Shield of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “Admiral, Lieutenant Warris is quite right on the procedures,” the major said. “If this applicant doesn’t have a verifiable citizenship record with a member world, we can’t even consider him.”

  “Bureaucratic nonsense,” Ackbar raged, his voice rising on a wave of righteous indignation. “Whatever happened to taking the measure of a man’s courage, his honor—the fight in him, and the reasons in his heart? Do they all have to be as stamped-and-pressed alike as stormtroopers to get your approval?” He dismissed the recruiter with a wave. “Get out.”

  Grateful to be excused, Warris retreated as Ackbar focused his attention on the supervisor.

  “Admiral, we could certainly reconsider the application if you could just give us the context for your concern—”

  “The context,” Ackbar repeated disbelievingly. “It’s not enough that a man is willing to put on a uniform and fight alongside people he’s never met, just because he shares an ideal with them—no, his offer must come from the right context, and his school papers must be in order, and his arms not too long, and his blood type stocked in the combat medivacs.” Ackbar shook his head in disgust. “How things have changed. I can remember when we were glad for anyone willing to fight beside us.”

  “Admiral—there have to be standards—”

  The major’s tone was placating, and Ackbar did not wish to be placated. “Major, ask yourself how many of the everyday heroes of the Rebellion—not just the names everyone knows—would have qualified to fight for their freedom under your rules,” Ackbar said, leaning in. “And then ask yourself if that answer doesn’t make you look just a bit like a dewback’s cloaca.” Then Ackbar turned and stalked out of the office without waiting for a reply, much less a salute.

  Halfway down the corridor, Ackbar’s outburst was already making him feel a touch foolish. But what he found when he reached the waiting area left him feeling a deep sadness.

  For Ackbar found that all the seats in the waiting area were empty. Seemingly crushed by the rejection, Plat Mallar had not waited for him. Without a word to clerk or guard, the young survivor had left the recruiting office, exited through the main gate, and faded away into the city.

  Ackbar turned to the gate guard and pointed. “I’m going to need that speeder.”

  Chapter Twelve

  From experience on Coruscant and Mon Calamari both, Admiral Ackbar knew that the line that divided the inner circle from the outer circle in any government was access. If you were part of the inner circle, you could see the President simply by walking down a private corridor and through the back doorway into her office; when you called, the President spoke to you directly; when you transmitted a letter, you got a personal response.

  Ackbar had enjoyed that status throughout Leia’s tenure in the top office, first as chief of state under the Provisional government, then as President of the New Republic. Even under her comparatively open administration, that placed him in select company.

  The private door was open to Han, of course. And Mon Mothma, who had chosen to distance herself from the Palace since her close call with an assassin led to her giving up the office. Nanaod Engh, who had not quite become a friend, but whose duties made him an everyday visitor. Behn-kihl-nahm, though he was too well-mannered not to observe the protocols of high office. Tarrick and Alole. And Ackbar.

  Or so it had been before the Yevethan matter had escalated to a crisis. But Ackbar had been jarred by the discovery that he was locked out of the President’s residence, his key disabled, his status as a member of the family suddenly withdrawn. So he had chosen to approach the President’s suite on level fifteen through the front door, and tried to prepare himself for another rebuff.

  But the security guards outside the suite made no move to stop Ackbar, and though the staff inside showed some slight surprise at seeing him there, no one moved to bar him from the back rooms.

  “Good morning, Admiral,” Alole said, looking up from her greatdesk with a smile. “Go right on in—she’s in her conference room, reviewing last week’s Senate debate.”

  When he reached the doorway from the office to the conference room, Ackbar hesitated. Leia was standing at the end of the room with her back to him, hugging herself as she looked up at her holoviewer. The image on the screen was of Senator Tuomi. His tone was earnestly reasonable, his words subtly inflammatory.

  “Is this door still open to me?” Ackbar’s voice boomed in the confined space.

  Leia turned away from Tuomi only long enough to steal a look back over her shoulder. “If you didn’t have to shoot your way past Tarrick, then the door’s still open.”

