Star Wars - Black Fleet Crisis - Shield Of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  the major for help. "Are there special circumstances I wasn't made

  aware of--" "Admiral, Lieutenant Warris is quite right on the

  procedures," the major said. "If this applicant doesn't have a

  verifiable citizenship record with a member world, we can't even

  consider him."

  "Bureaucratic nonsense," Ackbar raged, his voice rising on a wave of

  righteous indignation. "Whatever happened to taking the measure of a

  man's courage, his honor--the fight in him, and the reasons in his

  heart? Do they all have to be as stamped-and-pressed alike as

  stormtroopers to get your approval?" He dismissed the recruiter with a

  wave. "Get out."

  Grateful to be excused, Warris retreated as Ackbar focused his

  attention on the supervisor.

  "Admiral, we could certainly reconsider the application if you could

  just give us the context for your concern--" "The context," Ackbar

  repeated disbelievingly. "It's not enough that a man is willing to put

  on a uniform and fight alongside people he's never met, just because he

  shares an ideal with them--no, his offer must come from the right

  context, and his school papers must be in order, and his arms not too

  long, and his blood type stocked in the combat medivacs." Ackbar shook

  his head in disgust.

  "How things have changed. I can remember when we were glad for anyone

  willing to fight beside us."

  "Admiral--there have to be standards--" The major's tone was placating,

  and Ackbar did not wish to be placated. "Major, ask yourself how many

  of the everyday heroes of the Rebellion--not just the names everyone

  knows--would have qualified to fight for their freedom under your

  rules," Ackbar said, leaning in.

  "And then ask yourself if that answer doesn't make you look just a bit

  like a dewback's cloaca." Then Ackbar turned and stalked out of the

  office without waiting for a reply, much less a salute.

  Halfway down the corridor, Ackbar's outburst was already making him

  feel a touch foolish. But what he found when he reached the waiting

  area left him feeling a deep sadness.

  For Ackbar found that all the seats in the waiting area were empty.

  Seemingly crushed by the rejection, Plat Mallar had not waited for

  him.

  Without a word to clerk or guard, the young survivor had left the

  recruiting office, exited through the main gate, and faded away into

  the city.

  Ackbar turned to the gate guard and pointed. "I'm going to need that

  speeder."

  CChapter 12

  from experience on Coruscant and Mon Calamari both, Admiral Ackbar knew

  that the line that divided the inner circle from the outer circle in

  any government was access. If you were part of the inner circle, you

  could see the President simply by walking down a private corridor and

  through the back doorway into her office; when you called, the

  President spoke to you directly; when you transmitted a letter, you got

  a personal response.

  Ackbar had enjoyed that status throughout Leia's tenure in the top

  office, first as chief of state under the Provisional government, then

  as President of the New Republic. Even under her comparatively open

  administration, that placed him in select company.

  The private door was open to Han, of course. And Mon Mothma, who had

  chosen to distance herself from the Palace since her close call with an

  assassin led to her giving up the office. Nanaod Engh, who had not

  quite become a friend, but whose duties made him an everyday visitor.

  Behn-kihl-nahm, though he was too well-mannered not to observe the

  protocols of high office.

  Tarrick and Alole. And Ackbar.

  Or so it had been before the Yevethan matter had escalated to a

  crisis.

  But Ackbar had been jarred by the discovery that he was locked out of

  the President's residence, his key disabled, his status as a member of

  the family suddenly withdrawn. So he had chosen to approach the

  President's suite on level fifteen through the front door, and tried to

  prepare himself for another rebuff.

  But the security guards outside the suite made no move to stop Ackbar,

  and though the staff inside showed some slight surprise at seeing him

  there, no one moved to bar him from the back rooms.

  "Good morning, Admiral," Alole said, looking up from her greatdesk with

  a smile. "Go right on in--she's in her conference room, reviewing last

  week's Senate debate."

  When he reached the doorway from the office to the conference room,

  Ackbar hesitated. Leia was standing at the end of the room with her

  back to him, hugging herself as she looked up at her holoviewer. The

  image on the screen was of Senator Tuomi. His tone was earnestly

  reasonable, his words subtly inflammatory.

  "Is this door still open to me?" Ackbar's voice boomed in the confined

  space.

  Leia turned away from Tuomi only long enough to steal a look back over

  her shoulder. "If you didn't have to shoot your way past Tarrick, then

  the door's still open."

  "I shall try to remember to take a cue from the presence of weapons in

  the reception area."

  Pausing the playback of the recording, Leia turned toward Ackbar. "Did

  you really think you might not be welcome here?"

