The Crystal Star

by Vonda McIntyre

  Ackbar went on, “The curvature of a planetary body limits the effectiveness of fixed emplacements with line-of-sight weapons. Destruction of only a few such emplacements creates a breach in the planetary defenses, and a corridor from space to the surface. You see here that the Fleet is close to opening such a corridor. The threat at this point would be from atmospheric fighters or ground-to-air missiles launched from over the horizon. But Bessimir has no such defenses. When the breach is fully opened, the invasion will begin.”

  “Admiral Ackbar—a question,” Senator Tolik Yar called out. “How realistic a test is this for the Fleet? Is this anything more than a scripted performance?”

  “It is as realistic as possible,” said Ackbar. “This is an operational readiness exercise, not a simulation. It is true that the Fleet is opposed only by battle drones and computer sims. But I can assure you that the defense team takes pride and pleasure in constructing a difficult problem for the Fleet tacticians.”

  “Admiral Ackbar,” said Senator Cion Marook, rising from his seat and allowing the great, heavily veined air sacs on his back to fully inflate. “This has been a most impressive demonstration so far. But on behalf of my colleagues, and those we represent, I must wonder why command of the new task force was given to such a newcomer.”

  “Senator, General Etahn A’baht is hardly a hatchling—he is easily twice my age, and I suspect he is senior to you as well.”

  Marook bristled. “I did not say he was young, Senator, I said he was a newcomer. The commanders of the other fleets are all veterans of the Rebellion—leaders who, like yourself, earned honor in the great battles at Yavin, Hoth, and Endor.”

  Ackbar acknowledged the compliment with a nod.

  “But this Dornean has worn our uniform for less than two standard years. The Fifth Fleet was authorized in no small part on your personal testimony and assurances, and built at great expense to the New Republic. I would be much happier if it were you on the bridge of the Intrepid and General A’baht were here waving a pointer in front of us.”

  “But you ought not be, Senator,” Ackbar said sharply. “Though it was not part of the Rebel Alliance, Dornea has its own heroes from the fight against the Empire. General A’baht has a long and exemplary record as a fleet commander with the Dornean Navy. We are fortunate to be able to call upon his services.”

  “The entire Dornean Navy numbers barely eighty vessels,” Senator Marook said with a grand gesture of contempt.

  Standing by the back wall of the conference room, Princess Leia rolled her eyes and shook her head. It was wholly predictable that the complainant was Marook. Hrasskis society was built around a strict notion of succession by seniority, and the highest social value was waiting one’s turn. After five years in the Senate, he still had not embraced the notion of basing appointments on merit.

  “And yet, the Dornean Navy successfully defended Dornea’s independence throughout the reign of Palpatine, against Imperial forces several times as large,” said Princess Leia, intervening in the hope of cutting the argument short. “Come now, Senator Marook—surely this is an inappropriate time to argue over command assignments. Let’s move on.”

  Admiral Ackbar held up his broad hand. “Princess Leia, if you please—there is no better time to put this to rest. I have heard rumors of discontent in the Council for weeks, but this is the first time anyone has voiced such sentiments in my hearing. I would like the chance to explain to Senator Marook exactly why he is so terribly wrong.”

  Even offered in his measured tones, such a direct rebuke was out of character for Admiral Ackbar, and told Leia how angry her Calamari friend was. “Very well, Admiral,” she said, nodding and settling into a seat to listen.

  Given the floor, Ackbar proceeded to ignore Senator Marook completely, addressing himself to the rest of the gathering. “You must understand that the problems of invading a planetary body from space, or defending one against an invasion, are quite different from the problems of destroying a planet, or blockading one, or laying siege to one.”

  Ackbar moved out from behind the podium. “And it is a set of problems with which we have had very little experience. The veterans of the Alliance, whom Senator Marook so kindly praised, know all the secrets of fighting as an insurgent force—the roles of stealth, of mobility, of hit-and-run tactics, of disrupting the enemy’s lines of supply and communication.

  “But a commando force cannot defend a homeworld, a system, a sector. A commando force cannot tie up its assets waiting to be attacked. A commando force cannot carry out an invasion. You should remind yourself that at no time in its history did the Alliance enjoy the resources to fight a conventional war. And the one time we were forced by circumstance to do so, at Hoth, we suffered a terrible defeat.

  “That is why Etahn A’baht was selected to command the Fifth Fleet. He brings to that bridge all the hard-won expertise of the Dornea, an expertise which I cannot match. And it is his tactical plan which we are testing at Bessimir,” Ackbar said, pointing at the screens behind him.

  “Unlike my colleague from the Hrasskis, I do not question the qualifications of General A’baht. I am more concerned about the sharp end of the knife than I am with who wields it,” said Senator Tig Peramis, rising from his seat near the door. “Admiral Ackbar, I have questions concerning the conditions of the test.”

