"Useless!!"
An enraged roar rang out in the palace that had once belonged to Queen Amidala...
However, aside from making the B1 battle droids standing guard outside stare blankly at one another and causing a small commotion, it accomplished nothing.
In the end, the Trade Federation viceroy had failed to carry out the task assigned by the big shot above him. That "unarmed" Naboo Royal Starship, with its shiny chrome hull and a mere seventy-six meters in length—a little yacht that had already been as good as theirs—had still managed to escape with its important passengers aboard.
If word of this got out, it would surely be the biggest joke in the Galactic Republic that year. After all, an entire Trade Federation fleet had been unable to stop a diplomatic sightseeing vessel, and had even let it slip through the encirclement. That was pretty hard to explain away.
Of course, none of that mattered now. Their quarry had still gotten away...
Relying on the ship's superior speed, powerful shields, and efficient cooling system, they had made a high-speed emergency landing in Naboo's atmosphere, leaving their fighters and the pursuit forces dispatched afterward far behind. When the Trade Federation's air forces reached the crash site, all they found was an empty "Naboo Royal Starship" with almost no fuel left. They had gained nothing else.
As far as Viceroy Newt Gunray was concerned, though, Naboo was already entirely under their control, held by their army of droids—the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of cheap B1 battle droids they had bought with mountains of money! Under their ongoing search, that stupid woman who had brought this on herself by returning to Naboo, Queen Padmé Amidala, would eventually be captured by their troops. There was no doubt about it. This planet was, in practice,