Star Wars - Black Fleet Crisis - Shield Of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  them."

  "Stop that, before the children hear you," she said, punching his

  shoulder and then resting her head against it.

  Han wrapped an arm around her. "I might let him off if he takes it

  back." After a long pause, he added, "But he has to mean it." There

  was another pause, during which his tone turned serious. "And, what

  you said--before the children hear him."

  Leia said nothing then. But as she cuddled with Han and watched Jaina,

  Jacen, and Anakin playing by the waterfalls, four words burned in her

  ears before the chil dren hear. When she returned to the fifteenth

  floor, she quietly asked Alole to find her a sample of the messages

  received in recent days on the ministry lines. Not long after Alole

  provided them, Leia called Nanaod Engh.

  "I've thought some more about what you said," she said. "Please see

  what can be done."

  "We'll get after it right away," Engh promised.

  Young and old, fresh and seasoned, the Grannan and the Mon Calamari

  left their Fleet speeder and walked in unconscious lockstep across the

  parking apron toward the red-and-white snub fighter sitting high on its

  skids a dozen meters away.

  "Here's what I wanted to show you," Admiral Ackbar said. "Have you

  ever seen one of these before?"

  "Yes," Plat Mallar said, ducking under the locked foils a nd studying

  the wingtip spars. "In my grandfather's enemy vessel silhouette drill

  set. It's some variation on an Incore T-sixty-five X-wing, isn't

  it?"

  "Correct. But notice the wider profile through the fuselage, and the

  side-by-side cockpit."

  "Dummy laser cannon on the wingtips, too," Mal-lar said. "Trainer?"

  Ackbar nodded. "This is a TX-sixty-five primary trainer. The X-wing

  may no longer be the Fleet's front-line fighter, but every pilot in the

  Fleet took his first hundred hours in one of these, and every new pilot

  probably will for some years to come."

  Mallar crouched and peered under the fuselage. "A lot different from a

  TIE interceptor."

  "Indeed. Including one difference you should be able to particularly

  appreciate---hyperdrive."

  A wry smile creased the boy's face, then vanished.

  "One of these crashed the day I came out of the tank, didn't it? I

  heard the medics talking."

  Ackbar turned and pointed across the field. "Right over there, on

  taxiway twenty-two. Not the first, or the last," he said with a little

  shake of the head. "Sometimes, despite everything we do, they come out

  of the simulators with the idea that if they make a mistake their

  mentor pilot will just reset the exercise."

  He shrugged. "And sometimes ships just break."

  "My engineering instructor liked to say that stopping isn't hard,

  stopping gently is--and anytime you leave the ground, you'd better

  check twice to make sure all the nuts are tightened, because gravity

  flunks all the incompletes."

  "It sounds like your instructor knew his business."

  "Yes," Mallar said. "Bowman York did know his business. I miss

  him."

  A fat-bodied military transport rose from the field beyond and roared

  overhead on its way to space. Wearing a wistful expression, Plat

  Mallar turned his head to watch it until it vanished from sight.

  "So effortless--so much power, under such precise control." He looked

  back to Ackbar. "That's all I cared about before the Yevetha came, you

  know. Not the bombs and the laser cannon. Just flying. Just the

  ships, so graceful, dropping out of the clouds, disappearing into the

  sky. They came and went every day when I was very young. Mom said I'd

  sit at my window for hours and watch for them, and call out to the

  whole house when I saw one."

  Ackbar inclined his head toward the trainer.

  "Would you like to go up?"

  "I've been trying to convince myself that it would only make me feel

  worse, just in case you asked," Mallar said.

  "How did you do?"

  "Failed miserably. Yes, I'd really like to. Can we, sometime?"

  As his answer, Ackbar climbed up the boarding ladder, reached inside

  the open cockpit, and tossed a flight helmet down to a surprised Plat

  Mallar.

  "Now?"

  "Why not?"

  "Don't I need something more than this?"

  "You need a mentor pilot," said Ackbar, reaching into the cockpit again

  and retrieving another flight helmet.

  "That's me."

  "I meant--wait, we're just going for a ride, aren't we?"

  Ackbar clambered down the ladder with his helmet under his arm. "You

  meant like a flight suit?"

  "Well--yes."

  "In the cargo area of the speeder," Ackbar said, nodding toward it.

  "Why don't you get them?"

  Mallar hurried off to the speeder, returning quickly with an armful of

  folded brown fabric. "Which one's mine?"

  "On top," Ackbar said. "The one with your name on it."

  For a moment Mallar stared blankly, uncom-prehending.