  Leia’s attention immediately perked up. Senator Peramis was the newest member of the Council on the Common Defense, representing the worlds of the Seventh Security Zone, including his own, Walalla. So far he had been a quiet member, diligently studying the Council records that his new level of clearance opened to his eyes, asking many thoughtful questions, and expressing few opinions.

  “Proceed,” said Admiral Ackbar, making a sweeping gesture.

  “You chose to send the Fifth Fleet against a target which lacks a planetary shield. Why is that?”

  “Senator, it is not possible to assault a planet which enjoys the protection of a planetary shield until that shield has been disabled. We would learn nothing about our new tactics from such an exercise. And there are far more worlds like Bessimir than there are worlds with the wealth and technology to sustain a planetwide shield.”

  “But, Admiral, did you not warn the Council that it was exactly those well-armed worlds which the New Republic lacked the capacity to confront? And did you not promise the Council that if we built the Fifth Fleet, even the strongest of the old Imperial worlds would not be able to threaten us with impunity?”

  Ackbar nodded gravely. “I believe that we are keeping that promise, Senator Peramis. The defense of Bessimir was designed in accord with our existing threat profiles. Operation Hammerblow represents a likely scenario for the use of the Fifth Fleet.”

  “What, to overwhelm an underdefended world?”

  “Senator, I did not say—”

  “This is exactly the point that concerns me. An army fights as it trains,” said Senator Peramis. “Did you build the Fifth Fleet to protect us against a strategic threat, or to strengthen Coruscant? Does the danger you saw lie outside our borders, or within them?” He turned and pointed an accusing finger in Leia’s direction. “Exactly who are you preparing to invade?”

  Ackbar blinked, rendered wordless by surprise. The other officers in the room scowled and bristled. The other members of the Council were taken aback—by Peramis’s intimations themselves, or, like Senator Marook, by his temerity in speaking out of turn.

  “I can only think that if you had been here when the votes were taken, Senator Peramis, you would not ask such questions,” Leia said sharply, moving to the front of the room with a purposeful stride and a swirl of robes. “You unfairly malign Admiral Ackbar’s honor.”

  “I do not malign him in the slightest. I am sure Admiral Ackbar is faithful in his duties and loyal to his superiors,” Peramis said, looking purposefully at Leia.

  “How dare you!” bellowed Senator Tolik Yar as he leaped to his feet. “If you do not withdraw your words, I will knock you
down myself.”

  Leia sent a small, tight smile in the direction of her champion but waved off his assistance. “Senator Peramis, the Fifth Fleet was built to protect the New Republic, and for no other reason. We have no territorial aspirations, no hunger for conquest. How could we, with ten new applications for membership arriving every day? On the honor of the House of Organa, I give my word—the Fifth Fleet will never be used to invade a member world, or to coerce its will, or subdue its legitimate ambitions.”

  Even before he spoke, it was clear that Peramis was unimpressed. “What weight shall I give a vow made on the honor of an extinct family—a family you have no blood claim with?”

  Tolik Yar’s face flushed, and his hand moved toward the ceremonial dagger he wore on his breastplate. But the hand of the officer standing beside him stayed the impulse. “Wait,” General Antilles said softly. “Give him a little more rope.”

  Senator Peramis swept his gaze across the room and found that every face was turned toward him. “I am sorry to spoil the festive moment, and waste the expensive pyrotechnics thoughtfully arranged for us by Admiral Ackbar and General A’baht. I am sorry to raise Senator Yar’s blood pressure, and to offend Senator Marook’s well-honed sense of propriety. But I cannot be silent.

  “What I’ve learned in the months since I took my Council oath, what I’ve heard and seen today, alarms me profoundly. If I could, I would speak of this in the well of the Senate, before the eyes of the entire Republic. You have not bought security—you have built the machinery of oppression, and are about to hand it over to the progeny of the most brutal oppressor in history’s memory.

  “I am deeply, unalterably opposed to arming the New Republic against its own members—”

  “You are mistaken—” Admiral Ackbar began.

  “That is what you’ve done!” Senator Peramis said angrily. “The Fifth Fleet is a weapon of conquest and tyranny, nothing less and nothing more. And once a weapon is forged, it tantalizes, and tempts, and transfixes, until someone finds a reason to use it. You’ve given the son of Darth Vader a glittering temptation to follow his father’s path. You’ve given the daughter of Darth Vader a gift-wrapped invitation to secure her power by force of arms.

  “And yet you sit here smiling and nodding and swallowing the fiction that all of it is for your protection. I am ashamed for you—ashamed.” Senator Peramis shook his head vigorously, as though to clear it of unwelcome thoughts, then stalked out of the conference room.

