Remnant: Force Heretic I
Page 36
For those Moffs who disagreed, who thought that now was the perfect time to consolidate their strong-holds against both the Yuuzhan Vong and a Grand Admiral who would dare defy them, Pellaeon circulated a rumor that anyone not in attendance would forgo the right to navy defense. The Yuuzhan Vong was a problem the Empire had to confront as a whole, and the composition of that whole had to be determined as quickly as possible. No one was compelled to attend, but everyone knew the consequences if they didn’t.
That there would be retaliation, Jacen didn’t doubt. B’shith Vorrik had been humiliated in front of both his army and that of his enemy. Somehow, the Yuuzhan Vong commander would return. It was just a matter of how soon that would be, and how much of a force he would bring with him.
Jacen stood to one side with Luke, Mara, Saba, and Tekli, making their presence known but not contributing to the discussion. It was another calculated provocation engineered by Pellaeon. Luke had expressed reservations about flaunting the old enemy before so many Moffs, but through the Force Jacen could tell that the Jedi Master was secretly enjoying the situation.
When everyone was seated, Pellaeon rose from his chair and stood before those assembled.
“The reason I have brought you all here is quite simple,” he said, forgoing the formalities of introduction. “I wish to share with you a realization I have come to, and to tell you what I intend to do about it.”
Pellaeon walked around the table with hands clasped behind his back. It was a simple psychological ploy, intended to intimidate those seated by forcing them to either crane their heads around to see him or stare dumbly forward at nothing as he talked. It was a cheap trick, but Jacen understood that the Grand Admiral needed every advantage he could get.
Gilad Pellaeon had donned his full battle uniform, and his general appearance had been cleaned up prior to the meeting, but there was no hiding either his age or the fact that he had recently been on the verge of death. He would carry a slight limp for as long he lived.
“In the last forty-eight standard hours, the Imperial Navy has fended off the greatest threat it has ever faced.” He studied the Moffs before him with penetrating eyes. “You’ve seen the reports and studied the breakdowns, so I’m sure you can understand the significance of what happened at Bastion and, hopefully, will have some appreciation of the seriousness of the decisions we must now make.” He paused further for effect. “Until we rebuild Bastion, the Empire is temporarily without a capital; the Moff Council has lost several of its most important members and, with them, I suspect, its short-term cohesion. Many of our citizens have been enslaved by the Yuuzhan Vong, and our borders are no longer safe.
“But the threat we have repelled is not the Yuuzhan Vong. It is something far more insidious. Indeed, we didn’t know we were facing it until the very last, when it was almost too late to fend it off. That threat can be summed up in one word. It is a word that has more fear for me than extinction. It is irrelevance.”
Jacen caught a flicker of annoyance as it passed across the jowled face of Moff Flennic. For a moment he thought Flennic might interrupt, but the Moff remained silent, brooding.
Pellaeon had completed a circuit of the table and returned to where he started. He put his palms down on the table and leaned forward. “When we first heard about the Yuuzhan Vong,” he said, “we blithely observed their passage through the galaxy and assumed that when they didn’t attack us, they did so out of caution. We were too strong, too determined, too superior for them to risk a confrontation. We believed ourselves to be too formidable an opponent. But when we sent support to the Battle of Ithor, we saw just how strong the enemy’s fleets really were. Afraid that we would be unable to defend ourselves, we pulled in our heads and dug in, waiting for an attack that never came.”
He straightened now, his expression briefly betraying his weariness. “And it never came,” he said slowly, “because we simply didn’t matter to the Yuuzhan Vong. We weren’t considered a threat. We had demonstrated an unwillingness to become involved in someone else’s fight, and a propensity for sitting back and watching our neighbors being destroyed. Why should they attack us? We weren’t hurting them; if anything, we were making their job easier. In effect, we made ourselves irrelevant, and for that I feel the greatest shame of all.”
