by James Luceno
Han and Leia approached and shook hands with him in turn.
“Prime Minister Teppler,” Leia said. “Thank you for seeing us. And allow us to offer our condolences on your loss.”
“Losses, actually,” Teppler corrected. “My brother died defending Aidel.”
Han looked at the man more closely. There was something familiar about the Five World Prime Minister pro tem, and even in the dimness Han could now make out what it was—Denjax Teppler was the slightly older, slightly softer-edged image of the CorSec guard who had been with Aidel Saxan during their first meeting with her.
“I apologize,” Leia said. “We didn’t know.”
“I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” Teppler said. “I’m too used to a role as a minister dispensing information, not used to being a Prime Minister keeping it all bottled up. Please, sit.” He gestured to chairs opposite his, and resumed his seat.
His visitors settled into chairs. Leia said, “We were surprised to receive your coded communication.”
“Surprised that Aidel had shared her secrets with me, as we were no longer husband and wife?”
She nodded.
“Well, she didn’t, not exactly.” Even in the poor light, Teppler seemed to lose his focus, his intensity, and Leia felt the man was staring back through time. “After she died, I received an in-case-of-my-death package from her. Her dealings with you were part of that package. Also part of it was an apology for getting me killed.”
Han frowned. “She hasn’t, has she?”
“Not yet. And I’m likely to remain alive as long as certain parties see me as an asset rather than a liability.” Teppler shrugged. “I’d like to remain alive. I’d prefer that even to coordinating Corellian government. But most of all I want to keep Corellia from being ruined. Devastated by war, her economy depleted by a lengthy struggle against the Galactic Alliance, or—perhaps worst of all—her economy and critical faculties drained away by years of rule under the wrong regime.”
The Solos nodded. Teppler was obviously speaking of Chief Sal-Solo and his political allies.
“And that’s why I’ve asked you here,” Teppler continued. “To defend my people, my world, I’m going to commit an act of high treason. I’ve smuggled you in here, into the most secure portions of our war department facilities, so you can be a witness to a meeting I’m forbidden to attend.”
“Forbidden?” Leia arched a brow. “How can they forbid you?”
“By having more pressing matters scheduled for me during this meeting.” Teppler looked increasingly glum. “With my brother dead, and never having gone through the process of building myself a reliable, loyal society of conspiratorallies, I haven’t had anyone I can trust with me since Aidel’s death. Which my political opponents know all too well. I’m the perfect front man—hapless and helpless. And then Aidel’s message about you two comes to me, and I discover that perhaps the most incorruptible Corellian of all is visiting us on the sly, and willing to risk his home, his relationship with his own government, in the interest of keeping people alive and keeping his homeworld intact …”
Han felt shock creep across his face. “Incorruptible? When did I become incorruptible?”
Leia grinned at him. “It’s your stubborn pride, dear. It keeps you from accepting the wrong kind of bribe.”
“Hello? Smuggler?”
“Ex-smuggler.” Leia returned her attention to Teppler and sobered. “You actually want us to spy on this meeting.”
“Yes. A top-secret military meeting. It’s supposed to deal with throwing the GA forces off Tralus.”
Leia frowned at him. “And why do you think I’d refrain from telling the GA military about the plans we listen to?”
The Prime Minister gave her a sad stare. “Because you know as well as I do that there can’t be a peace initiative until the GA is off Tralus. The GA can’t negotiate their departure because that’s already been tried and failed. The GA can’t just leave because it would be too great a loss of face—even greater than being driven off, because it suggests they were wrong in the first place. And the Corellians won’t even start thinking about peaceful solutions while there’s an occupying force on Tralus.”
His expression graduated from sad to positively miserable. “There can’t be peace until an act of war drives the GA out of this system, and you know it. And if you were to tell the GA government our plans, we couldn’t succeed at driving them out. It’s as simple as that.”
Leia was silent for a long moment. Finally she said, “I’ve underestimated you, Prime Minister. You’re more calculating than I thought.”
“Aren’t I, though?” He offered her a self-deprecating smile. “At this rate, I wonder whether, when assassins or war-trial executioners come for me, I’ll welcome what they have to offer.” He shrugged. “As for now, the only forces I know are loyal to me are four YVH droids my brother programmed for my security. I’m hoping that, after you’ve witnessed this meeting, you can tell me if there are any others. Or at least confirm the disloyalty of others I suspect. It would be helpful.”
“We’ll consider it,” Han said. “I think we’ll watch your little meeting and then decide what to do.”
“That’s about as much as I could ask for.” Teppler rose, and the Solos did, as well. “My droids will be back for you when it’s safe to smuggle you out of here. In the meantime, the polarizing tint on the viewport here, and the darkness of this chamber, will prevent anyone below from seeing you.”
“Meaning we shouldn’t turn on the lights,” Han said, deadpan.
Teppler stared at him a long moment, then managed a slight smile. “Meaning exactly that.”
Once she was set up before the computer console in Thrackan’s quarters, it took Mara just short of three minutes to crack his security.
