Shield of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

“Thank you,” Leia said, pulling the datapad toward her. “Tarrick, see if you can find Councillor Jobath and coax him in. Tell him I have news for him.”

  “He’s been calling us every morning for a fortnight,” the aide said with a lazy grin. “I think I can get him here.”

  Alole had paused at the door. “Princess—”

  Leia looked up from the device. “Yes, Alole?”

  “It’s good to have you back.”

  “Run a tally sheet,” Leia said. “I’m betting yours is the minority opinion.”

  Entering with a smile, Behn-kihl-nahm embraced Leia, then turned and closed the door to the President’s reception lounge. “How are you, Princess?”

  “Better,” she said. “How am I, Bennie?”

  Selecting the largest of the chairs, the chairman of the Defense Council made himself comfortable before answering. “You are safe for the moment. You still have the support of five of the seven Council chairs. There is no serious talk of convening the Ruling Council to consider a petition of no confidence.”

  “That sounds better than I had reason to hope. Who are the contraries? Borsk Fey’lya?” The opportunistic Bothan headed the Justice Council and had always been cool to Leia, not least because of her friendship with Ackbar.

  “Of course,” Behn-kihl-nahm said. “There’s no possible advantage to him in supporting you—but if the tide turns, he has positioned himself as the leader of the opposition. Since Justice has no real responsibility for either war or diplomacy, Fey’lya is free to play both the inside game and the outside game.”

  “How so?”

  “For now, the malcontents of the Senate will gather around him, simply because he stands taller than they do. He need not even promise them anything, though they may end up thinking he has. And when the grids come looking for what they call balance, he can be as provocative as he pleases.”

  “You’re saying that I’ll have to get accustomed to the sound of his voice.”

  “Whenever you are the subject of the grids’ attention, there he will be. In a month, perhaps two, if it should happen that you were removed, he will have acquired enough power and status to have a chance at becoming acting President.”

  Leia nodded, frowning. “Surely you’d be in a stronger position than he would.”

  “In this scenario, I would be fatally damaged by having been your champion in a losing cause,” said the chairman. “If you are recalled, whether by the Senate or the Ruling Council, they will not turn to me to replace you.”

  “And if I resigned now?”

  Behn-kihl-nahm wriggled his shoulders, settling deeper into the chair. “There is no reason for you to do so—or even to contemplate it.”

  “You wouldn’t be tainted,” she pressed. “And he wouldn’t have had a chance to enlarge his power bloc.”

  “We are already where we belong, you and I,” said Behn-kihl-nahm. “There’s no need to speak of change. It is an unnecessary distraction.”

  “I’ll try to remember that when Borsk Fey’lya speaks of it from the Senate podium,” Leia said. “Who’s the other chairman to side with Fey’lya?”

  “Chairman Rattagagech is the other, but I would not say he has sided with Chairman Fey’lya,” Behn-kihl-nahm said.

  On hearing the name, Leia immediately understood the reason for her mentor’s distinction. The scholarly, thoughtful Elomin, who headed the Science and Technology Council, was in most respects the antithesis of the boisterous Bothan. “Do you know anything about his reasons?”

  “As you would expect,” Behn-kihl-nahm said. “The Elomin love order. After the events of the last few weeks, he views you as a font of social and political chaos rather than as a force for stability and order.”

  “I suppose I can hardly blame him for that,” Leia said. “Is anyone teetering?”

  “Chairman Praget has expressed some ambivalence to me,” said Behn-kihl-nahm, naming the head of the Security and Intelligence body. “Of course, this is only the present. Much depends on what you do next. There is very little enthusiasm for war. Too aggressive a course could easily swing two, perhaps even three other members of the Council to support a petition of no confidence. And then there would be no protecting you from a vote by the Senate common.”

  “How much enthusiasm is there for justice?”

  Behn-kihl-nahm shrugged. “Indifferent. The deaths of strangers, conveniently out of sight in Koornacht Cluster, do not weigh heavily against the prospect of the deaths of patriotic Republic pilots and fighting on peaceful Republic worlds. There are some who find a cause in these events, but more, perhaps, who see only a political crisis.”

