of his own poor mother that he had abandoned to slavery on Tatooine, in that small but cozy little hut they had been allowed by Watto to call home. If she died and he wasn’t there, just like what had happened to Padmé’s family, he didn’t know what he’d do.
Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, it was likely that he’d be going back home to join her soon. Back to Tatooine, that dustball in the middle of nowhere. Back to slavery, hardship, and an uncertain future, but at least they’d still have each other. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe all of this was what he deserved for being so selfish as to leave her suffering there and go off on his own to become a Jedi of all things.
Qui-Gon had freed him and promised him that he would become a Jedi even when the Council had rejected him, even going so far as to give him his first lesson on the trip to Naboo from Coruscant. But Qui-Gon and his apprentice, Obi-Wan, were both dead now.
While Theed itself had been spared a direct hit due to Gunray still being in the city, it had been rocked by the impacts of the blasts decimating the nearby Gungan army, simulating a fearsome and powerful earthquake. It must have interrupted and thrown off the balance of the fight between the two Jedi and the tattooed, horned man they had been fighting with the dual-bladed red lightsaber because both of their bodies had been found afterwards beside a reactor shaft, riddled with lightsaber wounds.
Their killer had been nowhere to be found, though the Jedi Council had managed to seize his ship when they had arrived with the Chancellor and the Judicial Forces after the battle, making many think he had fallen to his death in the reactor shaft during the quake.
Anakin doubted the Jedi would ever accept him as one of their own now and train him with both Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan gone. Nor was he even sure he still wanted to be a Jedi after everything that had happened.
He still remembered how all those masters in the Jedi Council had scolded and reprimanded him for worrying about his mom before rejecting him for training in their Order. The same mother they continued to leave in slavery along with billions of others in the Outer Rim.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
That was what Qui-Gon had taught him. His very first lesson in the Jedi ways onboard that Royal Naboo ship. The very first line of the Jedi Code.
Anakin hadn’t been able to understand it at the time despite Qui-Gon’s attempts to teach him. How could there be no emotions? Emotions were what made them living beings, it was what bound them all to each other either for good or bad. How could having no emotions bring one peace?
Qui-Gon had simply smiled, as if he and a thousand other Jedi had asked the exact same questions when they too had been younglings. He’d promised that as his padawan, Anakin would understand and appreciate it eventually, but that would never happen now.
Qui-Gon was gone. And so was Obi-Wan, and Jar Jar, and all the pilots Anakin had flown with, and Padmé’s family, and millions of the Naboo and Gungans beside. Anakin couldn’t understand how he could have no emotions in the face of all this death. Have no anger against Gunray and the rest of his ilk for causing all of this, have no grief for the ones that had been lost, or no guilt because it had all been his fault no matter what anyone tried to tell him differently.
They called him a hero, but he didn’t feel like one. He had blown up that control ship, he had been the last survivor out of all the pilots, and everything that had happened afterwards was because of him.
Maybe that was why the Jedi Council had rejected him in the first place. They had known that he was too full of emotion, too disbelieving in their ways, in their precious peace, to be trained.
Peace? What peace could there be? How could the Jedi claim to have peace when they let billions, if not trillions of sentient life-forms suffer under the yoke of slavery in the Outer Rim? Suffer just like he and his mother had? How could they have peace when they let two of their own and millions of others die in an orbital bombardment under their watch on a world that should have been under their and the Republic’s full protection?
His mom had always said that the Republic and its laws didn’t exist out on Tatooine, out in the Outer Rim. Anakin now realized that they didn’t exist anywhere in the galaxy, even inside the Republic’s own borders.
The Republic and the Jedi Order were failures. They had failed to free all the slaves for thousands of years. They had failed to protect Padmé and her people. They had failed to keep the peace, because it did not exist and never had.
He had forgotten the lessons growing up on Tatooine had taught him. Had allowed himself to believe in the foolish hope Qui-Gon had given him. Peace was only a luxury for the rich Core Worlders, high in their towers and never wanting for anything, blind to the pain and suffering of the galaxy at large. It was only a pretense for the idealistic and foolish.
The real galaxy was cruel and harsh, and life could never be taken for granted. Suffering was common, happiness rare, and peace nothing more than a pretty lie.
And now he waited. Waited for his fate to be decided on. Waited for the Jedi to make up their final mind on whether he was to be one of them or not. Waited to see if he would be sent back to Tatooine, back to where he’d probably be enslaved all over again within barely a day.
If only Qui-Gon hadn’t died, he might be a Jedi even now. If only he hadn’t messed around where he shouldn’t have and blown up that battleship, maybe the bombardment wouldn’t have happened. Maybe Qui-Gon and everyone else would still be alive. Padmé’s family would still be alive and Naboo would be in the position to take him in and free his mother even if the Jedi refused him.
The door to his temporary bedroom in Theed Royal Palace slid open, and Anakin’s eyes widened as he saw who entered into the room. It was the newly elected Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, the former Senator for Naboo, Palpatine.
Anakin hurriedly got to his feet to stand at attention. “Supreme Chancellor,” he began a greeting as formally as he could manage but Palpatine waved him off.
“Please my boy. There is no need for such formality between us. At ease,” the man said with a slight smile.
He seemed kind and charming to Anakin, with a demeanor that immediately put him at ease. He liked to imagine Palpatine was the kind of man his father or grandfather could have been. He reminded him a lot of Qui-Gon.