First was the medical portion of the identification process. She used a dropper tube to place a single drop of Thrackan’s blood onto a sensor needle resting in a depression on the console surface. The blood, taken during one of his visits to a doctor, had been more recently purchased, surreptitiously and at an extravagant price, by Galactic Alliance Intelligence. Then there were his fingerprints. The transparent, almost undetectable glove Mara wore bore his prints and was sufficient for most security purposes.
Third, there was visual confirmation. Just before the computer got to that portion of its security sequence, Mara activated a small holoprojector-scanner unit that detected her face, mapped it, and projected a three-dimensional representation of Thrackan’s features over her own. No living creature would be fooled by the device—Thrackan’s face glowed, and the effect was made worse in the dimness of his chambers. But the computer scanner accepted the image.
After that, it was a matter of entering the correct password. Mara got it on the third try.
Tiu, now leaning over her shoulder, asked, “What was it?”
“The name of one of his mistresses.” Mara shook her head over the obviousness of that choice. “Now let’s go prowling.”
And prowl she did, downloading everything she looked at into her own datapad. Not that it amounted to much. “He apparently forwards all his files and records to a system in the government halls,” she complained. “He’s very tidy. Not good for us.”
“So this was all for nothing?” Tiu’s serene Jedi mask cracked for just a moment. “All those days of terrible, spicy Corellian food?”
Mara grinned. “Maybe not for nothing. We just need to look farther afield.”
She found security procedures and passwords that would make subsequent departures from and entries into this building much easier—until they were changed, that is. She found poorly hidden personal files kept on the building’s computer system by its security operatives, many of them constituting blackmail evidence against fellow agents, private citizens, and low-level government officials.
And then she found what she was looking for: an incoming message from several days earlier.
“ ‘To Thrackan Sal-Solo, Chief of St
ate, Corellia, all greetings and respects,’ ” she read. “ ‘Let me begin this communication by offering you a gift, the gift of knowledge: The impending meeting between representatives of the Corellian and Galactic Alliance governments will take place on Toryaz Station, Kuat System.’ Well, he or she was right about that.”
“Who sent it?” Tiu asked.
“ ‘But, sadly, this gift is incomplete by itself, as security at the station will be formidable. Fortunately, I have information on that matter, too—I can provide exact details on the locations of all delegates at all times, as well as the security measures guarding them, for the duration of their stay here.’ ”
“Here,” Tiu repeated. “So whoever wrote him was already on Toryaz Station.”
“Not necessarily. The word choice could be deliberate, to convince Thrackan of just that detail. ‘Should this information be of interest to you, please contact me on the HoloNet frequency indicated below, at the times shown. Standard encryption, using the contents of my next message as the encryption key.’ Then there’s the time and frequency information.”
“No name?”
“No name.” Mara scanned the file listing for follow-up messages with the same characteristics as this one. “I’m not seeing any sign of the message with the encryption key. It was probably delivered by other means.”
“I’m not feeling any animosity toward the sender of that message.”
“You’re not?” Mara looked up at Tiu, surprised.
“No. So it’s all right for me to kill him, correct?”
Mara grinned. “Self-deception is always a bad idea, Tiu.”
“Except when it amuses a Jedi Master.”
“Well … true.”
Tiu sobered. “But the fact that Thrackan received this message doesn’t mean that he paid for that information. He isn’t necessarily the one responsible for the attack.”
“Yes, he is. Regardless of whether he received the second information and dispatched the killers. Not reporting it to CorSec and Prime Minister Saxan constitutes treason, betrayal. Whether he arranged for assassins or just sat on information, he’s at least partly to blame for Saxan’s death and the mess we’re in.”
“Oh.” Tiu brightened. “Well, then, I’m not feeling animosity toward him, either. Can I—”
“No.” Mara glanced up as though she could see through intervening floors into the chamber by which she’d entered the bunker. “That escape craft … is it hyperdrive-equipped?”
“It is.”
“But I assume that if we were to board it and blast out of here, we’d have CorSec fighters on our tail in a few moments.”
“I wondered about that, too. And I had no way to confirm or disprove that as a theory … but I doubt it.”
“Explain.”
“It’s for Thrackan to escape in. One of the things he might want to escape from is a vengeful pursuit by new government forces that have chased him out of office, and those government forces could put CorSec on his tail. So my bet is that he’s given it transponder codes that will be registered as good and valid, no matter what, until all traces of Thrackan are scoured out of the computers.”
Mara nodded approvingly. “Which could take awhile, particularly if I pump some malicious code into this machine and wait long enough for associated computers to sample it, too. What say we steal Thrackan’s escape vehicle? If we don’t accumulate any pursuit, we can pick up my husband and go home. If we do, we can dump it over there in the ocean and leave Corellia by the route we’d planned originally.”
“I like this plan.”
Half an hour after Prime Minister Teppler’s departure, politicians and military officers began entering the room beneath Teppler’s viewing chamber. They traveled in groups, one important dignitary backed by three to five members of support staff, with the dignitary and one aide seating themselves at the large, triangular table dominating the room, the others exiled to secondary tables or far corners, there to remain until summoned.
As these people spoke in their small groups, Han and Leia could occasionally make out their words, whenever they were projected across the table or the room. Soon enough, Han realized that they were being augmented by a set of speakers in the wall beneath the long viewport.
