Star Wars - Black Fleet Crisis - Shield Of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  especially, seem to me driven this way."

  Nil Spaar nodded slowly. "You failed to anticipate that the vermin who

  came would choose death over captivity.

  That failure has cost my fleet a useful vessel, and wasted Yevetha

  blood."

  Drawing a hard breath, Tal Fraan dropped immediately to one knee.

  "Yes, darama. I know my error."

  "Rise," Nil Spaar said, and the younger Yevetha complied. "I shall not

  hold you to account for the failure of Kol Attan to seize the hostage

  you brought to him.

  Nor for the offense of the vermin in killing above their station."

  "You are gracious, Viceroy."

  "There are many kinds of vermin," Nil Spaar said offhandedly. "Perhaps

  those that were sent here are more like Commander Paret, who at least

  had the courage to defy me when I took this ship from him, than they

  are like those we hold in service. Otherwise, I would have judged them

  as you do."

  "I do not deserve your mercy, darama."

  "No," Nil Spaar said. "But you will help me think on how to answer the

  vermin for their boldness, and to strike at this one called Leia, for

  commissioning such sacrilege. And perhaps I will forget the other

  after a while, on such pleasures of revenge as you devise."

  Ackbar stood before the briefing room viewscreen holding one hand

  behind his back and pointing with the other.

  "This seems workable to me," he said. "If we tap Task Forces Apex and

  Summer from the Fourth Fleet, Task Forces Bellbright and Token from the

  Second Fleet, and Task Force Gemstone from the Third, we should be able

  to maintain our current patrols through the rest of the New Republic

  while building the force in Farlax to the strength of two battle

  groups."

  "Meanwhile, the Home Fleet will be left at full strength to defend

  Coruscant," Leia said. "Which may not sit well with the border

  sectors, but seems only prudent."

  "Well--General A'baht will be happy," Han said, leaning back in his

  chair. "This is what he's been saying he needed ever since he got

  there."

  Turning half away from the viewscreen, Ackbar exchanged glances with

  Leia. "General A'baht will not be in command of the combined force,"

  Ackbar said, and turned back.

  "No? Well--he might not mind too much," Han said, folding his hands on

  his lap. "A combined command like that is kind of like being put in

  charge of a zoo. Who are you going to pull off the line? Admiral

  Nantz is senior flag officer now, right?"

  Ackbar turned back toward the viewscreen, both hands tucked behind

  him.

  "No," he said. "Not Nantz."

  A crooked smile creased Han's face. "You'll do fine, Admiral," he

  said. "It's like riding a--it's something you don't forget how to

  do."

  "Han, Admiral Ackbar will be staying here with me," Leia said

  quietly.

  "I'm putting you in charge of the forces in Farlax."

  The smile faded quickly. "Didn't we take this class already?" he

  asked, sitting forward and dropping his forearms on the table. "I'm

  not the grand admiral kind.

  And this'll just make it look like you can't make up your mind--Etahn,

  me, Etahn, me--" "Han, she had no choice," Ackbar said without

  turning.

  "The Defense Council, led by Senator Fey'lya, insisted on approving the

  commander. He's lost confidence in General A'baht."

  "So why me?"

  "Because you've already spent some time with the Fifth. Because you're

  already familiar with the geogra phy and logistics out there. But

  mostly because you're not tainted," Leia said. "Fey'lya wanted Admiral

  Jid'yda--" "A Bothan--of course."

  "--and Bennie offered you as a compromise. As he explained it, the

  pro-Leia senators see you as supportive of me, and the anti-Leia

  senators think you're independent enough to deal with me."

  Han shook his head. "I can tell that that must have been an elevated

  debate."

  "You can't begin to know how absurd it was at times," Ackbar said,

  turning away from the viewscreen and approaching the table. "Senator

  Cundertol actually supported you on the grounds of--and I quote the

  great man verbatim--'He's not doing anything else, is he?"" "A

  heartwarming recommendation," Han said.

  "Remind me to thank His Denseness." He pulled Ackbar's datapad toward

  him and studied the list of force assignments. "I suppose it's a

  little late at this point to consider negotiating a truce."

  "I can't believe that the Yevetha will ever consider us their equals at

  the table," Leia said.

  "I suppose not," Han said, and pushed the datapad' away. "For a while

  there, Leia dear, I actually let myself think that we'd have a chance

  for that normal life you told Luke you wanted. I let myself believe

  that we were through with this sort of thing. And I have to tell

  you--leaving the uniform in the closet really agreed with me."

  Leia and Han exchanged rueful smiles at that.

