Healing.
Gotab could heal.
She saw it now. He had that same Force impression of quiet weariness, of being a buffer against adversity, that she’d encountered in other healers.
That just intrigued her more, but she wasn’t here to be fascinated. She was here to improve her chances of arresting her brother and stopping his self-destructive, galaxy-destroying descent into total darkness.
She stuck her fork in the last slice of nerf on the serving plate, something she would never do at home.
Be a different Jaina.
She could.
IMPERIAL DESTROYER BLOODFIN, IMPERIAL DOCKYARD, RAVELIN
“So, Admiral,” said the executive officer, “you approve?”
Pellaeon surveyed the new Destroyer’s bridge, a tableau of definitive standards frozen in a moment of paint-scented perfection.
“She’s splendid,” he said. “I still have misgivings about using the best tableware when we have such rough company for dinner, so to speak, but she can’t remain a decoration.”
He wandered into the holochart. The projection was big enough to stand within. He had his doubts about that refinement, too, because he didn’t feel it gave him the best theater overview to fight the ship, but he could always use one of the bridge repeaters. That was more his scale.
“Let’s try the comm system, shall we? Get me Admiral Niathal.”
“Very good, sir.”
Cha Niathal should have had contacted him by now if only to vent her spleen. His sources—old friends and comrades simply staying in touch, never spies—said that there was now a bigger war going on between Niathal and Solo than there was on the front line. She’d be looking for an ally.
Well, there was only room for one backside on that big chair. What did they expect from power sharing?
If Niathal had any sense … she’d be looking for a triumvirate. Pellaeon had sense, and he wasn’t sure he’d want to make up the numbers.
“Gil,” said Niathal’s voice.
He turned and smiled at the holoscreen. She looked tired. Mon Cals’ eyes were indicators of their fatigue; hers were dull and had lost their shine. “How are you, Cha? Has the boy left you in charge?”
“We all miss your humor greatly. So this is Bloodfin.”
“Indeed. Turbulent-class. Smaller and more agile. I thought I’d give you the holographic tour.”
“Actually, I’m glad you made contact. Much as I’d love to scrutinize Bloodfin, could we discuss a confidential personnel matter?”
Pellaeon gestured to the XO to indicate he was moving to his day cabin to continue the conversation. Hatch closed behind him, he diverted the link.
“Go ahead, Cha.”
“By all means say I told you so.”
“Ah, Jacen. Very well, I did mention it, but let’s move on. In a few days, we’ll be committing ships and troops to Fondor. If there’s anything you want to tell me, now would be a good time.”
“He’s prepping to mine Fondor’s approaches and cut off the orbitals in a few hours, and he’s talking about a first-assault phase within a week. Has he discussed his detailed plan with you?”
“He tells me he’s getting under way at twenty-three fifty-nine Coruscant time, which is … let’s see … three standard hours’ time. Isolate the planet, secure the shipyards, then move on to the planet itself.”
“Define move on.”
“He expects a surrender, he says.”
“Do you?”
“No, I think he’ll have to occupy it, and first he has to take the capital.”
“I estimate he has enough troops to take the orbitals, and that’s all. So level with me, Gil, because I don’t trust Jacen to value my crews’ lives now—has he offered the Imperials Fondor? Are you planning to occupy it?”
Pellaeon didn’t have a yes or no answer to that. An I-thought-about-it-and-we-might-have-to wouldn’t help.
“He has made no such offer,” he said, “nor hinted. He may want us to interpret his silence on the matter as a hint that it might be on the table, to ensure our attendance, but unless he has some elaborate plan for troop deployment that he hasn’t shared with me, then once his troops are committed to the shipyards, the only forces left to land on Fondor are mine. In which case … he’s left the doors open for us to rob him.”
“You’re very honest.”
“I’m too old to want glory. At my age, you worry more about what might be said about you after you’re dead. I’d like to be recalled as an admiral who left the galaxy a little tidier and quieter than he found it.”
