Bloodline (Star Wars)

by Claudia Gray

  Murmurs of assent went down the table, and Leia found herself nodding. No other solution existed.

  Varish cocked her head, golden fur spilling over one shoulder. “Are you nominating yourself, Tai-Lin? Not a bad idea.”

  “I have a better one.” Tai-Lin smiled. “Our candidate must be more than a trusted, long-term senator. She must also be someone known throughout the galaxy. Someone whose friends and family are famed for their contributions to the New Republic. A war hero not even the Centrists can accuse of being weak.”

  Leia’s eyes widened. Oh, no.

  Varish clapped her furry hands together. “Of course! The First Senator of the New Republic must be Princess Leia!”

  Damn.

  “But that’s amazing.” Greer smiled as she set down her datapad, surprised out of professional mode by Princess Leia’s revelation. “You’d be a wonderful First Senator.”

  “You’d win for sure, Your Highness.” Korrie hugged her datapad to her chest. Exciting stuff for a girl of sixteen, finding out she might be working for the person on the verge of becoming the most powerful individual in the galaxy. But Greer couldn’t be condescending about Korrie’s glee when they were equally thrilled.

  Politics didn’t offer enough excitement, usually—but this? A race for First Senator would be nearly as good as a race in a starfighter. Not quite. But almost. As much excitement as Greer could handle, anyway.

  “How very marvelous,” C-3PO said. “When will the election be scheduled?”

  Princess Leia only shook her head at them before leaning back in her office chair. “I told you guys already. When my term is up, I want to resign.”

  Greer wanted to protest but didn’t dare. Fortunately, what C-3PO lacked in tact, he made up for in enthusiasm. “But, Your Highness, you mustn’t resign! Not now when the galaxy needs you.”

  “Threepio’s right.” Greer wondered if those words had ever passed her lips before. “You’re probably the strongest candidate the Populists could field. That makes you our best chance of winning. If a Centrist wins the election instead…bad things could happen.”

  Which was a weak way of putting things, and Greer knew it. But speaking the truth out loud meant saying words like war and tyranny. She didn’t want to drag the conversation there if it wasn’t necessary. Surely it wouldn’t be. Princess Leia had to listen to reason, right?

  Leia sighed as she got to her feet and walked to the window of her office. The view revealed little beyond shrubs and the reddish footpaths outside the senatorial complex, but at least it let the light in. If it hadn’t, Greer would’ve found the office too claustrophobic to endure.

  Sometimes she missed the sky.

  “Our mission to Bastatha reminded me of what it felt like to be in action during the Rebellion,” Leia said without turning from the window. “To know your entire life depended on your speed and your courage, and the blaster in your hand.”

  “How terrible,” C-3PO said. “Those were indeed frightening days, Your Highness.”

  “But wonderful, too.” Leia looked over her shoulder, not at C-3PO but at Greer and Korrie, whom she probably hoped would understand. “I miss being hands-on. I miss dealing with problems personally. I miss talking to pilots and soldiers instead of politicians all the time. I miss feeling like…no. I miss knowing that what I was doing really mattered.”

  Greer had imagined herself in the Rebel Alliance before, playing X-wing pilot as a little girl and pretending to blow up the Death Stars, sometimes both of them at once. But of course that was how a child thought of war: as a great adventure where the good always won and the evil died without shedding real blood.

  To hear Princess Leia, who had suffered unspeakable tragedy and danger throughout the war, speaking of those days with nostalgia—maybe it was the ultimate testimony to just how bad the Galactic Senate had become.

  If the Senate was collapsing, however, Greer knew who she wanted to remain standing at the end.

  “You could at least continue the Rinnrivin Di investigation,” Greer ventured. “The Senate would probably give you even more latitude—the Populists because they want you to shine, the Centrists because they want you to screw up.”

  Leia groaned and laughed as she returned to her desk. “No doubt.”

