by Troy Denning
He winked at Jacen—which was exactly the wrong thing to do at that moment.
Corran glared blaster bolts at Han. “I think we are answerable to Galactic Alliance authority, yes.”
“Even if it means war in another part of the galaxy?” Mara retorted. “Because Jacen’s right about this. The Force extends beyond the Galactic Alliance—and so does our responsibility.”
“Then let the rest of the galaxy pay your bills,” Omas snapped. “Until that happens, I expect the Jedi to put Galactic Alliance interests first.”
A sudden silence fell over the conference table, with Corran and Kenth casting accusatory glances at Kyp and Mara, and Kyp and Mara studying Omas with knowing sneers.
After a moment, Luke said, “When the Alliance offered its support, it was with the explicit understanding that there were no conditions.”
“In an ideal galaxy, that would still be true,” Omas said. He met Luke’s gaze without flinching—and with no regret or embarrassment for breaking his pledge. “But Galactic Alliance finances are stretched thin as it is. If we must suddenly replace the Chiss security patrols, the only way to afford the cost would be to slash the Jedi budget.”
Kyp planted his elbows on a wedge of black tabletop and ran his gaze around the circle of Masters. “Well, at least the question is out in the open now. Are we mercenaries, or are we Jedi?”
Corran’s eyes bulged, and the debate deteriorated into an open quarrel, with Corran and Kenth still arguing fiercely that the order’s first obligation was to the Galactic Alliance, and Kyp and Mara stubbornly contending that Jedi should strive to bring justice and peace wherever the Force summoned them. Cringing at what the Ithorians must think of such a contentious display, Leia glanced over at the foyer area and found them standing there in polite silence, as overlooked and forgotten by the Jedi as they had been by the Galactic Alliance government for the last five years . . . and that was when a terrible thought struck her.
Leia had a solution to the Colony problem—a solution that meant cheating the Ithorians yet again.
The Masters’ voices were growing sharp and loud, but Leia remained quiet. Her plan would please Omas more than it did her, and that in itself was almost enough to make her reject it. Once, she had held the Chief in high regard and helped place the war against the Yuuzhan Vong in his hands. But peace was often harder to manage than war. Over the last five years, Omas had made too many compromises, bowed to the demands of the moment so many times that he could no longer hold his head up high enough to see what was coming on the horizon.
And if Leia proposed her solution, she would be guilty of the same thing. She didn’t know if she could do that, if peace would be worth seeing the defeated eyes of Cal Omas in her own face when she looked into the mirror every morning.
Finally, Luke had heard enough. “Stop!”
When Kyp and Corran continued to argue, he stood and sharpened his voice without raising it.
“Stop,” he repeated.
Kyp and Corran slowly fell silent.
“Is this how Jedi resolve their disagreements?” Luke asked.
Both of the Masters’ faces went red with embarrassment, and Corran said, “I’m sorry.”
He was apologizing to Luke instead of Kyp, but that was more than Kyp did. He simply sank into his chair and, being careful to avoid Corran’s eyes, stared blankly at the table’s star-within-a-star inlay.
“Too bad,” Han muttered. “I haven’t seen a good lightsaber fight in ages.”
Leia was about to kick Han under the table when he exclaimed, “Ouch!”
“Sorry.” Mara looked past Han to Leia. “Just stretching.”
“No problem,” Leia said. Han’s joke was too true to be funny; the rift in the Jedi order had been widened today, and she was beginning to wonder if it could ever be closed. “I was feeling a little cramped myself.”
Luke allowed a tense silence to fall over the room, then sat down and turned to Omas.
“It may take some time to reach a consensus on your request, Chief Omas. As you can see, our decision is complicated by the fact that the Chiss are acting against the Killiks not because of what they have done, but because of what they might do.”
Omas nodded gravely, his irresolute gaze gliding around the table, silently taking the measure of the Jedi who had defied him, trying to judge the resolve of those who had not. Finally, he came to Luke and stopped.
“Master Skywalker, I quite simply do not care,” he said. “The Chiss’s trouble with the Colony is no concern of ours. We can’t put Galactic Alliance lives at risk just because a few Jedi feel bound by a quaint morality no one else understands.”
Kam Solusar and Tionne arrived on the heels of the exchange. It had been over a year since Leia had seen either of them, but they looked much the same, Kam still wearing his white hair cropped close to the head and Tionne allowing her silver-white tresses to cascade over her shoulders. They had barely cleared the door before they drew up short, recoiling from the animosity in the Force with the horrified expressions of someone who had just stumbled upon a pair of mating Togorians.
