Major Faction Mate in Six I: Candidate Moves

Most of the Senate offices had emptied hours earlier, leaving Verity Stuyveris' suite unnaturally quiet. She had sent the staff home, except for Lucian Varencourt. Theed remained awake outside, its lights populating the window in ordered rows and clusters. From here, the city seemed remote. The light in Verity's office was low and limited -- the banker's lamp on her desk spilling light across the briefing materials from Thyferra that never seemed to stop accumulating, and a second lamp on the coffee table, bathing the seating area where the Senator and her Chief of Staff sat.

A tray with a once-steaming carafe of caff and a cup sat near the lamp. The second cup was in Luc's hand. Neither one of them had touched the tray of food that Kira had brought from the cafeteria before leaving for the night.

Verity sat forward with her elbows lightly resting against her knees, reading the operative language for the fifth time. The fifth time in an hour. The restraint employed in the motion's language was somewhere between artful and offensive compared with what she thought of its subject. For example, the motion bewilderingly did not accuse Aurelian Veruna of treason. It didn't venture into waters that could not be established from the record. It recounted his sins in the most sanitized language possible: he had ignored an order issued by the Chancellor in her capacity as Commander-in-Chief; he did it knowingly and intentionally; he had ordered his Kinsguard to place themselves between himself and Republic personnel while continuing to act against the order. The resolution also addressed his conduct as it related to the prosecution of Lysander von Ascania, although the investigation there was in its infancy, so it was limited to that which Verity had seen with her own eyes.

She thought she was being exceedingly generous by not adding that he had battered a Senator to the motion. Restraint, indeed.

"Assume I file it tomorrow," Verity said at last, looking up at Luc and brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "What happens next?"

Luc sipped his cold coffee. His other arm stretched along the backrest of the sofa. He considered the question for a few moments, then leaned forward and set the cup down on the tray. "The obvious difficult is that there will be some who agree that Veruna exceeded his authority and they still won't care enough to censure him for it. Thyferra does change the atmosphere. He will say he acted because the situation required it, and some will believe him. Others will think that the argument is procedural and is secondary to the fact that Veruna was trying to hold back the Sith." He paused, stroked the five o'clock shadow accumulating at his chin. "You know what happened because you were there. The others? They'll know there was a battle, an artifact, a lot of confusion, and then a retreat."

Verity's expression sharpened. "We also know that he used armed retainers to thwart orders given by the Chancellor. That has to count for something."

"But Senator, the Kinsguard were simply protecting Veruna during a Sith boarding action. The fact that he was attached to the artifact was incidental." Lucian made a face and Verity sighed and leaned back.

"But that's exactly what some of the dimmer bulbs in this place will say. Probably more the first thing than the second. That he Charter doesn't matter, that the law doesn't matter, that nothing matters in a crisis. Half of my colleagues would run into Palpatine's loving arms if someone only told them it was the only choice." She made a disgusted noise.

Luc picked up his cup again, sipped from it, then cradled it between his two hands as he leaned forward. "There is also the matter of the nationalist Naboo groups. Your feud with Veruna is already getting you some uncomfortable attention there."

"What kind of attention?"

"You know -- we can't let this woman push us around and let's show her what we did the last time unwelcome industrialists showed their faces here," said Luc, waving a hand dismissively. "It's hostility, to be certain, but so far -- no credible threat."

"The Trade Federation. My God, that was almost a millennium ago, don't these people have anything else?" She frowned and stood, stretching her shoulder. The medics had said she would be fully recovered, but she still felt a tightness there. "Forget the nationalists. If I do this and it fails, Veruna will treat it like carte blanche. He'll run amok. That's what you were going to say next, isn't it?"

"Yes," Luc said. "Shall I be you, now? All right, how's this? He's already running amok. He could not be running amok any more than he is. At least if the Senate rejects this motion, they are signing their names to every mess he makes, every... no, give me a second, it'll come." He paused, as if trying to think of something suitably cutting. "Ah, okay, here: every shit-smeared handprint he leaves on the Charter."

"Close," Verity conceded. "But I usually try to avoid anything... scatological."

