We mustn’t be hesitant. Not now. Not so close to its conclusion.
And she adds in one last barb, a line she knows she will one day regret because it does not sound like her—the threat, the bluster, the venom—but she says it anyway: “Those who vote no: Recognize that you are marked. You will be marked as cowards at best and traitors at worst.”
She does not like the way she sounds, even though she knows the words are sincere. I sound like a dictator. She sounds like Palpatine.
The chancellor leaves the circular stage by going down a set of spiraling steps. At the bottom, she nearly collapses against the railing, she’s so tired, so bone-weary. After righting herself, she ends up in the small office afforded to her, an office underground whose window is literally pressed up against the soil: In the rich tilth she sees the lightning shape of forked roots and the turning tunnels of crawling worms.
Auxi enters after. “That was a great speech,” she says.
“I pushed too hard at the end. I went too far.”
“Maybe they’ll respect someone who goes that far.”
She tells Auxi that she needs to be alone for a while.
After Auxi leaves, Mon spends time trying to flex the hand at the end of her injured arm. The fingers have the strength of moth wings. She spies a stain at the end of her sleeve: a bit of pta juice, from the fruit. Mon sits like that for a while. Staring down. Flexing her weak fingers. Hunching over farther and farther until she feels like a monk so reverent and so worshipful that she’ll fold in on herself and become one with the living Force.
The air changes. Someone is here.
She looks up, embarrassed, a blushing bloom rising to her normally pale cheeks. There stands Auxi. Her face stark.
The vote failed again. She can see it.
“Now what?” Mon says weakly, desperately.
“We finish the war,” Auxi answers.
“What?”
“The vote passed, Mon. The vote passed.”
In the deep shadows of a moonless night, deeper shadows gather. Beyond them wait the low slopes of the Karatokai Mountains. Ahead of them is a narrow valley, in which there sits an outpost that has changed hands many times over the centuries: Once a Republic outpost, it fell to the Empire when Imperial reign ruled over Devaron, and now yet again it has returned to the hands of the revivified Republic.
Here the jungle is noisy. Flocks of gold-feathered taka-tey roost in the vine-tangle above, chirruping and cack-cack-cacking. A thousand different insects hum and chatter in a cacophonous choir. Something kilometers away bellows, calling to another of its kind in the opposite direction.
But the shadows remain silent and still.
They are patient. They are waiting.
Down in the valley, the outpost is lit by bold beams from spotlights, beams that capture the slippery, sliding night mists. A flurry of activity sees ships landing and unloading supplies. The New Republic is establishing outposts new and old across the planet’s surface. They bring people. They bring food and potable water. They have diplomats, liaisons, scientists, and of course soldiers.
They are invaders.
This is a sacred place. A hundred klicks from here is an old Jedi temple. It is not the only place on this planet strong in the Force. The shadows cannot feel this themselves, for they are not conduits for the Force, but merely slaves to it. (As are all living things. All are caught in the river of power that is the Force, trapped by its currents. Only those who wield the dark side of the Force are capable of changing those currents; they are riverbreakers. They do not surrender to fate. They are its foes.)
The shadows are Acolytes of the Beyond. Here wait two dozen of them, though they are only one cell among many across the galaxy. Though they grow restive, they know to wait. They mustn’t disappoint their masters.