  Encouraged, Greer continued, “So it’s not like you’d have to give up being in action forever. And if you were First Senator, you could work around the bureaucracy you’ve hated so long. It wouldn’t be the same as just staying in. Everything would change.”

  “Everything will change with or without me,” Leia pointed out.

  Greer nodded. “But with you, we have a chance to change for the better.”

  Princess Leia had a way of looking at people as if she could see straight through them to the bone. She was a hard person to lie to, a harder person to convince. Yet the only terrible secret Greer kept was one the princess knew and kept for her. When Princess Leia fixed Greer in that stare, it wasn’t a prelude to an investigation, but her way of calling for absolute, total honesty. “What would you do, if you were me?”

  Excitement and freedom versus duty and purpose: Greer had made that call once. Princess Leia was, in effect, asking her if she regretted it.

  “I’d stay.” Greer lifted her chin. “I’d run. And I’d win.”

  The princess leaned back in her chair, deep in thought. They’d worked together long enough for Greer to know what that meant: She hadn’t chosen to remain yet, but she was no longer resolved to leave.

  “An exploratory committee,” Princess Leia finally said. “Just to—consider the possibilities. I’ll agree to that much.”

  “How splendid!” chirped C-3PO. Korrie grinned as she got to work pulling up potential names for the committee. They both thought the debate was over and that they were on the verge of the most exciting political campaign in thirty years.

  Greer knew only that, for the first time, she had lied to Leia Organa.

  Some regrets could never be spoken aloud.

  —

  “Told you—you’re never going to leave.” Han shook his head and smiled as if to say, See? I’m always right. His cocksure grin would’ve fooled most people.

  Leia, however, could sense his disappointment, and it was harder to bear than her own.

  “I don’t want this,” she said. “You know I don’t.”

  “Of course not. That’s why you’re putting together the, whatsit, ‘exploratory committee.’ ”

  She shook her head. “Han, the only thing worse than my becoming First Senator would be a Centrist becoming First Senator. If I walk away now, I could be handing the galaxy over to the next emperor. You know I can’t do that.”

  After a moment, Han sighed. “I know.”

  Political news spread fast. As soon as Leia had told her staff to set up the exploratory committee, she had put in a comm request to Theron. If her husband had heard news this significant from a broadcast of some kind, it would have been terrible.

  Telling him herself? Still not good.

  Han had turned out to be on whatever ship he was flying on Theron, literally waist-deep in the wiring on the black-tiled wing with his tools lying around him. He’d pushed his safety goggles up to his forehead so that his gray-white hair stuck up in front. In the background, both droids and mechanics kept working hard, doing something complicated to the ship’s rear engines.

  “Repairs?” she asked, hoping to leaven the conversation. “I didn’t think you would even have started flying in the rounds.” The early heats of the Sabers competition could be supervised from platforms on the ground; flight surveillance didn’t begin until the lunar relays.

  “This?” Han shrugged as if it were nothing, but already he’d begun to smile again. “Actually, thought I might soup this baby up before I take her out again. Give her a little fighting power, and see how far I can push the engines. She’s a good ship—fast, handles well—but she needs that little something extra.”

  Han had said virtually
the same thing about every ship he’d flown since the Millennium Falcon. He kept hoping to re-create that magic. But Leia knew he never would, no matter how much speed or maneuverability any other spacecraft might have. Some loves came only once in a lifetime.

  “The work would be going better if I didn’t have to deal with a rookie crew,” he continued. “If I still had Greer on my team, we’d be finished by now.”

  “I’ll tell her you said so.”

  “She doing okay?” Han frowned in genuine concern.

  “I think so. Greer’s more excited about the political campaign than I am.” Leia smiled ruefully. “Which isn’t saying that much, really. But still.”

  “Well, tell her hello from me.”

  This was Leia’s cue to ask whether Han had heard from Ben or Luke (though she knew he wouldn’t have), or to inquire about how Chewbacca was doing. Their conversation would trail off into something simpler and easier, and they could both pretend everything was all right.

  But it was important to be honest at moments like this, even if it was hard.

