by Timothy Zahn
“A few words at the most,” Tierce assured him. “And that assumes one or more of the nearby ships even had the right equipment, which is unlikely.”
Disra pondered. “Yes,” he conceded. “And even if they did, a few words aren’t going to grab anyone’s attention. No one who counts, anyway.”
“Especially considering how many other crises are about to come down on their heads,” Tierce agreed.
“Right,” Disra said. “What did you have Dorja do with the ship and crew?”
“He’s currently en route back here, doing a quick interrogation on the way. Most of the crew, I suspect, will have had no idea what Vermel’s mission was; those we can bring back into service with vague intimations that Vermel was up to some sort of treason. As for Vermel himself—” He shrugged. “I thought we’d lock him up somewhere quiet for the moment. We might find a use for him later.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Disra said. “Any word from Trazzen and the others?”
“We’ve received their last scheduled report,” Tierce said. “They’ll be out of contact from now on until summoned.”
“Um,” Disra grunted. Everything seemed to be going according to plan.
And yet, this whole thing with Vermel and his possibly leaked message bothered him somehow. Surely no one could have caught any of it; and even if they had, surely they would dismiss it out of hand as smugglers or a simple theft-and-defection attempt gone bad. “It occurs to me, Major,” he said slowly, “that perhaps we ought to push up our timetable a little. Just in case.”
There was a long moment of silence. “I suppose that would be possible,” Tierce said. “But I really don’t think it’s necessary. No one’s going to pay any attention to the incident over Morishim.”
Disra stared hard at him. “You’re certain of that?”
Tierce smiled thinly. “I guarantee it.”
The recording ran through to the end for the third time, and finally General Garm Bel Iblis shut it off. “About as clear as roiled mud,” he commented to Lando. “Still, I would have bet you couldn’t have gotten even this much through all that jamming. Very nicely done.”
“I just wish we’d gotten more,” Lando said. “Janson figured it was probably a theft-and-defection gone wrong.”
“Yes, it does look that way,” Bel Iblis said, fingering his mustache thoughtfully. “But somehow I don’t think it was.”
Lando eyed him. “Then what was it?”
“I don’t know yet,” Bel Iblis said. “But consider the facts. The Empire hasn’t got nearly enough Imperial Star Destroyers left to waste one on a simple chase mission. And they wanted him taken alive; and they wanted to make sure he didn’t talk to anyone.”
“And he knew you were here,” Lando pointed out. “You can almost hear the words ‘General Bel Iblis’ in there.”
“Yes,” Bel Iblis agreed. “Though keeping track of my whereabouts is no big deal anymore. We don’t keep things nearly as secret as we did even five years ago.”
He swiveled over his computer and began punching keys. “It seems to me you can also hear the name ‘Vermel’ mentioned. If I remember right, there was an Imperial officer of that name on Admiral Pellaeon’s staff.”
Lando looked out the viewport at the curve of the planet below, and at the distant flares of the X-wings still circling around in the distance. “Seems to me that would add weight to the defection theory,” he suggested. “They wouldn’t want to kill someone of that rank out of hand, and they certainly wouldn’t want us to know he’d tried it.”
“Perhaps.” Bel Iblis peered at the display. “Yes, there he is. Colonel Meizh Vermel.”
Lando spread his hands. “There it is, then.”
Bel Iblis fingered his mustache again. “No,” he said slowly. “My instincts still say no. Why use a Corellian Corvette if you were going to defect? Why not something faster or more heavily armed? Or requiring a smaller crew, unless all hundred-odd crewers were defecting together?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either.” Bel Iblis slid out the datacard of Lando’s recording. “But I think I’ll make a few copies of this and see if I can find out.”
Lando cocked an eyebrow. “In all your copious spare time?”
The general shrugged. “I’ve been needing a hobby anyway.”
CHAPTER
7
The Grand Convocation Chamber of the New Republic Senate had been completed only three months earlier, its construction stepped up out of necessity after Kueller’s bombs had weakened the structure of the old Senate Hall beyond repair. And while there were still bits of trim and scrollwork left to be finished, the overall effect was every bit as impressive as its designers had promised. The old arrangement—with the delegates’ seats arranged in concentric semicircles, descending inward toward a raised dais—had been replaced by a series of variably sized, variably shaped blocks of seats, connected to each other by short stairways or ramps that had been arranged at apparent random, yet which maintained a consistent grace and style. Separating the seat groups were clear glass panels, or carved lattices, or merely short railings and a meter or two of vertical height, as the designers’ fancy had taken them. Each block of seats had an unobstructed view of the central dais, as well as a display that could be adjusted to show either a closer view of the dais or any of the other blocks of seats in the chamber.
In many ways the place reminded Leia of the magnificent Corioline Marlee theater back on Alderaan, a renowned palace of the arts that had always been synonymous in her mind with courtesy, culture, and civilization. It had been her secret hope that the Grand Chamber’s similar design would help encourage those same qualities in the Senators who assembled there.
But for today, at least, that was clearly not going to be the case.
