Palpatine reclined in the platform’s padded seat as angry rebuttals spewed from the stations of the Rim Faction worlds, as well as from those belonging to the Trade Federation, the Commerce Guild, the Techno Union, and the Corporate Alliance. How wonderfully and predictably the Senate had deteriorated over the course of twenty years. As had so many ordinary and extraordinary sessions, this one would end in chaos, with nothing resolved. For the screens that filled the Rotunda, hovercams captured Valorum’s sad expression of impotence. Soon, very soon, it would fall to Palpatine to impose order
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