Pellaeon looked up and caught Jacen’s eyes. An understanding passed between the two men that sent a shiver down Jacen’s spine. Pellaeon was talking about war, but the same principle could be applied to all aspects of life. The greatest crime a being could commit, against itself and those around it, was to withdraw from the living. Jacen had seen this when his father had withdrawn from his mother after the death of Chewbacca; he had felt it in himself when he had retreated from battle to find an answer to his doubts; and he was seeing it now, on a much larger scale, in the actions of the Imperial Remnant. Life was involvement; being part of the Force meant participating in the evolution of the galaxy. It was not just sitting back and observing. The only question of importance that anyone truly intending to live needed to ask themselves was, how did one become a part of that process?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question still eluded him.
“Well,” Pellaeon went on, “we’ve been attacked now. No one could’ve missed that. But does that mean we’re relevant?” He shook his head. “No. It means that Supreme Overlord Shimrra took a moment to stamp out a potential threat lingering around his rear lines. A potential threat, mind you, not an actual threat. The force he sent wasn’t sufficient to disable us, even with surprise on its side, but it was nothing compared to the resources he committed to Coruscant. B’shith Vorrik, furthermore, is no Tsavong Lah or Nas Choka. Had we really mattered to the overall war, Shimrra would have wiped us out years ago, not tried now as an afterthought.
“But we refused to roll over and be destroyed, even when we were grievously injured. We insulted the enemy as he retreated, and we liberated some of those taken captive. We showed them that we are not easy prey, and that we will not be so easily dismissed.
“If Shimrra didn’t consider the Empire a threat before, he will now. How long he considers us a threat, however, is entirely up to us.”
“And why is that?” Moff Flennic asked, obviously unable to contain his disapproval of being lectured at any longer. Jacen could feel the resentment radiating from the man.
“Isn’t that obvious, Kurlen?” Ephin Sarreti said from across the table. The Moff, recently released from a medical barge evacuated from Bastion, sported one arm in a sling and a dour expression. “If we sit here expecting to defend our territories indefinitely, we’ll all be dead within months.”
Pellaeon nodded. “And giving Vorrik time to petition another strike force from Shimrra—fresher, larger, and certainly more eager for our blood—would be suicide. We remain a threat only so long as we remain alive.”
Flennic inclined his head slightly. “I can’t help but feel apprehensive about the alternative you’re about to propose.”
“It’s the only alternative that I can see,” Pellaeon said softly, regarding each of the Moffs around the table before continuing. “We must take the fight to the Yuuzhan Vong.”
A murmur of unrest immediately rippled around the room, but it was Moff Flennic again whose voice was heard. “You would have us leave our worlds behind?” he asked disbelievingly. “Undefended?”
“Not entirely,” the Grand Admiral said. “Every planet would retain a token defense force—at least enough to repel the sort of attack Yaga Minor suffered.”
“But not enough to repel a serious invasion,” came a woman’s voice from the far end of the table.
Jacen recognized the woman as Moff Crowal from Valc VII, a system on the very edge of the Unknown Regions.
“If the Yuuzhan Vong are kept busy elsewhere, there won’t be one,” Sarreti pointed out.
“Can we be absolutely certain of that, though?” Flennic countered hotly. He faced Pellaeon. “Admiral, you are gambling with our very lives here!”
“If, as you say, we can’t beat the Yuuzhan Vong here,” Moff Crowal said, “then how do you propose we beat them on their own territory?”
Pellaeon nodded. “A fair question,” he said. “And one that has occupied my mind these last couple of days.”
“Go on then,” Flennic said. “Give us your answer.”
“There is only one possible answer.” The ageing Grand Admiral took a moment to look around him—a staged moment of reflection, Jacen knew, but effective. The man was clearly a veteran of these types of meetings, and could employ all manner of body language to strengthen his argument. “In order to survive intact, the Empire needs to see itself objectively; it needs to cultivate a certain distance from its immediate past and see itself in the context of the wider galaxy and its history. We are not alone here, as much as we might sometimes like to pretend we are. We cannot avoid what is happening outside, as the Yuuzhan Vong have so convincingly demonstrated. For too long have we kept to ourselves; for too long have we ignored what is going on out there in the wider galaxy. We have remained content to direct our attention inward, at our own navels.