  “Which reminds me,” Leia said. “What became of Senator Tuomi’s challenge to my credentials?”

  “Over. Forgotten. Chairman Beruss squashed it under a procedural mountain. And I was able to limit the parade to the podium to ten speakers.”

  “How many more would there have been if you hadn’t shown up at the end of the line brandishing an ax?”

  Behn-kihl-nahm waved away the question. “It’s simply noise to be ignored. The more important question concerns the future. What do you plan to do about the Yevetha?”

  “What are we strong enough to do?” Leia asked. “What options are there that don’t lead to handing the presidency to Fey’lya or Praget or Cion Marook?”

  “Perhaps you might consider the question of what should be done, and then we can work together on surviving it.”

  “What should be done—” Leia shook her head. “What we should do is drive the Yevetha back to N’zoth, then drop a planetary interdiction field over them, with the timer set for a thousand years. And that would probably be too light a sentence by half.”

  “You are kinder than I,” said Behn-kihl-nahm. “The only justice I can imagine would be for them to suffer the sentence they imposed on their victims. Of course, that’s impossible—for us to do such a thing would violate every principle in the Declaration.” He plunked a bitter candy from the bowl on the side table. “But I could stand by and watch while someone else did it.”

  “You’re stronger than I,” Leia said. “I think I would have to look away.”

  Behn-kiln-nahm made the candy disappear with a snap of his jaws. “But while we are waiting for this avenger to appear—”

  “Maybe I should meet with the Defense Council and get a sense of how far we’re willing to go.”

  “I would rather see you come to the Council on a quest than with a question.”

  “If I come before them and insist that we have to use the Fifth Fleet to spank the Yevetha, every one of them will remember what Tig Peramis said about why we built that fleet, and what Nil Spaar said about my heritage. If we’re going to do anything that risks the lives of those who wear New Republic uniforms, the initiative has to come from the Defense Council.”

  Behn-kihl-nahm shook his head. “There is no way it can come from anyone but you.”

  “Then it isn’t going to happen,” Leia said flatly. “Nil Spaar tied my hands. Senators Hodidiji and Peramis gave him the rope. And I stood still for it, because he was smiling while he did it.”

  “This decision does not have to be about Leia Organa Solo.”

  “How can it be about anything else?”

  “It could be about Plat Mallar,” said the chairman. “He could become the symbol of your cause.”

  Leia was shaking her head even before Behn-kihl-nahm finished speaking. “I will not use him,” she said. “I won’t exploit his tragedy. If the execution of a million or more sentient beings, the destruction of a dozen planetary communities, isn’t enough—if the members of the Council need a living victim paraded in front of them to move them to act—then shame on them. And shame on us.”

  Making as to leave, Behn-kihl-nahm stood. “Shame is a scarce commodity in politics,” he said, brushing down his clothes. “And there are more politicians than statesmen on Coruscant now.”

  “I don’t want to believe that.”

  “Nev
ertheless, it is so. Think this through carefully, Princess. You will get only one chance to lead them,” the chairman said. “If you forfeit it, you will have no choice but to follow where they lead. And I cannot promise you that they will choose an agreeable destination.”

  The hypercomm link showed nothing but static until General A’baht entered the decryption code Admiral Hiram Drayson had obliged him to memorize. Several seconds later—longer than the usual hypercomm transmission lag—the static resolved into the face of the Alpha Blue director.

  “General A’baht,” said Drayson with a nod. “Thank you for making yourself available—”

  “Drayson,” A’baht growled. “Perhaps you can explain what is going on back there.”

  “You may be hoping for too much,” said Drayson. “This is Coruscant, after all. Which peculiarity in particular concerns you?”

  “I requested additional support within the first hour of our arrival on station,” A’baht said. “All I have heard in reply is silence. ‘Under review by the Fleet Office Strategic Command,’ I am told. But not one member of the command staff has contacted me.”

