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Bail has attended enough Senate farewells to know that retirement speeches reveal more truth than most debates. People become unexpectedly honest when they believe nobody can punish them next term.
The Senate has dressed grief as ceremony.
Blue banners hang between the upper galleries. Retiring senators occupy the front platforms with their families and aides gathered behind them. The central podium is framed by pale flowers from Naboo, Chandrilan glasswork, and one enormous ceremonial sculpture from Kuat that looks expensive enough to fund a hospital.
Election season is approaching.
Half the chamber is saying goodbye.
The other half is counting votes.
Bail settles into Alderaan’s pod beside his senior aide and glances across the vast Senate Dome. Most of the speeches have been gracious so far. Some have even been brief, which Bail considers the greater act of public service.
Senator Vell of Sullust is concluding 32 years in office by thanking every committee chair she has ever served under.
Individually.
Bail keeps his expression attentive.
Across the aisle, Senator Chuchi is doing the same.
She sits straight-backed in Pantora’s pod, pale blue hands folded over a datapad she has not checked in the last hour. Her gold facial markings catch the chamber lights every time she turns her head.
The newest arches are impossible to miss.
They sweep across the bridge of her nose and over both cheekbones, fine gold lines worked into the older ceremonial patterns. Pantoran marriage markings are meant to be seen. They are a vow, announcement, and warning to anyone foolish enough to question the legitimacy of the bond.
The Holonet has been chewing through the mystery for weeks.
Riyo Chuchi, unmarried public reformer, returns from a private visit to the Moon Goddess Temple wearing fresh marriage arches and declines to identify her spouse.
Bail understands why the story has consumed Coruscant.
He remembers what happened when he married Breha.
A senator marrying the Queen of Alderaan had produced enough gossip to blot out three trade disputes and a border crisis. Reporters examined every public appearance, every shared glance, every adjustment of jewelry. One network had devoted an entire segment to the angle at which Breha held his hand during a diplomatic reception.
Bail had found it ridiculous.
Breha found it hilarious.
Riyo appears less entertained by the attention, though she handles it with unnerving calm. Every reporter receives the same courteous answer.
Her spouse’s privacy is not a matter of public policy.
The refusal has only made the speculation worse.
Bail looks toward the Guard personnel stationed along the chamber entrances.
They are all in armor.
Senate patrol almost always is. The red-and-white helmets conceal their faces, and the rifles carried across their chests remind the galleries that decorum is not the same as safety.
Dress uniforms are rare in the Dome. Bail usually sees them at logistics centers, military ceremonies, or aboard Venator bridges where senior officers trade armor for grey or white tunics. Clone High Command wears white. Most commissioned clones wear grey. The Chief of Defense wears black.
All of the uniforms include caps.
Formal, regulation, sharply angled and pulled low enough to hide the eyes. Conveniently low enough to hide the upper portions of a clone’s face.
Bail has seen Fox in dress blacks only a handful of times. The Chief is usually armored, deployed, or absent from any ceremony that does not directly concern his duties. Even when he appears in uniform, the black cap throws his face into shadow.
The last time Bail saw him, a thin flash of gold had appeared beneath the brim when Fox turned toward the light.
Bail had assumed it was a reflection from the Chief’s rank pins.
Now he wonders.
Senator Vell finally reaches the end of her acknowledgments.
“And to the people of Sullust,” she says, voice trembling slightly, “thank you for allowing me to serve.”
The chamber applauds.
Bail joins in.
Vell bows, then returns to her platform with tears in her eyes. Her family closes around her as the next retiring senator approaches the podium.
Senator Lume Ghirra of Roona is older than most of the Republic’s current institutions and has spent 47 years treating parliamentary procedure as a siege weapon. Bail disagrees with her on nearly everything, but he respects her ability to remember the precise wording of laws passed before half the chamber was born.
She plants both hands on the podium.
“I was advised,” Ghirra begins, “to speak about unity.”
A few senators smile.
“I was also advised to keep my remarks under ten minutes.”
More smiles.
“I have ignored better advice.”
The chamber laughs politely.
Bail relaxes slightly into his seat.
Ghirra speaks of the Republic before the war, of disputes that once seemed catastrophic and now seem quaint. She names colleagues who died in office, systems lost to the Separatists, and compromises she regrets.
Then she turns to the war.
The chamber changes.
Not visibly, at first.
A shoulder stiffens here. A whispered conversation stops there. Several senators in the Commerce Guild bloc lower their eyes to their datapads.
“For two years,” Ghirra says, “this chamber has been told that victory is distant, perhaps impossible, and certainly too complex for public scrutiny.”
The Chancellor remains still on the central dais.
Mas Amedda does not.
Ghirra continues.
“Yet over the last eight months, the strategic situation has changed.”
Bail watches the trade representatives now.
One murmurs something to an aide. Another checks the Chancellor’s dais.
“Separatist production on Geonosis has fallen. Republic forces are maintaining pressure across multiple fronts rather than bleeding themselves dry in singular assaults. Local defense forces have begun holding territory without permanent GAR occupation. Rotation times have improved. Casualty rates remain unacceptable, but they are no longer climbing at the pace they once were.”
The words are simple.
The reaction is not.
Most of the chamber applauds.
A few senators do not.
Bail notices who keeps their hands folded.
Senator Ghirra turns toward the Chancellor.