Eventually, the highest-ranking officer so far, Admiral Vara Karathas, chief of staff for the Ministry of War and operational leader of the Corellian military, entered with her retinue. All the other officers straightened, looking busier and more efficient, and the big chamber’s upper lights came on in full strength.
“What’s keeping them?” Han frowned down at the military officers below. “They’re still not starting. We were more prompt back in the Rebel Alliance days.”
“You weren’t, you specifically.”
“No, but we were. When you didn’t wait for me.”
Even from the altitude of the viewport-side chairs in Prime Minister Teppler’s box, Admiral Karathas looked years older than the last time Han had laid eyes on her, a holonews spot broadcast the day of their first meeting with Aidel Saxan. There were no more lines to Karathas’s face, no more gray to her hair, but the ramrod-straight military rigidity that always seemed to characterize her had apparently fled. Her posture now was that of a tired woman, and her face seemed softer, no longer stretched into taut planes and sharp angles by unyielding muscles.
She didn’t look beaten. But she did look beatable. Han grimaced, not appreciating the change.
Standing at one truncated point of the triangular table, Karathas pointedly drew a chrono out of a jacket pocket and consulted it. As she did so, several of the other officers glanced in the direction of Teppler’s box—beneath it, actually, and a trifle to the left—and exchanged eye contact and words with one another, reacting to some new arrival and indicating that, at last, things might proceed.
From the direction they had been looking, Wedge Antilles, again in Corellian uniform, walked into the room, without retinue.
Admiral Karathas gave Wedge a wan smile. “Cutting it rather close, aren’t you, Antilles?” She projected her voice sufficiently that it was clearly audible in Teppler’s box—that, and perhaps the microphones that fed Teppler’s speakers were oriented more toward the main table than other portions of the chamber.
Wedge nodded and moved up to the table beside Karathas. “Admiral, if I had a credit for every time someone told me that …”
“Yes, you could probably buy our way out of this situation.” Karathas looked up, in a direction disconcertingly close to where Han and Leia sat, but her eyes seemed to be focused on a point to their left, beyond the wall that separated them from the next room. “Are we all ready? Yes? Then let’s begin. Please sit.” She did as she suggested, and there was a momentary delay as some officers fled the main table and others trotted up to it, seating themselves.
“All right,” Karathas said. “We find ourselves in the unenviable—unacceptable, but unavoidable—position of having to wage a battle against enemy forces occupying the center of one of our own cities. We cannot do this without a gruesome toll in the lives of our own people, which could very well swing public opinion against us … which would be increasingly harmful to our defense of the Corellian system. Nor can we just ignore the enemy beachhead, as leaving it intact will allow them to reinforce it, expand it, and begin bringing more and more potent offenses against our insystem positions. Their command post in Rellidir on Tralus has to be obliterated … and so Operation Noble Savage has been designed to obliterate it. And to turn what would be a public opinion disaster into an asset.” Her voice did not convey military confidence. If anything, it carried more than a hint of regret, and even resentment.
Han saw Leia shiver. He gave her a questioning look.
“She didn’t say anything about minimizing expected civilian deaths,” she said.
Han leaned forward to give Karathas a closer look. “Maybe she’s getting to that.”
“Maybe.”
Below, Karathas gestured to someone
out in the shadows along the big room’s walls. A hologram sprang into existence above the center of the table—a view of the center of the city of Rellidir, inverted so that those at the table, looking up, were actually looking down into the monolithic block of spacescrapers as if from a great height. Some wavered at the unsettling perspective, but most were or had been pilots—amateur, professional, or military—and had no problem with the view.
The disc-shaped hologram began a slow rotation, and then a large region at the center of it—a massive, circular white building with eight narrowing points around its rim, giving it the appearance of a royal crown—began blinking, red-white-red-white. The building was easy to make out among all the spacescrapers, as it was surrounded by a broad belt of green occasionally decorated with narrow gray lines—a large city park with foot trails tracing through it. Small wire-frame objects in blinking red were scattered around the building, arrayed in rows and columns, but they were too small for Han to make out; a few larger wire frames in the same color scheme appeared to be troop transports and corvettes.
“This,” Karathas continued, “is their command post; they have occupied the Navos Center for the Performing Arts. This was a very good choice, speaking from a military point of view. It’s commodious, has an extensive underground storage area not accessible through any of the city’s normal underground infrastructure, and commands a good view of the surrounding airspace. Shield generators have been set up inside, powering a two-level shield defensive system.” On cue, a hologram wire grid of defensive energy shields appeared, blinking on and off in orange, just outside the green park areas surrounding the command post, and another wire grid, this one in red, began blinking several blocks out in all directions, a greater dome enclosing the smaller dome.
“It’s also sound strategically because the center is right in the heart of one of the most densely occupied portions of central Rellidir,” the admiral continued. “Any standard action waged there will result in thousands of civilian casualties. One concussion missile missing its target could bring down an entire superhabitat building … and inevitably there will be missiles missing their targets. Many of them. Our grim task has been to turn that terrible but inevitable consequence of war to our advantage.” Karathas’s voice was raspy and faint on those last words.