  “I shall try to remember to take a cue from the presence of weapons in the reception area.”

  Pausing the playback of the recording, Leia turned toward Ackbar. “Did you really think you might not be welcome here?”

  “We have not had a chance to talk since you returned, and we only spoke once while you were away—a short and businesslike conversation, as I recall,” Ackbar said. “Before that—well, I am not sure that I would have been included in the meeting the night of the pirate broadcast if it had been convenient to exclude me. I have been afraid to try my key again.”

  “Then you haven’t seen Han, either? I told him to tell you it was fixed. And here I thought it was me you were avoiding,” Leia said, coming to where he stood and hugging him. “I can’t stay angry at you for long. And besides—you’re one of the few people I’ve told myself I have to keep listening to, even when I am angry at you.”

  Patting Leia on the back with one large hand, Ackbar sighed. “That is good to know.”

  “I’ve missed you,” she said, easing out of the embrace. “Anakin misses you. No one on the staff’s caught sight of you for days. What have you been up to?”

  “I have been preoccupied,” Ackbar said, and gestured toward the viewer. “Why are you bothering with this? It can’t be pleasant to hear yourself be talked about that way, and I cannot see the use of it.”

  Leia glanced back over her shoulder at Tuomi’s face. “I suppose I have a morbid curiosity about whether anything is considered out of bounds.”

  “‘Greed has no limits, envy no boundaries, in the heart of a petty man.’ A favorite quote from Toklar, a much-quoted Mon Calamari philosopher,” Ackbar added.

  “Was he also the one who said, ‘Don’t look back—something may be gaining on you’?” Leia asked lightly.

  “I do not believe so,” Ackbar said. “But Toklar did write, ‘One sting is remembered longer than a thousand caresses.’ For every voice that supported Tuomi’s challenge, there were a hundred saying it was foolish, unjust, and cruel. Listen to them instead.”

  “I’m not offended for myself,” Leia said, pointing her controller at the holoviewer and ending the projection. “But it’s hurtful to those of us who are left to hear Alderaan spoken of that way. And it seems as though suddenly everyone’s finding reasons to object to my being here.”

  “People find what they look for,” said Ackbar. “Look to their motives, not their words.”

  “Tuomi says that his motive is justice,” Leia said with a shrug. “Alderaan is a nation of refugees, sixty thousand people with no territory except for our embassies here and on Bonadan. Tuomi represents five inhabited planets and nearly a billion citizens. Why should Alderaan rule Bosch, he asks.”

  “But you do not lead us for Alderaan. You lead us for the New Republic.”

  “In which Alderaan is a member only due to misguided pity, according to Tuomi.”

  “Tuomi is an ignorant fingerling,” Ackbar said with sharp contempt. “Alderaan’s membership is neither a courtesy nor a violation of the Charter. The New Republic is an alliance of peoples, not planets.”

  Leia nodded an acknowledgment. “Something often forgotten, even here.”

  “Then I will presume to remind you that the structure of the New Republic was crafted to avoid dominance by the most populous worlds—to prevent what Kerrithrarr called a tyranny of fecun
dity,” Ackbar said.

  Leia laughed tersely, tossing her hair. “I remember that argument.”

  “Perhaps you remember another quote I am fond of,” Ackbar said. “‘Today, we become a galactic family—a family of the great and the small, the young and the old, with honor to all and favor to none.’”

  Leia recognized the words from her own Restoration Day address. “That’s cheating.”

  “I trust you still believe what you said then.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then it does not matter if Alderaan now means sixty thousand, or six hundred, or six.”

  “No,” agreed Leia. “The exact number matters only to the assessors and accountants. Our claim to membership is valid, and just, and moral—regardless.”

  “I am glad to hear you say that,” Ackbar said, and dug into a large flap pocket in his belt. “I have brought something here for your endorsement.” He unfolded a single sheet of pale blue document vellum and handed it to her. “That is an emergency petition for membership for Polneye, offered by its representative on Coruscant.”

