If Mas Amedda had to describe the Galactic Empire as it stood now, he would say that what lay before them was a Manus berry. It had a hard, thorny shell, but inside was soft, juicy flesh.
If that shell could be cracked open, one could savor the delicious flesh within.
However... he could not think of any way to break through that hard shell.
That shell was far too powerful... It had over ten thousand Star Destroyers, hundreds of thousands of small and medium warships, millions of starfighters, hundreds of millions of Clone Troopers, and tens of billions of ordinary soldiers.
It also had the full support of the great noble houses of the Core Worlds, along with the immense wealth and resources controlled by those houses. How immense were that wealth, those resources, and that productive capacity? It was impossible to calculate. According to one high-ranking Imperial official, the material resources, financial strength, and productive capacity of the Core Worlds exceeded the combined total of every other region in the Milky Way Galaxy by more than five times.
Then there was the unfathomable power of Emperor Palpatine.
Mas Amedda knew little about the power of the Force, but he could sense that Palpatine's strength was growing by the day and had already reached a terrifying level. Not only that, he had gathered a large number of Dark Side superpowers under his command, establishing several mysterious organizations that even Mas Amedda, an Imperial minister, knew nothing about.
Certainly, behind the Imperial army's overwhelming strength were endless uprisings and resistance; behind the Core Worlds nobles' outward flattery were countless dirty deals and corruption; and opposite Palpatine's incomparable power was the light that had been suppressed for far too long.
But what did that matter? Until someone could truly shatter that