“I do not exclude myself from this criticism, either,” he went on. “There have been times I could have fought harder to do what my gut told me was right. That I didn’t will be my undying shame, because it was almost our undoing. But I will not let it happen again.”
“You will not?” Moff Flennic mocked. “Grand Admiral, I trust we are coming to some sort of point here. If you have gathered us together to dictate your terms, then please get on with it so that we can vote on your dismissal and put this behind us forever.”
Pellaeon smiled, and held the smile a moment longer than was comfortable. There was something in the silence around the table and the way the Moffs glanced at one another that told Jacen that Pellaeon had taken the gloves off. Now was the moment to deliver the message he’d gathered them all to hear. Mara must have felt it too, for he heard her take in a deep breath in anticipation and hold it.
“As Grand Admiral of the Imperial Navy,” Pellaeon said, “I am formally advising the Moff Council that at our earliest possible convenience we must strike a formal agreement with the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances to share military resources in order to repel the threat of the Yuuzhan Vong from the galaxy.” He had to raise his voice to be heard above the hubbub that immediately filled the room. “Furthermore, I advise that this agreement be ongoing after the immediate threat has passed. The only way to survive in the future is to turn our back on the past. As much as some of you may dislike to hear it, it is time for us to make peace with one another.”
Flennic was the first to his feet. “Join the Galactic Alliance? Have you gone mad? You can’t believe that any of us would ever agree to this!”
“I don’t need your agreement, Kurlen.” Pellaeon spoke softly, but his voice carried over the howls of dissent. “When I say that I am advising the council, I am only following a formality. This is the way it will be, because this is the way it has to be. I am simply saving you the need to think it through for yourselves.”
“This is treason!” another Moff gasped.
“It’s common sense,” Ephin Sarreti countered.
The Grand Admiral nodded his thanks to Sarreti for the support the Moff was giving him. “My loyalty to the Empire is as strong as it has ever been,” he said. “I will do what I must to ensure its survival.”
“By forcing us to submit to them?” A finger stabbed at where the robed Jedi stood off to one side. “We have spent our lives fighting this scum, and now you wish us to—”
“Be mindful of your words, Moff Freyborn,” Pellaeon interjected firmly. “These ‘scum,’ as you call them, saved my life back at Bastion—as well as saving the Empire from an early grave.”
“A grave they dug for us in the first place,” Flennic snarled. “At our peak we would never have fallen to the Yuuzhan Vong as they have. We would have sent them back from whence they came—impaled upon their own amphistaffs!”
“Do you really believe that, Kurlen? We weren’t able to resist a handful of Rebels, so how would we have resisted the massed might of the Yuuzhan Vong?” Pellaeon’s stare was cold and hard. Clearly visible behind the Grand Admiral’s bluff, mustachioed appearance was the man who had faced down far worse threats than a hostile Moff Council. “Your reasoning is both faulty and circular—and it is precisely the kind of reasoning that has brought us to these straits. The Empire is foundering not from forces exterior to it, but as a result of its own internal weaknesses. Our current circumstances are our own fault; it is foolish to lay blame elsewhere for our own failings.”
“The Empire will never surrender to the Galactic Alliance, Admiral,” Flennic said firmly. “And I cannot believe you would ever consider this after all your years resisting their insidious advance!”
Instead of responding angrily, Pellaeon just chuckled. “Like it or not, they have ruled the galaxy for almost as many decades as we did—and with less bloodshed and military expenditure, I might add. Right now, they are the one thing that stands between us and enslavement and death at the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong, and it is time we acknowledged that. And we need to do it now before we bury ourselves beneath old grudges and an inability to accept reality.”