“We are winning.”
The applause grows louder.
Bail claps with the rest, but his attention remains on the senators who look frightened rather than relieved.
A shorter war should be good news.
It is good news to Alderaan. To Chandrila. To Pantora. To every family waiting for supply routes to reopen and every world exhausted by conscription, occupation, or rationing.
It is not good news to anyone whose fortune depends upon emergency contracts.
Bail has watched military appropriations triple while oversight shrank. Companies with no previous defense experience now hold exclusive supply agreements. Senators who entered the war comfortably wealthy have become obscenely so.
Peace would end the contracts.
Victory would force audits.
A functioning Chief of Defense is a financial disaster for the right sort of patriot.
Ghirra’s voice carries across the Dome.
“The Republic owes gratitude to its soldiers, to the Jedi who lead them, and to the strategic reforms initiated by Chief of Defense CC-1010 Fox.”
Bail looks at Palpatine.
The Chancellor makes a face.
It lasts less than a second.
A tightening around the mouth. A flash of naked displeasure before the warm statesman’s mask returns.
Nobody looking toward Ghirra would notice.
Bail is not looking toward Ghirra. He watches Palpatine applaud.
Wasn’t he the one who appointed Fox?
The appointment had been sudden, strange, and publicly presented as an act of confidence in clone leadership. Palpatine praised Fox’s performance after Ryloth and described the promotion as necessary for centralized wartime command.
Since then, Fox has shortened campaigns, cut wasteful assaults, and transformed the Guard from a badly funded Senate security force into the operational center of the GAR.
By every public measure, the Chancellor’s appointment is succeeding.
Palpatine looks as though Senator Ghirra has praised an enemy.
Bail files the expression away.
He's been filing away more things lately.
The Chancellor’s increasing emergency authority.
The quiet resistance to clone welfare bills.
The strange gaps between military reports and Senate appropriations.
The fact that Fox’s casualty data appears in Speaker Tovaan’s briefings only when the Chief’s office chooses to release it.
Bail suspects there is much more being collected.
Fox is not careless with information. He hoards facts like ammunition and spends them only when the target matters.
Ghirra finishes by urging the next Senate to prepare for peace rather than prolong war for comfort or profit.
That earns less applause.
Much less.
Bail sees Senator Riyo Chuchi rise first.
He stands a moment later.
Mon Mothma joins them from Chandrila’s pod. Then Padmé Amidala. Senator Darsana. Senator Tills. More follow until most of the chamber is on its feet.
The Chancellor rises last.
His smile has returned flawless.
After Ghirra leaves the podium, the chamber recesses for ten minutes while the next retiring delegation arranges an elaborate cultural presentation.
Bail’s aide leans closer.
“Senator Dod left before the applause ended.”
“I noticed.”
“His office requested an emergency meeting with the Corporate Alliance delegation.”
“During farewell proceedings?”
“Yes.”
Bail looks toward the Commerce Guild pods.
Several are already empty.
He almost smiles.
The war has become predictable enough for investors to fear peace.
That may be the most hopeful sign Bail has seen in months.
Across the chamber, Riyo steps away from Pantora’s pod to speak with Senator Amidala. Her marriage arches shine against blue skin. Padmé says something that makes her smile, small and private.
Two Guard troopers stand nearby.
Neither reacts.
Bail wonders how many of them know.
Probably all of them.
The Guard keeps secrets with the same discipline it applies to uniform regulations. Its personnel are notorious for perfect armor seals, exact patrol timings, polished boots, and dress codes enforced with near-religious intensity.
Other clone battalions return from leave with new tattoos, shaved patterns, painted nails, and enough evidence from 79’s to alarm a medical officer.
The Guard does not.
Bail knows why.
A tattoo is individuality made visible. Visible individuality can be called instability. Instability can become grounds for decommissioning.
The regulations are not merely regulations. They are camouflage.
A cap pulled low over the eyes can hide more than fatigue. It can hide gold arches. It can hide a marriage the Republic does not legally recognize because one spouse is still classified as property.
The thought cools Bail’s brief amusement.
Riyo has begun breaking the Pantoran Assembly’s hold over her office. She now votes against instructions when conscience demands it and survives every attempt to recall her. Her clone-rights coalition grows with every casualty report and every story from worlds where the Guard’s conduct has improved.
Fox wages war through precision.
Riyo wages politics through exposure.
Together, whether the Holonet has guessed correctly or not, they are becoming difficult to control.
Perhaps that explains the Chancellor’s expression.
A chime calls the Senate back to order.
Bail returns his attention to the podium as Senator Ghirra’s successor presents her with a ceremonial sash. The old senator bows, her family applauds, and the galleries rise again.
Fox is not present.
He never attends these sessions.
He appears only when the business directly concerns his duties, and even then, he stands in silence while Speaker Tovaan delivers every formal statement on his behalf. The Chief of Defense has never spoken a single word into the Senate record.
Bail once found that peculiar.
Now he wonders whether it's deliberate.
No speech can be misquoted if it was never given.
No careless sentence can be twisted into insubordination.
No recording captures the voice of a man the Republic insists is not legally a person.
The Senate continues offering farewells.
Bail listens carefully.
Not only to what is said.
To who applauds.
To who leaves.
And to the Chancellor, whose smile remains warm whenever anyone speaks of peace, except when they mention the clone making it possible.