  Leia eyed Ackbar questioningly as she circled the table toward the window. “I think I’ve been manipulated.”

  “This claim, too, is valid, and just, and moral—regardless.”

  “Is there any reason at all to think that anyone else on Polneye survived the Yevethan assault?”

  “There is no evidence either way,” said Ackbar. “Why does it matter?”

  “If Plat Mallar wants to sit in the Senate—”

  “Plat Mallar wants to sit in the cockpit of a fighter. The Senate seat for Polneye will remain vacant, unless other survivors are found—as a reminder.”

  “I see your handprints all over this, Ackbar.”

  “I am trying to help the boy,” Ackbar admitted. “But he has his own mind.”

  “Let me ask a different question,” Leia said. “Have you made him aware of the offer from Jobath of Galantos, for sanctuary and membership in the Fia?”

  “Plat has spoken with Jobath.”

  “And?”

  “In the days after Alderaan was destroyed, how would you have looked on an invitation to become a citizen of Lafra or Ithor?”

  Leia placed the vellum on the table and bowed her head, pressing her palms together and touching her fingertips to her mouth. “I’m being roundly criticized already for the applications I approved when I came back.”

  “If that’s so, then one more can hardly make any difference,” said Ackbar. “But it will make all the difference in the world to the Polneya. And I must add this—for whatever it may be worth to you, I was proud of you for what you did.”

  Frowning, Leia leaned forward and rested her hands on either side of the document as she studied it intently. “You know,” she said slowly, “I felt pretty good about it, too.” She keyed her comlink with the remote. “Alole—bring me an endorsement tablet, please. Admiral Ackbar has called my attention to an application that was overlooked.”

  Belezaboth Ourn, extraordinary consul of the Paqwepori, paced restlessly in the sleeping chamber of his cottage in the diplomatic hostel.

  For the tenth time, he checked to see that the tiny blind box the Yevethan viceroy had provided him was properly attached to the much larger hypercomm relay. That was the extent of Ourn’s ability to determine whether there was some technical reason why, five hours after sending an urgent request to speak with Nil Spaar, he was still pacing and waiting.

  And Belezaboth Ourn did not like being kept waiting.

  His ship’s engineer had examined the sealed box with all the means at his disposal, but after a discharge from the box had destroyed his test instruments, the engineer had returned it with a shrug. All Ourn really knew is that with the blind box attached, the hypercomm conversed with it, and the box conversed with a Yevethan hypercomm at an unknown location.

  Muttering an imprecation against Nil Spaar’s fertility, Ourn called for a toko bird and a slaughter knife to be brought to him. He had been stuck on Coruscant for weeks now, unable to leave, waiting on the viceroy to keep his promises. He was not about to let himself be stuck in his room, unable to eat, waiting on the viceroy to answer his calls.

  Mother’s Valkyrie was still sitting on the landing pad where it had been battered by the departing Yevethan thrustship Aramadia. With the mission short of funds, Ourn had refused to authorize repairs, expecting to sell the cutter as scrap when the ship Nil Spaar had promised him was delivered. Then spaceport ground crews had covered Valkyrie with a bubble-like lien seal when the unpaid berth fees mounted.

  It was embarrassing to have the Paqwepori consular ship sitting there under a debtor’s lock for everyone to see. It would be humiliating to have to stand in line to leave Coruscant on a shuttle. And it was unthinkable for the delegation to return home penniless aboard one of the rattletrap commercial liners that came calling at Paqwepori.

  There was only one acceptable resolution, and Ourn clung to it unwaveringly. Nil Spaar must keep his promise of a Yevethan thrustship in payment for the damage to the Valkyrie and other services Ourn had rendered to Nil Spaar. Then the delegation could leave Coruscant not only in grand style, but in such a way that everyone would know that the Paqwepori had powerful friends.