“I refuse to accept defeat,” Flennic said, still on his feet and regarding Pellaeon with undisguised contempt. “And I don’t regard that inability as a disability, either. The Empire is strong; we proved that—you proved that—by repelling the invasion. Why, on a day when we should be celebrating our victory, are we contemplating the end of the Empire?”
“First,” Pellaeon said, “allying ourselves with the Galactic Alliance isn’t the same thing as dissolving the Empire. That should be obvious even to a child, Kurlen. They’re not asking us to surrender our sovereignty; nor will we. We will simply combine forces to our mutual benefit. Second, as I said earlier, the Empire exists today only because of luck: luck that the Yuuzhan Vong didn’t attack sooner, and luck that the emissaries from the Galactic Alliance came along when they did to show us how to fight effectively. Third, if we don’t fight back now, the Yuuzhan Vong will return and strike us down without any mercy whatsoever. If we don’t drive them back and join with our neighbors to keep them back, then no one will ever be safe again. And this Empire we hold so precious will completely cease to be. If you can’t accept that argument, Kurlen, then you’ll have to learn to accept your irrelevance to the council instead.”
Flennic’s eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening me?”
Pellaeon’s response was almost shocking in its bluntness. “Yes, Kurlen, I am,” he said. Then, eyeing each of the Moffs present, he added, “The council will unanimously accept my proposal, or I will take the entire fleet with me when I leave.”
The shock of his pronouncement provoked gasps of astonishment and dismay among those who had, perhaps, thought that Pellaeon could be talked around, or at least placated with a slightly softer alternative. No one had seriously considered that their Grand Admiral might gamble the Empire itself over something so outrageous as allying themselves with their old enemies.
Jacen felt a spike of animosity from Moff Flennic in the Force at the same time he saw the blaster come out of the fat man’s robes. In an instant, everyone’s attention in the room had gone from Pellaeon to the weapon aimed at him.
“This is treason of the worst kind, Admiral,” Flennic said steadily.
Jacen was about to use the Force to whisk the blaster from Flennic’s hand, when he felt Luke’s hand touch his arm.
Pellaeon faced the blaster as calmly as he had faced Flennic’s criticism. A dozen stormtroopers stationed at the exits rushed forward with their blasters raised to shoot Flennic down, but Pellaeon waved them back.
; “How strong are your convictions, Kurlen?” he asked. “Are you prepared to die for them?”
“You can’t threaten us, Admiral!” The Moff’s voice was even and calm, but Jacen noted that the blaster in his hand had begun to waver. “We are the Council of Moffs; we appointed you. We can always appoint another Grand Admiral to take your place—one who won’t lead us down such a treacherous path!”
“Another warlord choking on remembered glories, you mean? There aren’t many left, Kurlen. Our numbers have dwindled in futile attempts to reclaim something that was taken from us long ago. The galaxy isn’t ours by right; we have lost it. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can begin to understand what role exists for us now. And if that new role is to be part of the Galactic Alliance, then so be it. It has to be better than extinction. I for one am sick of fighting a war we can never win—and against the wrong enemy, what’s more.”
For the first time, Pellaeon’s reserve slipped. Jacen saw real passion warring below the surface, like the molten core spinning under the crust of a civilized planet. And it wasn’t lost on Flennic, either.
“This is madness,” the Moff said, appealing now to the rest of the council. “Are you all just going to stand by and let him destroy everything we’ve managed to salvage?”
“It’s better than being dead, Kurlen,” Sarreti said.
“Or enslaved,” Moff Crowal added.
Flennic winced as though he’d been mortally wounded. “You, Crowal?” he said. “You believe this nonsense?”
“It’s not nonsense, Kurlen,” she said. “I argued against joining the Galactic Alliance when the enemy wasn’t on our doorstep, thinking that if we didn’t provoke the Yuuzhan Vong, they would leave us alone. But that proved to be a mistake.”
“No.” Flennic’s gaze swept the faces before him, assessing the expressions and weighing up what support remained with him. Pellaeon watched patiently as he came to the only possible conclusion. “No …”