A Little Chat
© 2025 by Walter Reimer


Thumbnail art by David Booth (2020)
Star Wars © Disney, sadly



His office was the first thing he’d ordered to be repaired. It wouldn’t do to conduct the business of the fledgling Empire or speak with representatives of the Senate with the furniture scarred and scorched and the sweeping armorplast window missing.

Emperor Palpatine, robed and hooded in black, sat with his back to the window and smiled.

The Clone Wars were over, the people and the Senate were happily breathing a sigh of relief, and the traitorous Jedi Order had been suppressed. Fires still burned over at the Temple, but the archives were safe. All the Order’s massive library was now entirely under his control, added to the Sith archives he’d acquired after he had killed his former master.

Surprisingly, he was at a bit of a loose end, a brief intermission between receiving reports and deputations and conducting interviews and g decrees to deal with this or that lingering crisis. He had been taking advantage of the respite to meditate, feeling the ebb and flow of the dark side of the Force as it suffused him and spread out to fill the huge office.

All too soon, his commlink chimed, and the Emperor pulled the Force back into his mortal shell. “Yes?” he asked, his voice raspy after his battle with Mace Windu. “What is it?”

“I beg your pardon, Your Highness,” Mas Amedda said, his image appearing in front of the desk. “Representative Binks is here to speak with you.”

The Emperor raised one eyebrow. Binks and the rest of Naboo’s Senate delegation had left Coruscant for Pe Amidala’s funeral. The mourning period for the former Queen and Senator wasn’t quite over yet. “Send him in,” Palpatine said, and sat back as the door whispered open.

The Gungan loped in with the loose-limbed stride his kind used for moving about on land. The door closed behind him and Jar Jar Binks stopped in the middle of the office.

He gave a slight bow. “Yousa Highness,” he said in his singsong Basic.

Palpatine’s eyes widened at a sudden flare from the Dark Side.

The surge hadn’t come from him.

He reached out in the Force and his eyes narrowed. “Who are you?” he asked softly.

Binks smirked. “Meesa Darth Ept . . . Darth Sidious.” He stood still, there in the middle of the office. “Meesa Master, Darth Continent, he asked me to speak with yousa.”

Palpatine matched the smirk as he stood up slowly. His lightsaber was comfortably ensconced in one voluminous sleeve of his robe; a slight twitch of his arm and he’d make short work of this supposed Sith. “So, you are The Embarrassment’s apprentice?”

The Gungan’s eyes narrowed. “’The Embarrassment,’ yousa call him?”

“Yes,” Sidious hissed. “Using the Force to give opponents diarrhea. Shameful.”

Binks rocked his head from side to side. “Meesa agree, but meesa no here to argue. Meesa Master and me congratulate yousa, Emperor.”

A wary look. “Congratulate me?”

“Oh yes. Yousa won, an’ beat the Jedi. Meesa Master muy muy impressed.”

Sidious sneered. “As he should be.” A slight nudge of the Force, and a decorative sculpture took flight from its plinth, aimed at the back of the Gungan’s head.

Binks suddenly bent at the waist and scratched the top of his bare foot, the sculpture sailing over his head. “Ahh, thassa better,” he said, straightening up. A slight gesture caught the sculpture before it could hit the wall, and he guided it back to its resting place. “Meesa been dry too long.”

“Why aren’t you still on Naboo?”

“Meesa met my Master there, and hesa told meesa to come here,” Darth Ept said. “To congratulate yousa.” He twitched his broad ears slightly. “Meesa do wanna ask yousa a question.”

“What?”

“Could yousa ask the Queen to make meesa Senator from Naboo?”

Of all the things the Gungan could have asked, that was one request Sidious hadn’t anticipated. His eyes narrowed, feeling the Dark Side ri in him. “Why?”

“Is a place of power,” Darth Ept said simply. “Meesa suggested the Grand Army to the Senate. Meesa Master thought it a muy muy good idea.”

Whether Darth Continent had ever had a good idea in his equine head was a matter of debate, but Darth Sidious set that aside. Although he was prepared to kill this apprentice, the office had just been repaired and redecorated, and he didn’t want to make a mess so soon. “He wants you to watch me,” Palpatine said.

“Uh-huh,” Binks said, nodding his head jerkily. “Meesa watch, an’ meesa tell him, if mebbe yousa weaken, mebbe. But yousa strong in the Dark Side, so meesa am t’inkin’ you be Emperor longo time.”

“You are correct. I will be Emperor a very long time,” Palpatine said flatly. “Tell your Master,” and he sneered when he said the word, “that I will consider making you a Senator, and tell him that he is welcome to come fight me whenever he wants.”

Ept bowed, his eyes on Palpatine’s face. “Of course, meesa Emperor. Meesa go now, meesa need moisten meesa skin.”

“Go,” and Sidious watched as Ept turned his back on him and walked out of the office. The door closed and he sat down as a Force-driven vision appeared in his mind.

He smiled. Darth Ept was going to be too busy to betray the Emperor; the Gungan was deep in plans to kill his current Master. Making him a Senator would be a handy way to keep an eye on him, until it was necessary to send Darth Vader to kill Anakin’s old Gungan friend.

Emperor Palpatine smiled, and a slight brush of a finger against the desktop signaled Mas Amedda to bring him the next item on a ruler’s busy agenda.




end