Masters of the Game

Chapter 4: Nobody Said It Was Easy

Music: YouTube watch?v=csGoVMysHz0&list=PLyXt6P7d1IjUO-m8nsVSPZivqdDfn6S9_&index=2

THREE MONTHS TO ELECTION DAY

The Lofquar system.

Sereine had tried to spread the trips out somewhat; there was no way they could pack every venue they needed to visit into what was sure to be an insane last six weeks of campaigning, even though those six weeks always counted the most. Unlike many sectors in the Republic, only two planets in the Chommell sector allowed campaign ads on the public airways; so at home it was speeches, interviews, and touring, and whatever the popular press chose to air about your speeches, interviews, and touring.

Of course, a stop earlier in a campaign might not be expected to turn out the sort of crowds that would attend campaign stops toward the end of one. Still, unless it was a joint stop, with Bibble and the Princess also appearing at the same venue, not many people came to see just Palpatine.

It was worrying. People simply weren't as interested in the troubled incumbent as they were in Bibble and the beautiful Olivia Sen.

Palpatine's strength going in had simply been that he was the incumbent, and he had traded that away, for what, she didn't know. She knew he would notice the difference in attendance at the different bookings, so she tried to schedule mostly joint stops.

And that was irritating, for Palpatine and for the entire traveling staff. Tonight, for example. Sitting there in the darkened hush of Lofquar Scope Ampitheatre, Sereine bit the inside of her cheek as, once again, Princess Olivia finished speaking before her allotted time was up. Always the least prepared and the least well-read, the woman led a charmed life—granted her by her huge blue eyes and her elegant and patrician face, capable of the sort of beauty, mirth, and charm that beamed from holovids like a supernova.

What nature hadn't graced her with, her hairdresser, makeup artist, and dressmaker made short work of. Tonight, the podiums were all glass, which the Princess made use of, as she always did, by wearing the new shorter skirts she was singlehandedly making a new Republic fashion trend. Neither of her opponents sported legs like that, and she made sure every viewer knew it. And her hair was her crowning glory, blonde, cropped startlingly short, and exquisitely styled.

Sereine knew every campaign was essentially a beauty contest, but this was blatantly unfair. All Sen had to do was show up at the refugee camps, smashing even in work dungarees, and nobody cared what any of the candidates said.

Which was a shame. Palpatine's green light went on, and he handled an extremely boring topic—taxing merchants for use of the Enarc Run, the system's main trade route—with engagement and gravity. Difficult though it was to make anyone care about so dry an issue, Palpatine made the point that when major corporations were taxed, average citizens had better lives, in a succinct manner, without too many facts and figures. His cultured voice was easily the best on the ears that night, and Sereine was proud of his resonance and inflection. They'd worked hard on every single word of that.

Bibble stepped on his last line with the tired joke about spending other people's money, and he got the laugh even though he didn't wait for his green light.

As always, every moderator and pundit named Palpatine the winner of the debate, yet the public most decidedly did not. Sereine checked the realtime polls surreptitiously on her datapad as the candidates left the stage. They were still hovering around the thirty-four percent mark.

The number pierced her heart like a knife. Her ace in the hole was a slow  ace in the hole, and the thought that all their hard work on his speeches hadn't moved the needle at all hurt.

At least the Princess's numbers were dropping, too. People were beginning to realize that beauty might not be all she needed to handle the job.

Unfortunately, their losses were Bibble's gains. The Unstoppable Bibble, Sereine thought bitterly.