  Then Ackbar's bundled flight suit fell to the ground as Mallar shook

  his out and pawed over it with shaking hands, searching for the

  namestrip above the right pocket. When he found it, he looked up at

  Ackbar wonderingly.

  "On your own merit," Ackbar said firmly. "On the merit you showed the

  day the Yevetha came to Polneye--the kind that counts more than any

  test score or transcript.

  And I mean to teach you the way I was taught, with an eye to what you

  already know, and a light hand on the stick. In the worst days of the

  Rebellion, we were putting pilots in combat on ten hours of simulator

  time, because we were at war. Well, Polneye is at war with N'zoth.

  And if it's still important to you, and there's any way it can be done,

  I will have you ready to go back to Koornacht before that war is

  over."

  "Yes," Mallar said with a quiet fierceness. "Yes, I want it."

  Ackbar nodded. "There is a corridor in pilot country-you will see it

  later--lined with small metal plaques, one for each pilot who's died

  flying out of this base. The walls and the ceiling of that corridor

  are nearly covered in metal.

  And if we were to hang a plaque for every pilot who came through here

  as a trainee and died somewhere out there, under enemy guns or in a

  ship that just broke, we'd have to cover the entire face of the

  tower."

  "I understand," Mallar said.

  "You only think you do-like everyone your age," Ackbar said, shaking

  his head. "Just listen to me for a moment. When old people start

  wars, young people die.

  And every hero every war has ever made went out that morning with

  comrades who were every bit as brave, but not quite as lucky. You've

  used up a lot of luck already getting here, Plat Mallar. And no one,

  no one anywhere, would ever say a word to you if you were to choose not

  to put on that flight suit, and chose instead to make a life here. You

  stole that life back from those marauders. You need not offer it up

  again."

  "I know," said Plat Mallar, standing as tall as his frame would

  allow.

  "And I thank you for remi
nding me that there is a choice. But my

  choice is to wear this, and hope for a chance to do something that

  makes a difference--to me, if not to anyone else."

  "Very well," Ackbar said. "Then let us begin. You have a great deal

  to learn."

  Chapter 13

  As the last holo-image of the Yevethan attack on Morning Bell faded and

  the lights came back up in the Defense Council's hearing chamber, Leia

  studied the senators seated at the V-shaped table.

  There was one new face among the eight, reflecting a small shift in the

  balance the human Tig Peramis of Walalla was gone, and Nara Deega of

  Clak'dor VII, a Bith, had been seated in his place. After the

  confrontation at the activation briefing for the Fifth Fleet, it was a

  relief not to have to face the fiery Peramis, who had removed himself

  to a legal limbo by presenting articles of withdrawal for his

  homeworld.

  But the intimidatingly intelligent Deega was, like the majority of his

  species, deeply committed to pacifism. A ruinous civil war had left

  Clak'dor VII an ecological nightmare, inhabitable only in domed

  cities.

  Because of those memories, Leia did not expect to find Deega any more

  tractable than Peramis had been.

  Leia walked into the middle of the space defined by the , and all eyes

  turned to her. On the recommendation of Engh's image specialists, she

  had forgone the flowing robes of Alderaan's royal house in favor of

  what Han had called street-fighting clothes--a simple garment

  suggestive of a flight jumpsuit. But she wore just one of the medals

  and honors she was entitled to the small blue-fire crystal talisman of

  House Organa.

  "The question I bring before you is a simple one," Leia said the first

  words she had spoken in that room that day. "What shall we do about

  what you've just seen?

  "These images document both the murderous brutality and the

  expansionist mentality of the current Yevethan government," she went

  on. "They've committed unspeakable acts of xenophobic genocide and

  been rewarded for it with new worlds to settle and new resources to

  exploit. Their success can only whet their appetite for more--but even

  if they are content now, they're profiting from crimes against peace

  and morality.

  "Excluding the Koornacht Cluster, Farlax Sector contains more than two

  thousand inhabited systems, some three hundred of which are members of

  the New Republic. Not one of them is strong enough to resist the

  Yevetha on its own.

  "We've already accepted our responsibility to protect the peaceable

  inhabitants of Farlax by sending the Fifth Fleet to stand between them

  and the Yevetha.

  But that's no more than a stopgap solution. We cannot undertake a

  permanent deployment at battle-group strength. Eventually we will face

  an unappealing choice between abandoning those systems, reinforcing

  them, and taking on the Yevetha for them.