“Meaning?”
“Is he going to foul up?”
Niathal looked down at the floor for a moment. “You know he’s a Sith?”
“Force-users do complicate things for us ordinary mortals.”
“I think he might overplay his hand this time. But I might also not be aware of some second plan he’s going to put into operation and leave us all standing.”
“You want me to do something.”
“I’m just sharing my fears that this may well be very costly in terms of lives, and that Jacen can be extravagant. I have elements of the Third Fleet standing by for Fondor. I’m thinking more of enabling withdrawal than pouring personnel into a battle.”
“Ah.” Pellaeon sat back and felt a little cheated. “You want me to stay at home.”
“No, I was genuinely expressing concern and seeking information. Would you prefer not to join him? I know some of the Moffs are more expansionist than you.”
“If I were to say that I wouldn’t shed tears if Jacen were to crash and burn, in any sense, and that I would accept responsibility for cleaning up the mess he’s left, would that answer your questions?”
“So you’ll wait for his next big mistake and go in for the kill.”
“If I felt it stabilized the galaxy.” Pellaeon didn’t think it was the time to explain that he doubted the GA’s ability to hold down the job with or without Jacen, given that it had enabled Jacen to thrive; Niathal probably knew that anyway. “But one thing I’ll promise you is that I have a line I will not cross, and while the Moffs and I might be pursuing the same course at this moment, we don’t all share one ideology.”
“Stiff upper lip and do the decent thing …”
“Yes. If you want to put it that way.”
“I’ll join you in that.”
Pellaeon now knew how she felt but not what she might do. “Let’s hope for a better outcome.”
“Indeed. I’ll be in touch.”
Pellaeon closed the link and sat chewing over Niathal’s words for a while, wondering how much worse Jacen might become if Niathal were taken out of the picture for any reason. She seemed still to be a brake on Jacen—no small measure of her own strength—and Pellaeon could do business with her.
The Imperial interest is served by supporting her. Keeping moderates in power is a lot cheaper all round than battling down despots every few years.
If push came to shove at Fondor, and Niathal was salvageable, then Jacen might find himself alone.
How much support did Solo have from his officers and in the ranks after the Tebut incident? That would be the critical factor. Sith, Jedi, or god, he was still one man.
Pellaeon got up and walked the passages and flats of Bloodfin, noting where fitters were still sealing covers on conduits and engineering droids were busy in shafts.
“Sir? Sir!” The Junior Officer of the Deck—Lieutenant Lamburt on the current watch—strode as fast as he could without committing the sin of actually breaking into a run. “Sir, security has a visitor at the brow asking for you, but she’s reluctant to present ID.”
“Any cause for concern? Armed? Jealous? Blond or redhead?”
The officers laughed politely, seeming to think Pellaeon was joking about his eye for an attractive female, undimmed even now. He couldn’t have known that the blonde—Tahiri—was not someone he wanted on board, however charming, because she was Jacen Solo’s creature, and
almost certainly not as sweet as she looked, or that the redhead was probably someone he was very anxious to see indeed.
The OOD let out another nervous laugh. “Good call, sir. The lady has red hair.”
Pellaeon tugged his cuffs to smooth his sleeves and walked aft toward the brow, a renewed man. “Then I shall welcome her on board personally. Have the steward droid serve tisane in my day cabin—perhaps some confits and a decanter of syrspirit, too.”
“Very good, sir.”
There was always a heady sense of optimism in a new ship, and Pellaeon could feel it. Junior ratings pressed flat against bulkheads to let him pass, even though there was quite enough room to walk by. He liked smaller ships. There was something tight and purposeful about them, the difference between a vessel with a starship’s lines and what might as well have been an office tower. The ship’s complement was small enough to get to know all hands properly. This was a ship he wanted to fight, a real warship, just for the exhilaration of being closer to the vibration, noise, and sheer mechanical life of a great fighting beast.