  "Well--seems like going all the way back to Yavin," he added, "I've

  made you coax, wheedle, guilt, and shame me into volunteering for dirty

  jobs. I won't make you do it this time. Fact is, the Yevetha disgust

  me--and they scare the stang out of me, too. If we don't control them

  now, the future could get very messy. So I'll take this job, because

  it needs to be done."

  "The hard jobs are usually necessary ones," Ackbar mused.

  "This isn't hard," Han said. "Those pilots who flew into the Cluster,

  knowing the odds on coming back--that's hard. All I have to do is give

  men like that a reason.

  What's the timetable, Admiral?"

  "There is a ferry flight of recon-X's leaving for the Fifth Fleet in

  fifteen hours. They will fly escort for your shuttle," Ackbar said.

  "You should arrive not long after the task groups from the Fourth Fleet

  reach Farlax. Oh, and you will take the temporary rank of commodore

  for the duration of this assignment."

  "Commodore, eh?" He tried a cheerful smile on Leia, but she was no

  more persuaded by it than he was.

  "Does that come with a hat?"

  Even though he was caught in legal limbo--not quite a full member of

  the Senate, nor quite a former one--Tig Peramis of Watalla retained

  some of the usual courtesies of office. Behn-kihl-nahm would not allow

  him to speak or vote in the Assembly and had removed him entirely from

  the Defense Council. But Peramis's 'access keys still allowed him

  entrance to all but the Council chambers and restricted records. And

  that meant access to the other senators, whose gossip he thought worth

  nearly as much as a senatorial record search.

  Months ago he had denounced the Fifth Fleet as a weapon of conquest and

  tyranny and warned the Defense Council about the ambitions of Vader's

  daughter.

  He had been reprimanded by Behn-kihl-nahm and ridiculed by Tolik Yar,

  but events had proved him prophetic, confirming his worst fears. And

  the lightning annex-ation--on the flimsiest of pretexts--of eighteen

  formerly independent worlds in Farlax seemed to Peramis to foreordain a

  dramat
ic escalation.

  The middle-of-the-night gatherings in the Defense chambers, Leia's

  secret meeting with the Ruling Council, the "bungled" blockade attempt,

  the nakedly emotional appeals on behalf of tiny alien populations, and

  the open and deliberate provocation of the Yevetha at every turn all

  appeared to Peramis as pieces of an elaborate plan to justify

  annexation of Koornacht itself. Even the periodic outbreaks of

  criticism in the Senate seemed calculated, the critics themselves

  buffoons doing more discredit to their cause than damage to the

  Princess.

  But something a drunken Senator Cundertol carelessly said to him

  alarmed Peramis to the point that he could no longer be satisfied with

  rumor and gossip.

  "A Corellian pirate with two battle groups to command," Cundertol had

  giggled. "He'll show you goon-faces something about fighting. Old

  Eating-a-Boat didn't want to kill other goon-faces, so he's

  goon-goon-gone--" Peramis fed him more doan wine in the hopes of

  coaxing Cundertol to tell him more, but the Bakuran only grew more

  childishly self-amused at being in the superior position.

  "Should have been a good boy," Cundertol said, swaying on his feet as

  he shook a finger. "You can't come to the party."

  Half an hour later Cundertol was glassy-eyed with doan shock, and

  Peramis was entering the Senate office complex with both his and

  Cundertol's voting keys in his hand.

  Cundertol's key alone would not be enough to give Peramis access to the

  Defense Council records, but Per-amis knew from experience that

  security on senators' personal logs was much more lax. Convenience

  demanded it. A personal log kept behind too many barriers would never

  be used. Of course, nothing classified Secure was supposed to be kept

  in something as unsecured as a personal log. But Peramis thought

  Cundertol someone who was likely to place more value on convenience

  than confidentiality.

  The Bakuran's voting key opened every necessary door and every damning

  file. It was all there, in a xeno phobic rant that demonstrated the

  surprising fact that the senator actually did temper his words in

  public.

  A battle group-strength force was headed to Farlax to reinforce the

  Fifth--but piecemeal, a clever stratagem that would help conceal what

  was happening by allowing all the other battle groups to remain visible

  on their patrol stations. And the Corellian who was to take charge of

  the war fleet was, as Peramis had suspected, Princess Leia's husband,

  Han Solo.

  Peramis stayed in Cundertol's office only long enough to watch the log

  once and copy it to a data card.

  Then he returned to the private dining room where he had left

  Cundertol, replaced the voting key in the senator's valise, and left

  him to ride out his pleasure trance alone.

  In the privacy of his own quarters in the Walallan mission, he

  retrieved the small black box Nil Spaar had given him from its hiding

  place in a chest of his eldest son's toys. There was no one to see

  him--he had sent his family home months ago, and the modest staff that

  served him knew better than to intrude in the middle of the night.