  "I think we must face that choice now, while the initiative remains

  with us--before the Yevetha find a way to force our hand. We must find

  some way to alter the Yevethan calculus, or what you saw just now will

  only be the beginning. We should try first to change their willingness

  to wage war, but we should be prepared to deny them the means to wage

  war.

  "That's why I'm here today--to ask for your counsel in devising a plan

  to deal with the Yevetha, and your support in carrying it forward."

  Leia's presentation was the only part of the meeting she could control,

  and it proved to be her best moment of the morning. As soon as she

  returned to her seat, Behn-kihl-nahm spoke briefly but supportively

  before laying out the ground rules for the discussion to follow.

  But as soon as that discussion began, the division in the Council

  became evident, and Leia's opponents began chipping away at the

  foundation she stood on.

  "What is the source of these images you have presented to us?" asked

  Senator Deega.

  Leia stood at her seat. "Senator, they were recorded by the Yevetha

  and intercepted by a ferret patrolling the perimeter of Koornacht

  Cluster."

  "Then they are completely undocumented?"

  "What do you mean, Senator? I can, if there's a legitimate reason to

  do so, bring someone in here who can testify to the time, manner, and

  location in which those images were recorded."

  "You have misunderstood, President Solo," Senator Deega said

  patiently.

  "If you did not make th e recordings, you do not know what was being

  recorded. You have said that these images document the eradication of

  certain settlements within Koornacht Cluster. But, objectively viewed,

  they document nothing. What planets were those? Who was aboard those

  ships? When did those events take place? Who assembled those images

  in that sequence?"

  "If the Council feels it hasn't seen enough and chooses to commit the

  time, I can present the entire unedited intercept--all eleven hours of

  it."

  "You still misunderstand, President Solo," said Deega. "For all you

  can prove, those images were recorded during the Rebellion, light-years

  away from Koornacht Cluster. If they were recorded at all--the quality

  of the images does not exceed the capabilities of the best image

  editors."

  Chairman Behn-kihl-nahm intervened at that point. "Senator Deega,

  inasmuch as you're new to the Council, I'm aware that you haven't had

  much experience evaluating military intelligence. Much as we would all

  like to have absolute certainty in these matters, technical espionage

  does not often allow us the luxury of the exacting standards a

  scientist has for evidence, or a mathematician for a proof. Sometimes

  we just have to trust our spies--or, if that asks too much, trust our

  eyes."

  That brought chuckles from Senators Bogen and Yar, and effectively

  silenced Deega. But Senator Marook stepped up to fill the void.

  "I have no doubt that terrible, shameful things have happened in

  Koornacht Cluster," said the Hrasskis, his air sacs pulsing slowly. "I

  do not question what Princess Leia has shown us."

  Leia waited, knowing not to take his words as a vote of confidence.

  "In truth, I found the presentation sufficiently real that I should not

  like to see any more, or see any more closely. It's enough to know

  that the dying are scream-ing--I don't find that listening to it adds

  anything to my understanding," said Marook. "What I question is the

  Princess's claim that this is a matter of great urgency.

  Perhaps she can help me understand."

  "I'll do my best," Leia said, wary.

  "These recordings--to the best of your knowledge, they were made days,

  even weeks ago, yes?"

  "That's true."

  "So what you've shown us is history. None of these tragedies can be

  prevented, or even tempered."

  "Then how is this any different from the unavenged atrocities of the

  Imperial era? Why are we not meeting to discuss how and when to invade

  the Core in search of the agents of Palpatine's rampages? Isn't the

>   real urgency here the waning of your political power, and your

  desperate need for a dramatic victory to restore your prestige?"

  That brought Tolik Yar roaring to his feet in Leia's defense with

  accusations of his own. "Bold talk from a traitor who secretly visited

  Aramadia and plotted with Nil Spaar against his own.

  You have never explained what you were doing there--besides shaming

  your people and betraying your oath--" Marook answered with a lunge and

  a clenched fist, which brought Senators Bogen and Frammel into it as

  peacemakers and sent Deega fleeing from the room.

  Meanwhile Senator Cundertol of Bakura and Senator Zilar of Praesitlyn

  sat back in their chairs, treating the contretemps as an object lesson

  and an entertainment, respectively.

  "You see?" Cundertol said, leaning toward his companion.

  "These aliens are always fighting, on the least provocation. It's in

  their nature. You can't stop them--so why should we try? Why are we

  obliged to protect the weak against the strong? Why not let the weak

  fall, and then make our alliances with the strong?"

  It took all Behn-kihl-nahm's persuasive skill to bring everyone back to

  the table and the session back to order. But by then, unanimity was