Pellaeon paused a moment before turning into the passage to face the hatch, and ran his forefinger over his mustache. It had been a long time. He took a breath and walked out to the brow. By now, a small knot of engineering ratings had gathered and were taking an excessive time to check hatch status lights while they stared at a woman who had been walking the decks before any of them were born.
“You haven’t changed one bit,” Pellaeon said, gesturing her on board with a sweep of his arm. “It’s good to see you again, Admiral Daala.”
ANAKIN SOLO, FONDORIAN SPACE, TAPANI SECTOR: 0500 GST
When the Star Destroyer jumped out of the comm silence of hyperspace, Caedus knew that something had not gone precisely to plan.
Battles never do. So we adapt the plan.
The comm boards and screens on the bridge burst into new life with restored connections; officers and senior rates caught up with signals and sitreps delayed by five hours. Caedus felt the mood change on the bridge in the ten paces it took him to reach the status screens, and it wasn’t generated by fear of him. The crew’s attention and growing dismay was fixed on the updating status reports.
They hunched over scanners and monitor. Caedus walked to the viewport and looked into the starfield, seeking out the disk of Fondor in the foreground. At this distance, it looked as if nothing was happening.
“Sir, we can’t contact the minelayers.”
Caedus glanced over the shoulder of the nearest sensor operator to check the holochart image built up from the real-time scan. There was no sign of the five minelayers; they were supposed to disgorge their clouds of Vigilante mines and pull back to beyond Fondorian space to the RV coordinates. The Anakin Solo should have dropped out of hyperspace right on top of them.
Tahiri hovered at his elbow. He reached into the Force and felt the usual background disturbances of wars: there was fear, anger, danger, destruction, faint echoes of explosions, the same mix of collective emotions and aftermaths that he could sense any day, any hour, if he stopped to think about it.
A Force-user’s ability to sense danger and concealed weapons was a wonderful asset in a Coruscant tapcaf or a strange city, but it was next to useless on a battlefield. Everything was danger and instruments of death; Caedus was a few hundred thousand kilometers off a planet that built warships and was on a high state of alert.
“Sir, Fleet Ops says they had last contact with the minelayers before the jump to hyperspace.” The lieutenant at the electronic warfare station didn’t dare blink as he met Caedus’s eyes. He radiated anxiety, and this time it was personal. “Then nothing, not even an emergency beacon. If they’d returned to Coruscant, they’d be back in port by now.”
The stealth minelayers were small vessels with disproportionately powerful drives to enable them to punch in and out of hyperspace close to their target zones; the aim was to spend as little time as possible in realspace to avoid detection, drop the surprise on the enemy’s doorstep, and jump back into hyperspace. With self-deploying networked mines that needed no conventional laying, it should have been a hit-and-run.
“Let me talk to them.” Caedus, still only mildly concerned, took over the comlink to Ops and called up the data flooding in from them with a movement of his forefinger. It disgorged a shimmering list of blue text with times and coordinates of passive position checks of the whole task force, including the outbound minelayers. “Ops, what happened?”
“Colonel Solo, we should have had confirmation of the minelayers’ position and intended movement by now if they completed their mission. We wouldn’t have pinged them at the Fondor end as long as they were on stealth mode, obviously.” There was a brief pause. While the ops room commander seemed to be taking a deep breath, Caedus felt a welling of dread around him as if the crew had seen something he hadn’t. “I know this might sound obvious, sir, and I apologize for asking, but can you detect any mines in position?”
Caedus switched back mentally to the ordinary world of the measurable and the detectable. Nobody on the bridge said a word. Yes, they had seen something tangible.
Your fault, Lumiya. You nagged me to stop relying on my mundane senses. I used to check scanners first and the Force second. What happened to my intellect?
“Sir, there’s no signal from the mine net for us to activate it, so they never left the hold, and this is the medium-range scan of Fondorian space out to Nallastia.” The lieutenant switched display modes so Caedus could see it not in columns of numbers, but in color-enhanced density and temperature mapping.