"Noted."

"If we do nothing -- if we simply accept that he can behave as he has -- then it will be harder to stand up to him when he does something worse. And Luc -- he will do something worse." Verity crossed to the little plate of cafeteria sandwiches, lifted the bread off the top of one of them, and considered the relative nutritional value of eating a pen cap instead. "And even if they laugh me out of the room, when it happens, they'll know I was right."

"Your favorite thing," Luc said.

Verity picked up the sandwich. "No," she answered. "My favorite thing is when they listen to me the first time. My second favorite thing is when they have to acknowledge I was right, which isn't the same thing as knowing I was." She sighed and sat, then took a bite of the sandwich. Not one of the cafeteria's best efforts, she had to observe. "No, the point is this: eventually someone will point to him and say I thought I was right too, and that's why Theed is now a smoking crater. It will justify, however tacitly, every idiot who gets elected to this body or heaven forfend, elected King of Naboo, license to do whatever. Veruna did it and nothing happened."

Luc set his caff down again and rubbed his bald head, a habit Verity learned meant he was losing patience. "That's exactly what will happen."

She was silent for a while as she finished the half-sandwich she had picked up before. The censure itself was modest to the point of irritating to her. It purported to express the sense of the Senate -- that sense being disapproval -- but it went no further. It didn't remove Aurelian from the Senate. It couldn't touch his crown. It wouldn't prevent him from carrying on as he always did. Its value lay entirely in drawing a line where there was still time to draw one and space to draw it in.

Verity coiled a blonde tress around one finger. "Then I don't see how I can't do it, simply because it might be unpopular."

"Agreed." Luc stood and picked up a sandwich. "That doesn't mean you should walk into it blindly." Verity turned toward him, one golden eyebrow lifting. "We don't know how much anyone outside this building cares. We can't. We can't poll on it without looking like craven opportunists -- "

"A ground that Veruna already occupies," Verity muttered.

" -- and even Senators are being cagey about it, because they haven't seen which way the wind is going to blow. We know the Jedi are unhappy about the artifact because Ala Quin said as much in so many words. We can guess the Chancellor is angry about the insubordination. And we know that Aurelian's little coven will back him no matter what. Beyond that we're guessing."

"You hate guessing," Verity observed, uncoiling her hair from around her finger.

"I hate guessing," Lucian confirmed. "Let it become known that you are considering a motion to censure. Nothing formal, no circulating text, no announced decision. Someone hears that your office has been sounding out senators... trialing language... asking questions. From there, it will take on a life of its own."

Verity gave him a long, level look. She had spent enough time with Luc to know that he had arrived at this proposal long before the conversation began and had just been waiting for her to catch up to him. "You want to leak it," she said, her tone faintly accusatory.

"I want the possibility to leak, yes," he said.

"And then we watch."

"And then we watch. The Voice. The Houses. The Senate. The Chancellor. The people. The press."

Verity sighed and picked up a napkin. She hated the idea, frankly, but she didn't say so as she crossed to the window. The evening had gone even darker, into an inky night. Somewhere beyond the Senate District stood the palace of a man who seemed increasingly convinced that the distinction between Naboo's interests and his own was less a question of kind than degree. She had no interest in government by plebiscite from the evening news, and even less interest in asking Naboo's permission to hold its king responsible for conduct undertaken in his capacity as a Senator.

"Let's say they hate it," Verity said, looking at Luc's reflection in the window. "By tomorrow afternoon every broadcaster on this planet is calling it an attack on Naboo and every poll says I should leave the poor little man alone. I'm still going to do it." She paused, raised her eyebrows. "Right?" He nodded. "Then why bother with this -- charade?"

He shrugged casually, as if she'd asked for his opinion on the latest reality holovision show. "It tells you what arguments you'll be walking into. Forewarned is forearmed."

There was something to that, Verity thought. She considered a few moments longer, then turned to him. "Leak it. Then go home."

"I go home when you go home."

"I'll be home by the time you leak it," she answered, brushing past him and picking up her coat from the rack by her door. "Good night, Luc."

He watched her, smiling faintly. "Good night, Senator."​