“Let me be certain I understand you, President Gavrisom,” a rough Opquis voice called over the chamber’s sound system. “You’re telling us that the Bothans were the key to the destruction of Caamas and the near genocide committed against the Caamasi people. Yet at the same time you tell us you will not seek justice for this heinous act?”
“That is not at all what I have told you, Senator,” President Ponc Gavrisom said mildly, twitching his tail once and resettling it against his hind legs. “Allow me to repeat. A small group—a small group—of as yet unidentified Bothans were involved in that tragedy. If and when we are able to learn their names, we will certainly dispense in full measure the justice I know we all seek. Until then, though, it simply cannot be done.”
“Why not?” an alien with shaggy blue-green hair and a long, thin face demanded. A Forshul, Leia tentatively identified her, representing the eighty-seven inhabited worlds of Yminis sector in the Outer Rim. “Councilor Fey’lya does not deny Bothans were involved. Very well, then: let them be duly punished for this monstrous blot on galactic civilization.”
Leia glanced across the dais at Borsk Fey’lya, seated at the far end of the curved row of High Councilors. The Bothan’s expression and fur were under rigid control, but her Jedi senses had no trouble picking up the turmoil of anxiety behind his face. He’d had, she knew, a long conversation with the heads of the Combined Clans back on Bothawui just prior to this meeting. From the hardness of his expression, she guessed the conversation hadn’t gone well.
“I understand your feelings, Senator,” Gavrisom said. “However, I must point out that the legal guidelines of the New Republic are not the same as the traditional codes of Forshuliri justice.” He unfolded his wings from across his long back and brought them in front of him. The prehensile feathertips touched one of the keys on the lectern, and a section of New Republic criminal law appeared on the display above his head. “Those guidelines do not allow us to penalize the entire Bothan people for the crimes of a few.”
“And why do we not know the identities of those supposed few?” the Ishori Senator called out. “I see Councilor Fey’lya seated to your right. What has he to say about all this?”
Gavrisom turned his head to look over his withers at Fey’lya. “Councilor Fey’lya, do you wish to respond?”
Visibly bracing himself, the Bothan rose to his feet. “I understand the anger this revelation has elicited from many of you,” he said. “I assure you that we of the Bothan clan leadership feel the same anger, and the same desire that the perpetrators of this terrible crime be brought to justice. And rest assured that if we knew exactly who those perpetrators were, we would long ago have dealt with them. The problem is that we do not.”
There was a short, warbling scream. Reflexively, Leia jumped, belatedly identified the blood-chilling sound as the Ayrou equivalent of a skeptical snort. “Do you expect us to believe—?”
“President Gavrisom, I would ask you to once again remind the Senator from Moddell sector to shut up that noise!” another Senator interrupted angrily. “The harmonics have already caused me to lose two eggs this session, and if I cannot bear my yearly hatchlings on schedule, I will lose both my status and any possibility of reappointment by my sector assembly.”
“Speaking for myself, that would be a relief,” someone else put in before Gavrisom could respond. “Some of us are exceptionally tired of your precious eggs being used as an excuse for everything you don’t like—”
Gavrisom’s wingtips touched a key, and the voice was cut off as the sound system shut down. For another minute angry voices continued to be heard, echoing indistinctly from various quarters of the chamber, before finally falling reluctantly silent as the participants realized that none of their verbal jabs was getting through to the designated recipients. Gavrisom waited another few seconds before turning the sound system back on. “The prologue to the New Republic charter,” he said quietly, “exhorts all member worlds to behave toward one another in an acceptable and civilized manner. Shall the members of this Senate be held to a lesser standard?”
“You speak of civilization, President Gavrisom,” a tall Bagmim said darkly. “How can we of the New Republic Senate consider ourselves civilized if we do not show our repugnance for the horrible crime committed against the Caamasi?”
Leia cleared her throat. “May I remind the Senate,” she said, “that whatever part any group of Bothans might have played, there is no indication any of them participated in the actual destruction of Caamas. That, it seems to me, should be the focal point of our outrage and justice.”
“Do you seek then to excuse the Bothans?” a Senator she didn’t recognize demanded.
“Besides which, the actual perpetrators were undoubtedly agents of then Senator Palpatine,” someone else added from the opposite side of the chamber. “All such agents have surely been destroyed during our onerously long war against the Empire.”
“Are you certain of that?” another voice chimed in. “We are still learning the full depth of Emperor Palpatine’s deceptions against the peoples of the galaxy. Who is to say his agents don’t yet walk among us?”
“Are you accusing one of us?”
“If you claim the title, what is that to me?” the other shot back. “There are still rumors of Imperial agents scattered among us—”
Again Gavrisom touched the cutoff switch, and again the debate was reduced to distant voices shouting uselessly at each other. Leia listened to the budding argument fade away, for the umpteenth time thanking the Force that she was at least temporarily no longer the one in charge of this madhouse.
The voices faded away into a tense silence. Gavrisom touched the key again. “I’m sure the Senator from Chorlian sector was speaking only figuratively,” he said with his usual unflappable poise. “At any rate, this debate has already passed the point of usefulness and will therefore be suspended for now. If the document which Councilor Organa Solo brought back can be reconstructed to the point where names can be discovered, we will reopen the discussion. Until then, there are many other matters which require our attention.”