Leia had not realized until she saw their alarm just how noxious the atmosphere in the room had grown. The rift in the council was widening before her eyes, opening a chasm that would only grow increasingly difficult for prideful Masters like Kyp and Corran to cross. Assuming that her idea was viable, and she felt sure it was, she had it in her power to close that rift—at the price of her own conscience.
Kam and Tionne took seats next to each other, on the opposite side of Cilghal from Luke.
“We were just discussing the situation at Qoribu,” Luke said to them. “Chief Omas has informed us that Tenel Ka has dispatched a Hapan battle fleet to aid the Colony.”
Tionne’s pearlescent eyes grew wide. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It gets worse,” Corran said, scowling at Jacen. “A Jedi is responsible.”
“He followed his conscience,” Kyp said. “Which is more than I can say for half—”
“Actually,” Leia said, cutting off Kyp’s insult before it could be finished, “there may be a way for the Jedi to stop the war and earn the trust of the Chiss.”
Han groaned, but everyone else turned to her with a mixture of relief and expectation in their eyes.
“Han and I discovered—”
“Uh, sweetheart?” Han grabbed her forearm. “Can I talk to you a minute?”
This did not please Omas. “Captain Solo, if you have discovered something useful to the Galactic Alliance—”
“Excuse me, Chief.” Leia spun her chair around, placing her back to the table, then waited as Han did the same. “Yes, dear?”
Han’s eyes bulged. “What in the blazes are you doing?”
“Stopping a war,” Leia whispered. Knowing Han would only grow stubborn if he realized how much this was going to hurt her, she tried to hide her dismay. “Saving billions of lives, keeping the council together, preserving the Galactic Alliance. That kind of thing.”
“Yeah, I know.” Han jerked a thumb toward the Ithorians. “What about them? That world we found was perfect—”
“And it’s perfect for the Killiks, too.” She had a familiar queasiness inside, a heavy feeling that used to come whenever she was forced to make an unfair choice as the New Republic Chief of State. “We’ll take care of the Ithorians another way.”
“How?” Han asked. “Ask Omas to give them a planet?”
“No,” Leia said. “Make him.”
She turned around and smiled across the table at Omas.
“On the way home, Han and I discovered a small group of uninhabited planets.” Leia waited for the murmur of surprise to fade, then said, “I think they might make a good home for the Qoribu nests.”
A wave of disappointment filled the Force, and Leia could not help looking past Omas toward the foyer. The Ithorians were all staring silently in her direction, their eyes half closed in resignation—or perhaps it was sorrow. Still, whe
n Leia met Waoabi’s gaze, he merely tightened his lips and gave her an approving nod. No Ithorian would want to live on a world that had been bought with someone else’s blood.
Leia directed her attention to Luke. “I propose that we move the Qoribu nests to these planets.”
“How?” Jacen asked. “There are four nests in the system, each with at least twenty thousand Killiks, and you don’t just move a Killik nest. You have to rebuild it inside a ship, lay in stores—”
“I’m sure Tenel Ka will instruct her fleet to help with that,” Leia said. “In fact, I’m rather counting on it.”
Jacen’s jaw fell, then he closed his mouth and nodded. “That could work.”
“And it will look as though it’s what the Jedi intended all along,” Omas added. “Brilliant!”
“You’re sure about this planet?” Luke asked Leia. “It’s completely deserted?”
“We should stop on the way back to the Colony and do a thorough sector scan.” Leia glanced at Han, who nodded, then added, “But I’m sure. The astrobiology there is . . . unique.”
“Well, then.” Luke glanced around the circle, seeking and receiving an affirmative nod from each of the council Masters. “We seem to have reached an agreement.”
The bitterness began to fade from the Force, and the tension drained from the faces of the Masters.
“We’d better prepared to deal with the Dark Nest,” Mara said. “It might not like this idea.”
“Dark Nest?” Omas asked.
“The Gorog nest,” Luke explained. “The Colony seems completely unaware of it, so we’ve started calling it the Dark Nest.”
“It’s attacked us several times,” Mara said.
“Why?” Omas asked.
Mara hesitated, clearly unwilling to tell the chief about the nest’s personal vendetta against her, so Leia answered.
“We’re not sure,” she said. “The nest doesn’t seem to want us involved with the Colony, so it’s a good bet it will try to stop us.”
“Maybe the Dark Nest wants war,” Jacen suggested. “It sounds like the Colony was pushing up against Ascendancy territory even before their own worlds began to grow scarce. There must be a reason.”