  "We have not had a chance to talk since you returned, and we only spoke

  once while you were away--a short and businesslike conversation, as I

  recall," Ackbar said. "Before that--well, I am not sure that I would

  have been included in the meeting the night of the pirate broadcast if

  it had been convenient to exclude me. I have been afraid to try my key

  again."

  "Then you haven't seen Han, either? I told him to tell you it was

  fixed. And here I thought it was me you were avoiding," Leia said,

  coming to where he stood and hugging him. "I can't stay angry at you

  for long. And besides--you're one of the few people I've told myself I

  have to keep listening to, even when I am angry at you."

  Patting Leia on the back with one large hand, Ackbar sighed. "That is

  good to know."

  "I've missed you," she said, easing out of the embrace.

  "Anakin misses you. No one on the staff's caught sight of you for

  days. What have you been up to?"

  "I have been preoccupied," Ackbar said, and gestured toward the

  viewer.

  "Why are you bothering with this? It can't be pleasant to hear

  yourself be talked about that way, and I cannot see the use of it."

  Leia glanced back over her shoulder at Tuomi's face.

  "I suppose I have a morbid curiosity about whether anything is

  considered out of bounds."

  "'Greed has no limits, envy no boundaries, in the heart of a petty

  man." A favorite quote from Toklar, a much-quoted Mon Calamari

  philosopher," Ackbar added.

  "Was he also the one who said, 'Don't look back--something may be

  gaining on you'?" Leia asked lightly.

  "I do not believe so," Ackbar said. "But Toklar did write, 'One sting

  is remembered longer than a thousand caresses." For every voice that

  supported Tuomi's challenge, there were a hundred saying it was
/>   foolish, unjust, and cruel. Listen to them instead."

  "I'm not offended for myself," Leia said, pointing her controller at

  the holoviewer and ending the projection.

  "But it's hurtful to those of us who are left to hear Alderaan spoken

  of that way. And it seems as though suddenly everyone's finding

  reasons to object to my being here."

  "People find what they look for," said Ackbar.

  "Look to their motives, not their words."

  "Tuomi says that his motive is justice," Leia said with a shrug.

  "Alderaan is a nation of refugees, sixty thousand people with no

  territory except for our embassies here and on Bonadan. Tuomi

  represents five inhabited planets and nearly a billion citizens. Why

  should Alderaan rule Bosch, he asks."

  "But you do not lead us for Alderaan. You lead us for the New

  Republic."

  "In which Alderaan is a member only due to misguided pity, according to

  Tuomi."

  "Tuomi is an ignorant fingerling," Ackbar said with sharp contempt.

  "Alderaan's membership is neither a courtesy nor a violation of the

  Charter. The New Republic is an alliance of peoples, not planets."

  Leia nodded an acknowledgment. "Something often forgotten, even

  here."

  "Then I will presume to remind you that the structure of the New

  Republic was crafted to avoid dominance by the most populous worlds--to

  prevent what Kerrithrarr called a tyranny of fecundity," Ackbar said.

  Leia laughed tersely, tossing her hair. "I remember that argument."

  "Perhaps you remember another quote I am fond of," Ackbar said.

  "'Today, we become a galactic family--a family of the great and the

  small, the young and the old, with honor to all and favor to none.""

  Leia recognized the words from her own Restoration Day address.

  "That's cheating."

  "I trust you still believe what you said then."

  "Of course I do."

  "Then it does not matter if Alderaan now means sixty thousand, or six

  hundred, or six."

  "No," agreed Leia. "The exact number matters only to the assessors and

  accountants. Our claim to membership is valid, and just, and

  moral--regardless."

  "I am glad to hear you say that," Ackbar said, and dug into a large

  flap pocket in his belt. "I have brought something here for your

  endorsement." He unfolded a single sheet of pale blue document vellum

  and handed it to her. "That is an emergency petition for membership

  for Polneye, offered by its representative on Coruscant."

  Leia eyed Ackbar questioningly as she circled the table toward the

  window. "I think I've been manipulated."

  "This claim, too, is valid, and just, and moral--regardless."

  "Is there any reason at all to think that anyone else on Polneye

  survived the Yevethan assault?"

  "There is no evidence either way," said Ackbar.

  "Why does it matter?"

  "If Plat Mallar wants to sit in the Senate--" "Plat Mallar wants to sit

  in the cockpit of a fighter.

  The Senate seat for Polneye will remain vacant, unless other survivors

  are found--as a reminder."

  "I see your handprints all over this, Ackbar."

  "I am trying to help the boy," Ackbar admitted.

  "But he has his own mind."

