Chapter 44: By Hook or By Crook

After restoring the food-supply to full functionality, I was invited to the palace for a press-conference.

The Nabooians were about eighty percent in approval of what I’d done; the rest were the usual malcontents who were never happy with anything, those worried by the sudden consolidation of wealth, and those who supported the previous owners’ rights. But eighty percent was good. That’s about as good as it ever gets in a society with freedom of speech and no mind-control.

The government, understandably, wanted to capitalize on that, reassure the public, and reduce the remnant worry that I would end up the overlord via food. Plus Jon decided to bother me until I agreed to go. He just rolled his eyes when I decided he had to accompany me; his tolerance for bull-shit like PR conferences was way higher than mine, so it was hardly a punishment.

I had just entered a chamber next to the throne room where I was meant to meet with Amidala prior to our joint statement when I saw a man in Palace Security Forces uniform, an officer by his rank tabs, get a message via his ear-piece. It must have been serious, as he seemed fairly panicked, running over to Amidala.

“Your Majesty,” he said quietly in her ear. It was still audible to my improved body though. “Trade Federation landing ships have launched en-masse.”

Oh shit.

Amidala nearly got whiplash she turned to him so quickly. “What? But, that’s impossible! The Chancellor assured me that the Jedi negotiators would have arrived by now,” she said, seemingly trying to assure herself, and falling out of the royal “we”.

Oh, shit.

“In that case, Your Majesty, it seems negotiations have failed,” the man said dryly. I couldn’t help myself, and chuckled a bit. Jon looked at me like I was an idiot.

Still, it was time to get moving. “Captain,” I said, activating my communications link spell with Orson as I began to walk towards Amidala. “The Trade Federation is invading. Give orders to raise readiness levels, and prepare for contingency blue.”

Blue was a plan to keep people out of Trade Federation hands by teleportation to prepared secret bunkers scattered about the planet, while avoiding destruction of assets via a lack of resistance. At the same time, my home itself would not allow more than a token droid presence; house arrest was fine, but if invaded the building defenses would be activated, and the place would fight until it was necessary to activate the self-destruct.

“Yes, my lord,” the man replied seriously. “I’ll tell the security detail to be ready as well.” Given the circumstances, the blockade and possibility of invasion, I was travelling with no fewer than a dozen bodyguards in three armored speeders. That was basically equivalent to a small army given their capabilities, but a bit of warning never hurt and we were facing a rather large army by all accounts.

“Very good, Captain,” I said, coming up on Amidala.

“Order an emergency meeting of the Privy Council,” she was saying to her handmaidens. “Get as many governors conferenced in as possible. We want to be ready to communicate with that damned Viceroy as soon as We are seated on the throne.”

“What is going on, Your Majesty?” I asked.

She glared at me. “We are being invaded,” she hissed, stalking out of the chamber and into the throne room, still giving orders to her attendants. As she sat herself on the throne and got into communication with the Trade Federation’s Viceroy, I was wondering something.

What the fuck had I been thinking, showing the ability to re-write droid controls while the Trade Federation was in orbit with a droid army? There was no way their intelligence hadn’t marked me as a priority target, and not in the way that I’d have been as a semi-mysterious rich man. No, they were going to want answers.

“Captain, it may be best to expedite case Blue,” I ordered. “Get the researchers and computers out, and prepare to receive hostile guests at our home. Scrub whatever you can’t evacuate. Don’t take casualties, but don’t leave the bastards any useable intelligence either. Still, don’t fire unless attacked.”

Seriously, what had I been thinking.

“Yes, my lord.”

It was time to refocus on the immediate surroundings Amidala was getting up; she was not happy. It seemed her talk with the Viceroy didn’t go well. Not that I was expecting anything else.

“Gangari, follow us,” she ordered. “Since you control the agriculture sector, you should be here for the emergency meeting.”

Fuck. I followed her; Jon followed me.

It quickly became apparent that the Nabooians were not, in any way, ready for this eventuality. Not that I was quite sure how they should have been; sudden invasion by a completely overwhelming force via orbital drop wasn’t something that could really be countered by a political discussion. But still, Naboo’s politicians did not respond with reason, intelligence and control. They were a bunch of panicked, breaking-down fools, really.

Honestly, I was pretty pissed off by it all. At least Amidala had the sense to order her security, law enforcement, and the rest of the population to, while not surrendering, not actually attack. Otherwise it could have been a bloody slaughter. I wasn’t sure if it was wisdom, or she actually believed in the rule of law that much. Then again, Naboo had had peace and prosperity for so long she may have actually believed that was the natural order of things. It may have been so deeply ingrained that she was literally incapable of considering otherwise.

Or the Force was keeping her from screwing the pooch.

Either way, it avoided a massacre. But we were still in that fucking room hours later when the droids showed up to take us into custody.