  “Strategic Command is waiting for guidance from higher levels,” Drayson said. “Until those issues are resolved, I don’t think you can expect any reinforcements—unless you should happen to come under direct attack.”

  “How long is it going to take to find some resolve?” A’baht said, “I’ve been forced to detach ships from the Fifth for Wehttam and Galantos. The other neighboring systems are still unprotected. And every day we sit out here patrolling empty space, the Yevetha dig in deeper on the worlds they took. We can’t reward them for their aggression. We must do something to punish them.”

  “I am not the one who needs convincing.”

  “Then who is? Our presence is accomplishing nothing. By this time, the Yevetha must know that the Fleet is an empty threat.”

  “The Princess wants to do the right thing,” said A’baht. “She will need our help to see that the right thing gets done.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “You need to find more graphic evidence of the Yevethan atrocities,” Drayson said. “Without it, Princess Leia will not be strong enough to overcome the resistance of the Senate.”

  A’baht drew his lips back in a silent snarl. “I don’t know that we can do more than we have. I’ve put prowlers right up to the border, even a little beyond. Our sensing technology simply can’t give us anything at that range. I’m having a difficult enough time getting good tactical information, much less documenting the massacres.”

  “I trust you’re persisting, even though it’s difficult.”

  “If you’re asking whether the ferrets and prowlers are still out, the answer is yes,” said A’baht. “But it’s too late now for what you ask. From the looks of what you sent me, the Yevetha didn’t leave much evidence behind. And why isn’t what you have already enough for Leia?”

  “It’s not a matter of what Leia has or hasn’t seen,” said Drayson ambiguously. “It’s a matter of what she’s free to show the Senate. If she offers them independent intelligence, something that doesn’t come from the NRI or the Fleet, the meaning of what she shows them will get lost in the questions about its origin.”

  “I have questions about its origin,” A’baht said gruffly. “You have to have had assets inside Koornacht to get those holos—assets which were either in place undetected, or which could move fast enough to arrive before the fires were out. I would very much like to know what manner of ferret could accomplish that.”

  “And those are exactly the questions Leia cannot be asked,” said Drayson. “She needs intelligence with a good, clear, and perfectly ordinary pedigree. General, I suggest you place a ferret in Zone Nineteen.”

  “Zone Nineteen?” A’baht consulted his tactical map. “That’s a third of the way around the Cluster toward the Core—far outside the area we’ve been patrolling.”

  “Then I suggest you widen your patrol area.”

  “Why?”

  “It so happens that Zone Nineteen sits on the line-of-sight vector connecting Wakiza and Doornik Three Nineteen, the Yevethan forward base. I think you may have an opportunity to acquire some signal intercepts with the hypercomm scanners.”

  “Yevethan signals?”

  “Of course.”

  A’baht grunted expressionlessly. “And when might this opportunity arise?”

  “Oh—I suspect there’s a great deal of traffic between those sites,” Drayson said lightly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you picked up something in the first few hours you were there.”

  “Which I’d be obliged to forward immediately to the Fleet Office.”

  “Of course.”

  “Will it get to Leia from there?”

  “In fairly short order, I would think.”

  A’baht nodded. “It just might be that we’ve shown the Yevetha this patrol deployment long enough. If I extend the perimeter patrols by half, maybe it’ll make ’em stop and wonder why.”

  “Thank you for considering my input, General,” said Drayson, smiling genially. “Oh, and one other thing—”

  “What is that?”

  “Since there are probably still some days, even weeks, of work left to do at this end, perhaps you might consider whether you can spare a smaller vessel for each of the other inhabited systems.”

  “I’m convinced that nothing smaller than a frigate could withstand an initial Yevethan attack, and I have no more ships of that class to spare,” said A’baht.

  “You’re right, of course,” Drayson said. “A corvette or patrol escort probably wouldn’t discourage the Yevetha, and certainly wouldn’t be able to repel them. I only thought there might be some symbolic value in their presence—”

  A’baht suddenly understood what Drayson was saying.—Unless we should happen to come under direct attack, you say. And so you would like me to bait the Yevetha with an easy victory.

