Jabba The Hutt

Jabba had decided to hold the meeting on board his sail barge, with just a few of his. . . servants, and guards, allegedly to increase security.

Even before she had left Coruscant, Padme had thought the whole thing was a bit. . . flimsy, but Chancellor Palpatine was insistent that she come alone, and in secret, to secure an agreement with Jabba. At the last minute, Padme had decided to bring R2-D2 along, hidden in one of her larger pieces of luggage.

Now a Separatist ship was inbound, and would land in minutes. There was nothing but hundreds of miles of Tatooine sand around them. She couldn't leave without being spotted and captured, or dying in the blazing desert in short order.

The two clones that had brought her had dropped her off, and were waiting for her signal to come pick her up. Besides them, only Chancellor Palpatine knew she was here. The clones knew about Artoo of course, but they hadn't told the Chancellor.

Jabba spoke a few sentences of Huttese, which his dull silver and bronze protocol droid promptly translated.

"Senator Amidala," the protocol droid began. "The Mighty Jabba is most distressed by this turn of events. If you are discovered here, it will be very bad for business, not to mention his life expectancy."

Padme doubted it would be as bad for Jabba as it would be for her. One the other hand, if Dooku knew he was negotiating with the Republic, and had her on his sail barge, he'd probably kill him. That still wouldn't help her though.

"Do you think I want to get captured?" she asked in a shout. "I'll have to hide or something!" Suddenly Artoo let out an interrogative whistle. Kriff. "And we have to hide Artoo!"