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I had sent my men back long before. From reports, the TF forces weren’t committing atrocities, but were taking control. I didn’t need another dozen projectile-shield enchantments around me as a buffer against orbital fire, and two people mysteriously escaping was much easier than fourteen. I was still trying to keep my cover, after all; while a few droids weren’t a threat to a planetary-apocalypse level mage, the Star-Wars verse had their own planetary-apocalypse level characters, not to mention star-ships of similar power.

But apparently I was high enough on the target-priority list to merit being transported directly to the Federation leadership, I was guessing for interrogation and signing over my fortune. Considering Amidala and her direct entourage were the only other ones to get similar treatment, it was quite the compliment.

Then a pair of Jedi dropped down, wiping out the droids in a flurry of flashy sword-work. They even brought along an incredibly irritating gungan, Jar-Jar Binks, as their comedic relief and mascot.

We were “rescued.” Hurray!

I’d have preferred to remain with the droids; I was planning an easy escape later, and that scenario had far lower chances of getting involved with people who could actually kill me. Not the general Jedi knights, but if what I saw from Star Wars, and possibilities I verified from the redacted histories of the galaxy, if those were true… Suffice to say, I did not want to engage top-tier Force-users.

As Jon and I bobbed along in Amidala’s wake, rushing to the hangar bay in an attempt to get into the air, run the blockade, and escape Naboo to avoid being forced to sign some document legalizing the Trade Federation’s invasion, I had a sudden realization.

I knew why I’d gotten involved so foolishly with the food situation, why I was present that day at the palace to get caught up in the invasion, why I was taken with Amidala.

It was the fucking Force, I knew it.

It wanted me involved, somehow, with what was going on. With what was about to happen. But whether it was to my benefit or detriment I didn’t know.

Honestly, that thought filled me with panic. Too much panic, I later suspected. But the kernel, the fear of the Force, was true. The Force sounds really great… until you realize that conflict between Jedi and Sith had been the root cause of at least half of the galactic wars. And the ones they didn’t start, they sure as fuck jumped in on. At the end of the day, I saw the Force as a sort of psychic field that magnified things. Enlightened monks became space-wizards, and significant wars became genocidal conflicts.

Hell, the last war between the Jedi and Sith lasted centuries, and basically caused a galactic dark age.

Granted, the Jedi had been around for a thousand years since then, so I wasn’t anticipating something as bad as that. I had, and still have, a very poor level of conclusive understanding of the Force, though I had many theories. The Force is sort of like God; ask a thousand people what it is, and you’ll get a thousand answers, with ten thousand explanations. But it was clear that the Force was hardly concerned with human ideas of morality, or gigadeaths for that matter.

It was also clear from what I’d learned of history that the Force functionally played favorites, acting like narrativium to create stories with Force-sensitive protagonists. I had no interest in being involved. But as strong as I was, I suspected it was nothing compared to a galaxy (or more) wide psychic force which seemed to be wanting me included in whatever mess was coming up.

It was clear I’d need some sort of shield specifically against fate, destiny, precognition and the like. Obviously it would need to be conceptual, given the disparity in power. But how to best achieve that…

I should, perhaps, have been more focused on the escape. I was paying enough attention to my precognition to ensure we weren’t destroyed, blocking shots that would have crippled the engines, damaged inertial compensators, or caused some other disaster. But I was afraid, especially with two Jedi on board, of doing anything more overt, and the ship did get hit hard enough to bring down the shields and do some damage.

Luckily most of the Vulture droids had been assigned to CAP (combat air patrol) to cover the relatively un-protected landers, and the remainder seemed to be under orders to disable but not destroy the queen’s transport. So we did get by without my having to intervene more overtly.

Still, it was fucking inconvenient when the hyperdrive was damaged. Maybe next time the Nabooians will decide that their royal yacht could do with some guns.

But either way, the hyperdrive needed fixing, and we had to do it somewhere the Trade Federation wasn’t. Tatooine, a desert world filled with smugglers, was chosen. I thought it was pretty stupid; the same smugglers, mercenaries, and “abandoned ship reclamation specialists” (read, pirates) that made Tatooine an unlikely place for the Trade Federation’s nice, fat, juicy ships to loiter made it a dangerous place for the queen’s incredibly flashy, pricy ship (which could no longer even run away) to land.

Granted, the place was under “Hutt Peace Accords,” a set of rules keeping the actual piracy away from the planets and stations necessary to enjoy and profit from it. But these people were career criminals and villains; a pardon allowing them to operate in Trade Federation controlled space and a big enough pile of credits, and the Hutt’s peace wasn’t worth shit.

But I wasn’t consulted, and the Force seemed to like the place (according to our wonderful new Jedi “friends”), so off we went.

Still, this fucking mess taught me one thing. It was clear that I’d need to figure out how to avoid the Force’s interference.