  Leia quickly turned her head away, struggling to control her expression, and to conceal the struggle. The stunned silence was broken by embarrassed coughing and the squirming, shuffling sounds of officers and Council members shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

  “Chairman! Chairman Behn-kihl-nahm!” Senator Tolik Yar exclaimed, finding his voice at last. “I want him reprimanded! I want him brought before the Review! This is intolerable. The Seventh must send someone else to represent it. Intolerable, do you hear?”

  “We all hear, Senator Yar,” Behn-kihl-nahm said in his most silken, soothing voice as he moved toward Leia. “President Organa, allow me to apologize for Senator Peramis’s regrettable lapse—”

  Tolik Yar snorted. “Why not apologize for the Emperor’s regrettable lapses as well? It would mean about as much.”

  Behn-kihl-nahm ignored the comment. “You may remember, Princess Leia, that the hand of the Empire fell heavily on Walalla. Tig Peramis remembers all too well. He was only a boy, watching his world conquered, his people’s spirit destroyed. The memories fill him with a passion which inspires his diligence but betrays his good sense. I will speak with him. I am sure he already regrets his intemperate words.”

  Behn-kihl-nahm’s exit was the cue for the room to empty. The others nearly fell over each other in their eagerness to excuse themselves, the ritual etiquette of salutes, congratulations, and good wishes so rushed that it took on the flavor of farce. Almost before she knew it, Leia was alone with Admiral Ackbar.

  As she lifted a weary face to Ackbar’s sympathetic gaze, she attempted a wry smile. “I thought that went well—didn’t you?”

  Just then, an image of General A’baht appeared on the primary display screen. “Etahn A’baht, reporting to Fleet Ops, Coruscant, with copy to president of the Senate,” the image said. “Live-fire exercise Hammerblow satisfactorily concluded. Detailed report on casualties, deficiencies, and the performance of individual commands to follow. Recommend that the Fifth Defense Task Force be considered operational this date.” Then the display went dark.

  Ackbar nodded, and clasped Leia’s shoulder with one large hand in a friendly and comforting gesture. “Well enough, Madame President,” he said. “Better to face bitter words than to face more fighting and dying. I think we have all had enough of that for a lifetime.”

  She stared out the doorway through which Peramis had exited. “How could he be so foolish?” she asked plaintively. “After Palpatine, Hethrir, Durga, Daala, Thrawn—one after another, with hardly enough time in between to heal the wounds and patch the hulls—how could he think we love war so much?”

  “I have found that most foolishness begins with fear,” said Ackbar.

  “I’m not accustomed to being feared.” Leia shook her head. “Especially for no reason. It makes me angry.”

  Ackbar grunted sympathetically. “I intend to go to my quarters and bite the head off a frozen ormachek. I suggest you go home and find something ugly to smash.”

  Leia laughed tiredly and patted Ackbar’s hand. “I just may do that. You know, I think we still have that Calamari blessing pot you gave Han and me at our wedding—”

  THE OLD REPUBLIC

  (5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

  Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.

  But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.

  The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.

  Then, a thousand years before A New Hope and the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi defeated the Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, decimating the so-called Brotherhood of Darkness that was the heart of the Sith Empire—and most of its power.

  One Sith Lord survived—Darth Bane—and his vis
ion for the Sith differed from that of his predecessors. He instituted a new doctrine: No longer would the followers of the dark side build empires or amass great armies of Force-users. There would be only two Sith at a time: a Master and an apprentice. From that time on, the Sith remained in hiding, biding their time and plotting their revenge, while the rest of the galaxy enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace, so long and strong that the Republic eventually dismantled its standing armies.

  But while the Republic seemed strong, its institutions had begun to rot. Greedy corporations sought profits above all else and a corrupt Senate did nothing to stop them, until the corporations reduced many planets to raw materials for factories and entire species became subjects for exploitation. Individual Jedi continued to defend the Republic’s citizens and obey the will of the Force, but the Jedi Order to which they answered grew increasingly out of touch. And a new Sith mastermind, Darth Sidious, at last saw a way to restore Sith domination over the galaxy and its inhabitants, and quietly worked to set in motion the revenge of the Sith …

  If you’re a reader new to the Old Republic era, here are three great starting points:

  • The Old Republic: Deceived, by Paul S. Kemp: Kemp tells the tale of the Republic’s betrayal by the Sith Empire, and features Darth Malgus, an intriguing, complicated villain.

  • Knight Errant, by John Jackson Miller: Alone in Sith territory, the headstrong Jedi Kerra Holt seeks to thwart the designs of an eccentric clan of fearsome, powerful, and bizarre Sith Lords.

  • Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, by Drew Karpyshyn: A portrait of one of the most famous Sith Lords, from his horrifying childhood to an adulthood spent in the implacable pursuit of vengeance.