  Seated at a table in his office, Peramis connected both the black box

  and his datapad to the hypercomm.

  At that point he paused. The furtiveness, the physical act of readying

  the devices, made him uncomfortable. He had not used the black box

  before. He had told himself that he never would. Peramis did not

  think of himself as a spy, much less a traitor.

  But he had kept the box nonetheless.

  He told himself he was an honorable man, with an honorable cause--to

  contain the militarism that threatened all that had been won in the

  Rebellion. After a successful adventure in Farlax, Leia would be

  untouchable.

  The Yevetha had to be warned.

  And it appealed to Peramis's vision of cosmic irony that Senator

  Cundertol would be the one to warn them, in his own words.

  But when Peramis activated the hypercomm, he left his office so that he

  would not have to hear those words again.

  Three hours short of reaching Intrepid, the commodore's Fleet shuttle

  Tampion and its ferry flight escort abruptly dropped out of

  hyperspace.

  They found half a dozen Yevethan ships waiting for them--the

  Interdictor Dreadnaught that had yanked them down, two thrust-ships,

  and three smaller vessels.

  The ambush had been perfectly planned. Before the dozing recon-X

  pilots and startled shuttle passengers even understood what was

  happening, their ships were bracketed in a furious ion-cannon

  crossfire. The fighters were disabled almost at once, then left

  drifting, ignored.

  The unarmed but better-shielded shuttle took more subduing but was soon

  dead in space, unable to maneuver or escape.

  Shortly after, Tampion was moving away from its escorts on a new

  course, under tow alongside one of the spherical thrustships. Raging

  over his impotence, unable even to signal the other pilots, Plat Mallar

  watched the pair jump out toward Koornacht. The Cluster filled the

  entire sky on the starboard side of his ship, like a painting of a

  swarm of night sparks.

  Mallar was never so sure of death as he was when the shuttle

  vanished.

  Helpless as the fighters were, any one of the five remaining ships

  could have dispatched them at leisure.

  Instead, the five ships gracefully arrayed themselves in a V, with the

  Interdictor in the lead position. Moments later they jumped away from

  the ambush point, their mission seemingly complete.

  Why did they leave us alive? Mallar wondered.

  An answer came to him almost at once, and it made him feel sick

  inside.

  So we could tell the Fleet, tell Corus cant, what happened to the

  commodore. So we would know that they have him.

  Han was brought before Nil Spaar not as a trophy, but as an object of

  curiosity.

  The encounter was in private, with no one else present except for Han's

  guards--two immensely strong male Yevetha who carried no weapons and

  seemed unlikely to need any, given how Han was bound. And the setting

  for the encounter was puzzling--not a throne room or arena of

  humiliation for the conquered, but a tile-wrapped chamber with floor

  gutters and valve jets mounted high on the walls. It made Han think of

  a shower stall, or an abattoir--and he wished he hadn't thought of the

  second possibility.

  As the Yevethan viceroy slowly circled his prisoner, he took particular

  interest in the bruises and burns Han had acquired by resisting when

  the soldiers boarded Tampion. Nil Spaar leaned in close to study the

  marks but was careful not to touch Han, even with gloved hands.

  "You are the mate of Leia."

  "I guess that secret's out," said Han, deciding to try to take his

  captor's measure. "And you're Nil Spaar. I've heard a lot about you,

  all of it bad. You've moved right to the top of my least favorite

  people list. I had to drop Jabba the Hutt off to make room for you.

&nbs
p; It's only fair to tell you that my number one goal in life is to

  outlive everyone on the list. I was halfway there before you replaced

  Jabba."

  The Yevethan ruler did not seem to take any notice of Han's goading.

  "What sort of vermin are you?"

  "I think the word you're looking for is 'scoundrel,' as in 'Corellian

  scoundrel,'" Han said. "I've also answered to 'rascal,' 'pirate,'

  'smuggler,' 'wretched scum,' 'toad-licker,' and a few others. Not all

  of those are considered polite where I come from, though--so I don't

  always answer politely. Just so you'll know, 'vermin' probably counts

  as impolite."

  "You are stronger than she," Nil Spaar said, cocking his head. "Why do

  you follow her? Why do you not lead?"

  Han answered with a contemptuous gaze and a shake of his head. "I was

  gonna tell you that grabbing me was the biggest mistake you ever made,"

  he said.

  "Now I see it's the second biggest. You've misjudged Leia from the

  beginning. Day in and day out, she might just be the strongest person

  I know. And you're gonna find that out the hard way now."

  Saying nothing, Nil Spaar retreated to the far end of the chamber, as

  if to leave. Then he gestured to the guards and spoke a few words in

  an unfamiliar language.