Attack of the Clones by R.A. Salvatore Read Free Book Online

did your duty, Senator, and Cordé did hers. Now come.”
    He started away, grabbing Padmé’s arm, but she shrugged off his grasp and stood there, staring down at her lost friend.
    “Senator Amidala! Please!”
    Padmé looked over at the man.
    “Would you so diminish Cordé’s death as to stand here and risk your own life?” Typho bluntly stated. “What good will her sacrifice be if—”
    “Enough, Captain,” Padmé interrupted.
    Typho motioned for Dolphe to run a defensive perimeter behind them, then he led the stricken Padmé away.
    Back over at Padmé’s Naboo fighter, R2-D2 beeped and squealed and fell into line behind them.

T he Senate Building on Coruscant wasn’t one of the tallest buildings in the city. Dome-shaped and relatively low, it did not soar up to the clouds, catching the afternoon sun as the others did in a brilliant display of shining amber. And yet the magnificent structure was not dwarfed by those towering skyscrapers about it, including the various Senate apartment complexes. Centrally located in the complex, and with a design very different from the typical squared skyscraper, the bluish smooth dome provided a welcome relief to the eye of the beholder, a piece of art within a community of simple efficiency.
    The interior of the building was no less vast and impressive, its gigantic rotunda encircled, row upon row, by the floating platforms of the many Senators of the Republic, representing the great majority of the galaxy’s inhabitable worlds. A significant number of those platforms stood empty now, because of the separatist movement. Several thousand systems had joined in with Count Dooku over the last couple of years to secedefrom a Republic that had, in their eyes, grown too ponderous to be effective, a claim that even the staunchest supporters of the Republic could not completely dispute.
    Still, with this most important vote scheduled, the walls of the circular room echoed, hundreds and hundreds of voices chattering all at once, expressing emotions from anger to regret to determination.
    In the middle of the main floor, standing at the stationary dais, the one unmoving speaking platform in the entire building, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine watched and listened, taking in the tumult and wearing an expression that showed deep concern. He was past middle age now, with silver hair and a face creased by deep lines of experience. His term limit had ended several years ago, but a series of crises had allowed him to stay in office well beyond the legal limit. From a distance, one might have thought him frail, but up close there could be no doubt of the strength and fortitude of this accomplished man.
    “They are afraid, Supreme Chancellor,” Palpatine’s aide, Uv Gizen, remarked to him. “Many have heard reports of the demonstrations, even violent activity near this very building. The separatists—”
    Palpatine held up his hand to quiet the nervous aide. “They are a troublesome group,” he replied. “It would seem that Count Dooku has whipped them into murderous frenzy. Or perhaps,” he said with apparent reflection, “their frustrations are mounting despite the effort of that estimable former Jedi to calm them. Either way, the separatists must be taken seriously.”
    Uv Gizen started to respond again, but Palpatine put a finger to pursed lips to silence him, then nodded to the main podium, where his majordomo, Mas Amedda, was calling for order.
    “Order! We shall have order!” the majordomo cried,his bluish skin brightening with agitation. His lethorn head tentacles, protruding from the back side of his skull and wrapping down over his collar to frame his head like a cowl, twitched anxiously, their brownish-tipped horns bobbing on his chest. And as he turned side to side, his primary horns, standing straight for almost half a meter above his head, rotated like antennae gathering information on the crowd. Mas Amedda was an imposing figure in the Senate, but the chatter, the