  "Let me ask a different question," Leia said. "Have you made him aware

  of the offer from Jobath of Galantos, for sanctuary and membership in

  the Fia?"

  "Plat has spoken with Jobath."

  "And?"

  "In the days after Alderaan was destroyed, how would you have looked on

  an invitation to become a citizen of Lafra or Ithor?"

  Leia placed the vellum on the table and bowed her head, pressing her

  palms together and touching her fingertips to her mouth. "I'm being

  roundly criticized already for the applications I approved when I came

  back."

  "If that's so, then one more can hardly make any difference," said

  Ackbar. "But it will make all the difference in the world to the

  Polneya. And I must add thisfor whatever it may be worth to you, I was

  proud of you for what you did."

  Frowning, Leia leaned forward and rested her hands on either side of

  the document as she studied it intently.

  "You know," she said slowly, "I felt pretty good about it, too." She

  keyed her comlink with the remote.

  "Alole--bring me an endorsement tablet, please. Admiral Ackbar has

  called my attention to an application that was overlooked."

  Belezaboth Ourn, extraordinary consul of the Paqwepori, paced

  restlessly in the sleeping chamber of his cottage in the diplomatic

  hostel.

  For the tenth time, he checked to see that the tiny blind box the

  Yevethan viceroy had provided him was properly attached to the much

  larger hypercomm relay.

  Th at was the extent of Ourn's ability to determine whether there was

  some technical reason why, five hours after sending an urgent request

  to speak with Nil Spaar, he was still pacing and waiting.

  And Belezaboth Ourn did not like being kept waiting.

  His ship's engineer had examined the sealed box with all the means at

  his disposal, but after a discharge from the box had destroyed his test

  instruments, the engineer had returned it with a shrug. All Ourn

  really knew is that with the blind box attached, the hypercomm

  conversed with it, and the box conversed with a Yevethan hypercomm at

  an unknown location.

  Muttering an imprecation against Nil Spaar's fertility, Ourn called for

  a toko bird and a slaughter knife to be brought to him. He had been

  stuck on Coruscant for weeks now, unable to leave, waiting on the

  viceroy to keep his promises. He was not about to let himself be stuck

  in his room, unable to eat, waiting on the viceroy to answer his

  calls.

  Mother's Valkyrie was still sitting on the landing pad where it had

  been battered by the departing Yevethan thrustship Aramadia. With the

  mission short of funds, Ourn had refused to authorize repairs,

  expecting to sell the cutter as scrap when the ship Nil Spaar had

  promised him was delivered. Then spaceport ground crews had covered

  Valkyrie with a bubble-like lien seal when the unpaid berth fees

  mounted.

  It was embarrassing to have the Paqwepori consular ship sitting there

  under a debtor's lock for everyone to see. It would be humiliating to

  have to stand in line to leave Coruscant on a shuttle. And it was

  unthinkable for the delegation to return home penniless aboard one of

  the rattletrap commercial liners that came calling at Paqwepori.

  There was only one acceptable resolution, and Ourn clung to it

  unwaveringly. Nil Spaar must keep his promise of a Yevethan thrustship

  in payment for the damage to the Valkyrie and other services Ourn had

  rendered to Nil Spaar. Then the delegation could leave Coruscant not

  only in grand style, but in such a way that everyone would know that

  the Paqwepori had powerful friends.

  The only troubling matter was that Nil Spaar was so often unavailable

  when Belezaboth Ourn tried to reach him. The last two times he had

  called with information, Ourn had been relegated to speaking to

&nb
sp; underlings. And his three attempts since deciding to withhold what he

  knew and insist on speaking directly with Nil Spaar had gone completely

  unanswered.

  For this, the fourth, Ourn had baited the hook, leaving a message that

  he had information about important developments near Koornacht. But,

  still, he had been waiting five hours.

  The toko bird and a response from the Yevetha arrived at the same time,

  and Ourn rudely chased the former away so that he could receive the

  latter. To his delight, the face that appeared was Nil Spaar's.

  "Belezaboth Ourn," Nil Spaar said. "What is that sound?"

  The toko bird's squawking over being rejected was still audible from

  the outer room. "Viceroy! An honor and delight to have a chance to

  speak to you again. Disregard the noise--it is a wild animal outside,

  nothing more. What news do you have for me? Is there any further word

  on delivery of my ship?"

  Ourn thought he saw regret in the Yevethan's expressive eyes. "Consul,

  this has become a matter of great awkwardness," Nil Spaar said. "My

  people and yours are nearly at war--" "No, not our people!" Ourn said,

  dismayed. "Why, there is not a single Paqwepori citizen in the New