He glanced at his display, then looked up to his right. “We will begin with the report of the Economics Committee. Senator Quedlifu?”
The Economics Committee report was longer than usual, with two bills being submitted to the full Senate for consideration. That in itself was fairly unusual: with each Senator limited to introducing one bill per year, and a straight up-down vote required to get that bill out of committee, most of the proposed legislation never found the support necessary to make it to the full Senate. Only a small fraction of those few, moreover, ever survived the Senate’s scrutiny to actually become law.
Which was precisely how the system was supposed to work. With nearly a thousand Senators already—and with each one representing fifty to two hundred entire worlds—there was no possible way Coruscant could truly look after the interests of all the beings making up the New Republic. This latest modification of the Senate had reduced its role to little more than providing for the common defense and mediating disputes between member sectors. The more commonplace day-to-day governing was handled at the sector, system, planetary, regional, district, and local levels.
A few of the Senators, remembering the glory days of the Old Republic, occasionally grumbled about the Senate being reduced to what they saw as little more than an elaborate debating society. For the majority, though, the more vivid memory was that of Coruscant’s domination during the dark days of the Empire. A relatively weak central government was exactly what they wanted.
As it turned out, the Economics Committee was the only one with any bills to introduce or, for that matter, anything really new to report. Gavrisom cycled through the rest of the committees with practiced ease and dispatch, bringing the meeting to a close less than two hours after it had begun.
And yet, even as Leia joined the flow of beings exiting from the chamber, she suspected that none of the Senators or High Councilors would be occupied with business as usual this afternoon. Caamas would be the thought on everyone’s mind. Caamas, and justice.
Or perhaps vengeance.
“Your Highness?” a tentative voice called through the rumble of conversation.
Leia paused and lifted a hand. “Over here, Threepio.”
“Ah,” the droid said, making his tentative way across the traffic flow toward her. “I trust the assembly went well?”
“As well as can be expected, under the circumstances,” Leia told him. “Any messages from the techs about the datacard?”
“I’m afraid not,” Threepio said, sounding regretful. “But I do have a message from Captain Solo. He has returned, and will be waiting for you.”
Leia felt her heartbeat pick up. “Did he say anything about his mission to Iphigin?”
“I’m afraid not,” Threepio apologized again. “Should I have asked him?”
“No, that’s all right,” Leia assured him.
“He did not seem inclined to be overly conversational,” the droid mused. “He may not have answered even if I had asked.”
Leia smiled. “Probably not,” she agreed, a hundred fond memories of her husband flashing through her mind. She’d been planning to head straight to her office to sift through some of the mountain of datawork waiting on her desk. Now, suddenly, she decided it could wait. Han would be waiting for her in their quarters—
“Councilor Organa Solo?” a voice said from her side.
Leia turned, a sinking feeling settling into her. The voice and mental profile …
And she was right. It was indeed Ghic Dx’ono, the Ishori Senator. “Yes, Senator Dx’ono?”
“I would speak with you, High Councilor,” the other said firmly. “In your office. Now.”
“Certainly,” Leia said, her feeling sinking a little further. The alien’s emotions indicated disquietude, but that was all she could read from it. “Come with me.”
Together they made their way across the flow of beings, Threepio struggling to keep up, and into the curved side corridor where the members of the High Council had their offices. Leia caught a glimpse of Fey’lya as he disappeared into his office; then they rounded the curve�
��
Leia stopped short, a soft gasp escaping her lips before she could stop it. Preoccupied with her thoughts, and with Dx’ono’s somewhat overpowering presence beside her, she hadn’t extended her senses ahead down the corridor. Three people were standing outside her office door: one of Dx’ono’s aides, and two slender beings completely shrouded in hooded cloaks.
“They wish to speak with you,” Dx’ono said gruffly. “Will you speak with them?”
Leia swallowed, her memories flashing back to her childhood on Alderaan and the time her adoptive father Bail Organa had permitted her to go with him on a private trip to the South Islands …
“Yes,” she told Dx’ono quietly. “I will be honored to speak with your Caamasi friends.”
The way Senate meetings usually went, Han had expected to be stuck hanging around Leia’s office for at least another hour before she returned. It was therefore to his mild surprise that he’d barely gotten comfortable in his wife’s inner office when a flicker of displaced air pressure announced that the door from the outer office had just opened.
He swiveled his feet off the corner of her desk and landed them quietly on the floor, getting up just as quietly from her chair and padding his way to the door that separated the sections of the office. In the old days, he would have tried to surprise her by jumping out and giving her a big hug and kiss. But her increasing Jedi skills had long since made trying to sneak up on her a pretty futile exercise.
Besides which, embarrassing her with some silly school-kid prank would make her madder at him than she probably already was over the Iphigin thing. Especially if she’d brought company with her.
She had. With his ear pressed against the door, he could hear at least two other voices besides Leia’s.
For a moment he stood there, waiting to see if she would either bring her visitors in or else invite him out to greet them. She certainly knew by now that he was in here. Unless she’d rather he keep out of sight completely …
And then, across the room at her desk, the intercom display abruptly came on.