  “Han? I’m sorry about the campaign. I really wanted something different for us.” She thought of her daydreams about the two of them flying through the galaxy together, carefree at last. Already those dreams were fading to shadows. “But nothing ever changes.”

  “Hey.” Han looked up from his work, more solemn than he’d been at any other point in the conversation. “Don’t apologize to me for taking this seriously, okay? You put duty first. Drives me crazy sometimes, but that’s who you are. It’s also probably why the New Republic is still in one piece.”

  Leia couldn’t quite smile. “Someday.”

  “Someday.”

  The words sounded like a promise. But Leia couldn’t make herself believe that day would ever really come…and she knew Han couldn’t, either. Someday was the sun disappearing behind a cloud, a morning lost to darkness long before night should have come.

  —

  Lady Carise Sindian walked through the hallways of the senatorial complex, her pink cloak rippling behind her as if in a breeze. She paced herself for speed and disdained the moving sidewalks that ferried around so many other senators. Passivity was a habit Lady Carise did not intend to acquire.

  The past day had been one of her greatest triumphs—so far, she thought. Yet victory demanded more of a person than defeat did. Instead of exulting in the successful vote, Lady Carise had spent hour upon hour receiving calls from countless Centrist senators, balancing them in such a way as to show favor to the most important without alienating the others. To her surprise and relief, Senator Casterfo had obeyed protocol by promptly coming to her offices.

  Had she been in his place, would she have been as quick to cede the main credit for the vote? Certainly not. But Casterfo understood the importance of authority, which meant understanding the need for hierarchy. That made him an asset rather than a threat. Lady Carise had summoned him back to her offices only an hour before to suggest that they attend the gatherings of potential Centrist candidates together, the better to avoid even a hint of factionalism. Casterfo had agreed to everything—had even been quite charming—until the moment she had called their meeting to a close, and explained why.

  “Going to see Senator Organa?” Casterfo had smiled as if they were discussing a mutual friend. “I imagine she’s not best pleased with me today. But do give her my regards.”

  Ransolm Casterfo cannot be such a fool as to think he could make a friend of a Populist senator, Lady Carise thought as she passed under the shadow of Bail Organa’s statue, scattering a flock of Toydarians that had been dawdling ahead of her. Nor should he assume the princess is naïve enough to take his pleasantries at face value. So what game is he playing?

  It bore further observation. However, Lady Carise set the matter aside for now. She was visiting Princess Leia not as a fellow senator, but as a fellow sister of one of the Elder Houses, which deserved its own weight and importance.

  After the princess’s doddering protocol droid had seen her in, Lady Carise took her seat before Leia’s desk, folding her hands in her lap. “You must realize why I’m here.”

  Princess Leia shook her head. She wore a plain gray dress more befitting a commoner than a senator. “I’m afraid you have me at a loss, Lady Carise. Unless this is about yesterday’s vote—”

  “Of course not. No politics today.” Lady Carise beamed. “You and I have the luxury of considering more high-minded issues, don’t we?”

  Instead of responding, the princess stared at Lady Carise in what seemed to be total incomprehension. Was she well? Possibly senility had begun to set in. Of course Princess Leia was rather young for such troubles, but one never knew.

  With what she considered gracious good manners, Lady Carise did not force the princess to guess. “I wished to discuss the governorship of Birren. Your staff must have been researching the matter for weeks now. When will you be traveling there for your inauguration?”

  “Oh. Yes. Right.” Princess Leia acted as if she hadn’t thought about the matter once since their last discussion. How disingenuous. “You know, Lady Carise, I’m not actually of the bloodlines of any of the Elder Houses. Bail and Breha Organa adopted me—”

  “You were a war orphan.” Lady Carise had always found this story extraordinarily touching. “And yet they raised you as their own. Through their actions the Organas showed that nobility is not merely a matter of blood.”

  Princess Leia smiled at the kind mention of her parents. “My point is, I shouldn’t be the person inheriting the governorship of Birren in the first place.”