Fondor appeared as a patchy disk of temperature graduation with the orbitals passing across its face picked out as more regularly patterned bars—the side-on view of flattened arrowhead-shaped shipyards. But beyond the limb of the planet, the enhanced image showed distinct patches like miniature nebulae. When the lieutenant zoomed in to show Caedus a finer resolution, the patches resolved into concentric rings showing particle density and tiny temperature variations in space.
“What am I looking at?” Caedus asked, knowing perfectly well but needing to hear it because he wanted to be wrong for once. The rest of the bridge seemed to recede from his field of view; the scanners and sensors in front of him were all he could see. He was angry, getting angrier, but it was silent and smoldering.
“The residual traces of an explosion, sir. The spectrometer analysis of the particle cloud shows it matches the material used for the Nonvideor-class minelayers.” The man swallowed. He was new: Tebut’s replacement. “The database, sir. We have a materials database to aid rescue and recovery missions, so we can tell which ships have been—”
All Caedus could hear was the faint machine chatter of the bridge instruments, and the quiet throb of drives and generators that was as reassuring as a heartbeat to the crew.
He felt they were expecting an explosion from him, too. But that would have been weakness. He felt that they were as shocked and angry as he was.
“How many are there … Loccin?” he asked, reading the man’s name tab. “I see three.”
“I’d have to get us line-of-sight with the other side of Fondor to be sure, but there may well be two more debris clouds out of vision. Just so you know I’m treble-checking … three of the jump exit coordinates match the three areas of debris.”
“Bridge to Flight Commander,” Caedus said. “Flight, get an X-wing out Core side of the planet and confirm debris fields and coordinates, please.”
The response filled the silent bridge over the shipwide comm, even though the flight commander was a soft-spoken woman. “Very good, sir.”
“Thank you, Flight. Now, someone tell me what’s happening on Fondor. What are they saying? Any HNE news feeds? Diplomatic protests?”
“Nothing from the Chief of State’s office, sir—”
“Yes, get me Niathal. She’s been sitting around with full comms for at least five hours, so she should be updating us, should she not?”
The bridge sta
rted coming back to life. The buzz of normal working conversation rose from whispers to normal volume.
“Sir, absolutely no mention of any incidents on HNE.”
“GA External Relations says no diplomatic contact, official or unofficial, sir.”
“GAG monitoring says their agents are reporting a continued high state of alert on Fondor, and a lot of military traffic between the surface and orbitals, but that’s been steady for several months.”
They’d been waiting for the GA to kick them back into line; it was only a matter of when.
Tahiri, who’d been watching Caedus with the expression of someone waiting for a live detonator to blow, edged up to him. “The minelayers were intercepted as soon as they dropped, then. They didn’t even get a chance to disperse.”
“Correct, Lieutenant Veila, subject to the findings on the two ships unaccounted for.”
“A hundred crew, yes? Complement of twenty per ship?”
“Yes.” The size and spread profile of the debris particles indicated massive explosions, as Caedus would have expected with mine-laden ships taking direct hits. The end was at least mercifully instant. I still care about my people. I’m not a monster. “Betrayed.”
“Fondor knew we were coming.”
“Lieutenant, Fondor knew we were coming for weeks, but they knew where and when we were arriving.” Caedus walked the width of the bridge and let his gaze fall on crew at random. All handpicked, screened for loyalty and the right attitude; and little opportunity to spy for Fondor this time. He felt no treachery, he really didn’t. If the leak wasn’t in this ship, the specific location could only have come from Fleet HQ, Comms, or someone directly in touch with the minelayers’ crews after they received their orders, and there had been very little time for that information to percolate through the system. It wasn’t enough for someone to tip Fondor off that minelayers were coming. They’d had completely accurate coordinates that enabled them to destroy all the minelayers the instant they emerged into realspace. Fondorian patrols, even if they got very lucky, wouldn’t have been waiting close to the precise points.