  “The only thing worse than leaving those populations unprotected is giving them an illusion of safety,” A’baht said curtly. “And the only thing worse than asking men to risk their lives on your word is sending them into a fight you know they can’t win. My pilots and crews are not symbols, Admiral Drayson. And I won’t betray them by reducing them to that.”

  “I understand those feelings, General,” Drayson said. “I share them. But I invite you to consider whether your status there is any different than that of an escort orbiting Dandalas or Kktkt. If the Yevetha attack your formation, many issues would be simplified.”

  “Are you saying that we were sent here to draw the Yevetha into a war?”

  “I am saying that you may decide for yourself how much of your arm to place in the rancor’s mouth,” Drayson said. “Zone Nineteen, General. Whatever else you decide, please keep that rendezvous.”

  The on-site recruiting office at Fleet Headquarters was next to the main gate, a long walk from the infirmary. Mindful of the physical exam, Ackbar had been unable to persuade Plat Mallar to wait until morning. But the energy in Mallar’s long strides on the way over had seemed to vindicate Dr. Yintal’s judgment that the Polneye survivor could be released.

  When they reached the small white dome with the Fleet insignia, Ackbar lost a second argument, this one over whether he would accompany Mallar inside.

  “I have to go in there without anyone holding my hand,” Mallar had said. “It’s important to me. I don’t want any pity, or any special favors from friends of old star pilots.”

  “As you wish,” Ackbar had said, acceding to the stubborn will of the young Grannan. He settled in a waiting area ordinarily occupied only by civilians and let himself be amused by the surprised recruitment staffers falling over themselves to salute him.

  Mallar was gone for the better part of an hour, but the process should have taken two. And when he returned, he looked worse than ill—his eyes were as empty as a discarded chrysalis, all the life having left them. Ackbar rose quickly and hurried to him.

>   “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Never mind—there’s a speeder at the guard station. Come, I can have you back to the infirmary in a twinkling.”

  “I was turned down,” Mallar said, his expression stunned and wondering.

  “For pilot training?”

  “For anything. For everything. He rejected me. They won’t let me volunteer for any duty.”

  “That’s absurd,” Ackbar said. “Stay here.”

  Leaving a wake of unanswered salutes behind him, Ackbar stormed through the screening room and past the interview rooms to the office of the recruiting supervisor.

  “Admiral Ackbar?” the supervisor said, rising from his chair in surprise as Ackbar entered unannounced. “Sir,” he added, and saluted smartly.

  “Major, one of your recruiters just processed an applicant named Plat Mallar,” Ackbar snapped. “I want that person in this room now, to answer some questions.”

  “Right away, Admiral.” The supervisor bent over his comlink and barked out an order. “I’m terribly sorry if there’s been some mix-up, Admiral—”

  The arrival of a tall human lieutenant interrupted the apology, as Ackbar turned away and ignored the major completely.

  “What’s your name?” Ackbar demanded, noting the Corellian insignia in the place above the right pocket reserved for an affiliation pin.

  “Lieutenant Warris, sir.”

  “Would you care to explain to me your actions regarding Plat Mallar?” he asked.

  The recruiter looked momentarily taken aback. “Sir, I don’t understand. He was unqualified,” Warris said.

  “Unqualified?”

  “Yes, sir,” Warris said. “The guidelines clearly specify that an applicant’s primary education must be through a certified school or program. Plat Mallar’s program isn’t even listed in the system.”

  “Of course it isn’t, you dunderhead—did you happen to notice where he’s from?”

  “Yes, sir. But that’s another problem, sir. He’s ineligible to join the Fleet—he’s not a citizen of the New Republic. In fact, it’s worse than just not being a citizen—he’s a citizen of Polneye, a planet that’s still officially listed as aligned with the Empire. I couldn’t possibly pass him through the interview, sir.” The recruiter looked to the major for help. “Are there special circumstances I wasn’t made aware of—”