  “But of course you should! None of the Elder Houses adjudicates succession through strict bloodline inheritance.” Privately Lady Carise held some reservations about this. Bloodlines had to matter somewhat, otherwise the very concept of royalty would be discounted. However, she believed that inner nobility could be demonstrated through action, and despite her political disagreements with the princess, Lady Carise felt nobody could deny Leia’s courage was the equal of any monarch’s. “You must succeed Lord Mellowyn, just as your son must someday succeed you.”

  For a moment Princess Leia looked weary, as if she had aged between one sentence and the next. “I can’t see Ben taking much interest in the governorship, either. Really, it would be better for everyone concerned if I were to remove myself from the succession. Wouldn’t it then fall to you? Birren was settled by both Alderaanian and Arkanisian explorers, after all.”

  Lady Carise managed to reveal no reaction beyond surprise. Inside, however, she felt as if every firework from the dedication ceremony had exploded again in the sky above, even brighter than before. She’s giving it to me. To me! A planetary title of my very own! My standing in the Elder Houses would rise immeasurably, overnight.

  But her dedication to the nobility remained even stronger than her ambition. “Princess Leia, you do me great honor by even suggesting it. Yet I could not possibly usurp your throne.”

  “You’re not usurping it if I’m giving it to you.” Princess Leia waved her hand as if shooing something off. “Honestly, I can’t see the point of spending weeks away from the Senate just to claim an honorary throne nobody else cares about filling, not even the people of Birren. If you don’t take the governorship, I’ll send an emissary there to see about officially abolishing the position. But if you’re willing to take it, and the citizens don’t object—please, Lady Carise, be my guest.”

  “Thank you.” Lady Carise could no longer keep her smile inside, and she beamed at the princess. “I promise that you’ll be proud of my service as supreme governor.”

  Princess Leia smiled back, but crookedly. “See? Now everyone’s happy.”

  “Of course I’ll travel to Birren immediately. It’s so important for someone to be hands-on.”

  The phrase seemed to strike Princess Leia strongly. She straightened as her gaze sharpened back to full intensity, as if she had only just woken. “I agree completely.”

 
; For most of the next half hour, Lady Carise felt as if she were floating on a cloud of delight. But as she strolled back toward her own offices, head filled with thoughts of herself in a golden gown to match her throne, it suddenly hit her: Weeks away from the Senate. Spending that much time on Birren now—at such a critical point, with the candidates for First Senator likely to announce themselves within the month—could she possibly afford it? Was she sacrificing her real work as a senator for the sake of the supreme governorship of Birren?

  She would simply have to find balance. Duty demanded that she fulfill both of her roles to the best of her ability. The winds of politics shifted by the day, but nobility was forever.

  —

  Joph had meant to take only a short nap, but instead he’d nearly blown through his whole down shift. He swore when he saw the time and dashed to the hangar, where a dozen or so other X-wing pilots had gathered around a holotransmitter. “Did they start?” he shouted as he ran toward them.

  Temmin Wexley, aka “Snap,” gestured for Joph to join the group. “About to! Move your boots, Seastriker!”

  The second Sabers run was about to begin: orbital sprints. While the final three stages of the Five Sabers were best watched through edited footage later—because they lasted hours, then days, then weeks—the first two were the best racing you could watch. Joph had shouted himself hoarse cheering on the pilots in the initial starfighter atmospheric dash, and he expected the orbital sprints to be just as exciting. More, even, because only after the second race could you begin to identify potential winners.

  Joph hurried toward the group—but paused as he saw one pilot working on her ship without even glancing at the races. “Greer?”

  She glanced over at him from her place beneath the Mirrorbright. The sleeves of her grease-stained jumpsuit were pushed above her elbows. “Hey, Joph.”

  “Aren’t you going to watch?”

  “Nah.” Greer shrugged with one shoulder and bent closer to her work. The glow of her handheld scanner etched her profile in the hangar’s shadows.