  The only troubling matter was that Nil Spaar was so often unavailable when Belezaboth Ourn tried to reach him. The last two times he had called with information, Ourn had been relegated to speaking to underlings. And his three attempts since deciding to withhold what he knew and insist on speaking directly with Nil Spaar had gone completely unanswered.

  For this, the fourth, Ourn had baited the hook, leaving a message that he had information about important developments near Koornacht. But, still, he had been waiting five hours.

  The toko bird and a response from the Yevetha arrived at the same time, and Ourn rudely chased the former away so that he could receive the latter. To his delight, the face that appeared was Nil Spaar’s.

  “Belezaboth Ourn,” Nil Spaar said. “What is that sound?”

  The toko bird’s squawking over being rejected was still audible from the outer room. “Viceroy! An honor and delight to have a chance to speak to you again. Disregard the noise—it is a wild animal outside, nothing more. What news do you have for me? Is there any further word on delivery of my ship?”

  Ourn thought he saw regret in the Yevethan’s expressive eyes. “Consul, this has become a matter of great awkwardness,” Nil Spaar said. “My people and yours are nearly at war—”

  “No, not our people!” Ourn said, dismayed. “Why, there is not a single Paqwepori citizen in the New Republic’s armed forces—not one! The societor has forbidden it.”

  “And I hope that will be an example to other rulers,” Nil Spaar said. “But there is a great fleet poised to invade our territory, and they do not seem to have been left wanting by your absence.”

  “Oh, that fleet is nothing but bluster,” Ourn said dismissively. “The Princess hasn’t the will to use it, or the support to do so.”

  “I find her a strong and canny dictator,” Nil Spaar said. “I cannot believe that she would make empty threats.”

  “If you could hear the speakers denouncing her daily in the Senate, you would know how weak she is. There has been a challenge to her right to lead the New Republic. Why, there is even talk that she will be recalled.”

  “I am more concerned whether the fleet that threatens us will be recalled,” said Nil Spaar. “You will understand that I can’t look past that.”

  “But what about your promise? What about the favors I have done you?”

  “We have a debt to the Paqwepori, it is true—but others in my government question whether we can trust an ally of Leia Organa Solo—”

  “I would have denounced her myself, if the chairman would only have let me—”

  “—and still others believe that we must keep Queen of the Valkyries for ourselves, to help us in our defense against the fleets and armies Leia is raising against us.
Truly, I do not see how we can deliver the ship to you in such circumstances.”

  The consul’s face had fallen farther with every word. “This is horrendous—unthinkable!” he sputtered. “Is there nothing you can do?”

  Nil Spaar flicked his cheek in the Paqwepori gesture of resignation. “Perhaps it would be possible—but no. I am embarrassed to ask for more when a debt already exists.”

  “Ask! Please, ask! Is there some way I can help resolve this?”

  “I thought only that if you could give me the means to persuade the others—if I could give them sufficient reason to trust you—to know that you are as honorable as I know you to be—”

  “Yes, of course—but what will do that? Are you asking me to leave Coruscant? Are you asking us to leave the New Republic?”

  “No, no—by no means. Just continue to be a friend to us there,” Nil Spaar said. “Keep your eyes and ears open to the machinations of she who afflicts us. Provide us with an unbiased report of her actions. Give us the information we need to keep this confrontation from spinning out of control. That’s the only way we can keep our promise to you. That will be all the proof they need of your loyalty.”

  “Of course,” Ourn said. “Of course! I would have done so anyway. In fact, my first reason for contacting you was to tell you about Leia’s newest abuse of her power. Even her friends are shocked by this—she came back from holiday and granted membership to more than twenty new systems, completely bypassing the established protocols—”

  “No,” Leia said emphatically, brushing past Nanaod Engh as though he were a street beggar. “I don’t want to call a cabinet meeting. I have nothing to tell them yet. The Defense Council hasn’t met yet. The viceroy hasn’t shown his hand yet.”

  Engh appealed to Behn-kihl-nahm with his eyes. “Will you talk to her, Chairman?”