“I’ve been told by the Jedi that with the unfortunate deaths of Master Jinn and his padawan, there are none who might be willing or able to train you within their Order, not with the Council still refusing to reconsider their decision to not accept you for training.”
Anakin nodded pensively. He had been expecting as much, and yet even so, even with his newfound apprehension about the Jedi and becoming one, the rejection still stung. What would happen to him now?
“I must confess I do not understand in the slightest what the Jedi are thinking. Why I would have thought it would be an honor for them to train one as accomplished and goodhearted as yourself! Surely, they must be able to find a place in their hallowed ranks for the Hero of Naboo?”
Anakin’s wince must have been visible as the Chancellor looked intrigued.
“My apologies. Do you not like that title?” he inquired.
“No sir. I don’t feel like I deserve it. I blew up the control ship yes, but I wasn’t even supposed to be there. It wasn’t my mission; I got involved when I shouldn’t have and because of me the bombardment happened.”
Palpatine’s expression turned sympathetic and caring. He knelt down to place his hand on Anakin’s shoulder comfortingly. “Oh, my dear boy. We must not hold ourselves accountable for things we have naught to blame for. You did a good deed that day, that is without doubt. It is not, and never has been your fault that Gunray, that coward, committed such a heinous crime in his panic. One way or another, whether it was you or anyone else who had taken that shot, he would have made that order so long as he remained free and uncaptured.
“And I have heard from reliable sources that the Queen and her company were in quite the dire straits at the exact moment you took that shot. Surrounded by four destroyer droids no less! They are only free because you took that shot. They only captured Gunray to begin with and brought an end to his unjust occupation because of you.
“Whether you believe yourself a hero or not, Anakin, you are part of the reason Naboo is free. And if the Jedi cannot see that, then that is their loss.”
Anakin’s spirits lifted ever so slightly at the Chancellor’s kind words, some tiny measure of pride bloomed in his heart and cut away just a little at the guilt and grief
“I would offer you the hospitality of Naboo as thanks for your actions that day if I could, Anakin. You would be treated well, raised with a good family, and want for nothing for the rest of your life. But as you well know, I’m afraid that neither Queen Amidala nor the rest of our people are in any proper state or condition to take you in right now.”
Anakin nodded pensively, his anticipation and anxiety growing by the second. Was the Chancellor about to tell him he would have to go back to Tatooine?
“But while Naboo may not be able to take you in, I could.”
What?
Surely the Chancellor had not just said what Anakin thought he had, did he?
“Don’t look so surprised my boy,” Palpatine said with a kind and amused smile. “You would be a credit to any household you join and if the Jedi will not take you and Naboo is unable to, well do forgive me if I try and steal you for myself, will you?”
He laughed then, as if it was some private joke only he knew.
Anakin could only shake his head in disbelief though. The Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, the most powerful man in the entire galaxy, was offering to take him in? Him, a pathetic former slave boy from Tatooine that even the Jedi hadn’t wanted?
“You remind me a lot of myself when I was your age Anakin. I can see the same drive, the same hunger for more. It would be my honor to take you into my household and help you become the great man I know you are destined to be. I have no children of my own, no wife or heirs. The Palpatine name will die with me, but as my ward and adopted son, you might just continue its legacy. What say you?”
Anakin couldn’t accept fast enough. “Yes!” he said enthusiastically before realizing he should be more composed and polite and less greedy. “Yes, of course Chancellor. Thank you for your generous offer. I will strive to do whatever I can to be worthy of it,” he said again with a bow.
Palpatine chuckled. “Yes, I’m sure you will, my boy. And please, feel free to just call me Palpatine whenever we are in private. It would be rather awkward if you were to live in my own house and continue calling me Chancellor all the time now, wouldn’t it?”
He chuckled again, and this time Anakin allowed himself to laugh with him. For the first time since the Bombardment, Anakin felt as if there was some light in his life again, some hope for a better future.
His thoughts soon turned to his mother and he realized he couldn’t let this opportunity pass him by.
“Please sir, umm… Palpatine, I’m sorry to trouble you, but would you be able to free my mom from slavery as well? She’s still on Tatooine you see,” Anakin asked, anxious and hopeful to see what his answer would be.
Palpatine looked horrified and aghast. “My goodness! The Jedi left her there a slave? I would have thought better from a man like Master Qui-Gon. And the Council wanted to send you back there with your mother still a slave and you likely to be made one again as soon as you landed? For shame,” he tutted and shook his head.
“Worry not, my boy. I will see to it that your mother is freed and reunited with you as soon as possible! Though, I hope you will forgive me if it takes some time to make the arrangements. There are many urgent matters demanding my attention at present, what with Naboo’s recovery, the prosecution of Gunray, and the concerns of the Republic at large.”
“Of course, sir. I understand. Take as long as you need. For a time, I thought that my mother might never be freed, that I might never see her again. A few weeks or even months would be nothing in comparison to that,” Anakin replied graciously.
He was a bit impatient to see his mom again and know she was freed from slavery and safe, but he didn’t want to push his luck. The Chancellor, Palpatine, had already been so good and kind to him and he didn’t want to look ungrateful.
“You have my utmost gratitude for your understanding Anakin. I think it’s a good sign that you and I will get along splendidly,” Palpatine said with a pleased smile.
For the briefest of moments, Anakin could have sworn his eyes flickered a sickly yellow.