“I don’t understand,” Omas said. “I thought you persuaded Tenel Ka to send her fleet because the Colony is trying to avoid a war?”
“The Colony is,” Cilghal said. “But the Dark Nest—”
“May have its own reasons to want a war,” Leia said. She did not want to complicate Omas’s view of the issue with a lengthy explanation of the Colony’s unconscious motivations—or give him reason to doubt the Jedi’s ability to resolve the crisis. “There’s a bit of a, um, power struggle going on inside the Colony.”
“Isn’t there always?” Omas said, nodding sagely. Power struggles were something that every government official understood well. He turned to Luke. “Is this going to be a problem for us?”
“Only finding it,” Mara said. “The Gorog are pretty secretive. So far, we’ve seen them on Yoggoy and Taat, but we have no idea—”
“Not a problem,” Han interrupted. “I can find their nest.”
“I don’t know if that’s even possible,” Cilghal said. “The Gorog social structure may be quite different from other nests’. They may have parasite cells hidden among all the other—”
“I can find ‘em—at least the, uh, heart,”Han said, following Leia’s lead in not mentioning Lomi and Welk by name. “Trust me.”
“Fine.” Luke turned to Chief Omas and added, “But we’ll have to take along a Jedi team large enough to neutralize the nest. The Chiss will be alarmed—and nothing you say is going to reassure them.”
“They’ll be reassured when the Killiks leave Qoribu. I’ll handle them until then—just don’t take too long.” Omas braced his hands on the table and rose. “Speaking of which, I’ll be on my way—”
“Not so fast, Chief,” Han said. “We haven’t told you what this is going to cost.”
“Cost?” Omas looked to Luke, who merely shrugged and directed the Chief back to Han. “Of course, the Galactic Alliance will be more than happy to compensate you for any expenses the Falcon incurred—”
“We’re talking a lot more than that.” Han pointed at Omas’s chair, motioning him back down. “You see, Leia and I had something in mind for that group of planets, and we’re not about to give that up just because you’re afraid of what the Chiss think.”
Omas scowled. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Borao,” Leia said. “We want you to annul RePlanetHab’s claim in favor of ours.”
“You see, we were there first, and they kind of claim-jumped us,” Han said. “It’s been scorching my jets ever since.”
You want me to give you a planet?” Omas gasped. “In the Inner Rim?”
“Not us.” Leia pointed over Omas’s shoulder toward the Ithorians. “Our clients.”
Omas spun in his chair, slowly, and faced the Ithorians—who were looking considerably less glum.
“I see,” he said. “If the decision were mine alone—”
“Han, do you remember the coordinates of the new planet group?” Leia asked. “We were having that trouble with the navicomputer, and I’m not sure we made a backup of—”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Omas said, rising again. “But, you understand, I can’t just do this. The Recovery Act is law—I’ll have to push a special exception through.”
“Then I suggest you hurry,” Corran said, leaning back in his chair. “The Qoribu problem is time-sensitive, and I’m sure the Solos will want this matter resolved before they leave.”
“That’s quite impossible,” Omas said.
When Corran merely shrugged, Omas turned to Kenth—who suddenly seemed far more interested in the training fields outside than in the Chief of State.
Omas sighed, then said, “But I can block RePlanetHab’s claim.” He turned to the Ithorians and added, “It may take a month or it may take ten, but I’ll push this through. By this time next year, you’ll have a planet of your own again. I give you my word as Chief of State.”
“That’s not much,” Han said, also rising. “But it’ll have to do.”
“To the contrary, Captain Solo.” Waoabi started forward, holding out his long-fingered hand to shake Omas’s and accept the promise. “It is more than we have now. Thank you.”
Waoabi’s courtesy should have made Leia feel better, but it did not. Instead, she felt sad and sickened and a little bit soiled by the trade-off she had been forced to make.
Like it or not, she was suddenly back in politics.
THIRTY-ONE
A WEIGHT LAY ACROSS JAINA’S chest, and the inside of one ear was being warmed by a soft, pulsing growl. The dormitory air was filled with a comforting melange of refresher soap and body smells from a dozen different species, but the predominant odor, familiar and musky and strongest, was human.
Male human.
Zekk.
Jaina reached down and felt his arm across her, and his leg a bit lower, then slowly turned her head. Through a lingering fog of membrosia excess, she saw the familiar chiseled features surrounded by a frame of shaggy black hair. Thankfully, he was still clothed.
The previous night came flooding back to her: Unu’s arrival at Jwlio, the Dance of Union, the Taat drifting off into the Harem Cave, the Joiners leaving in twos and threes and fours, her hand in Zekk’s . . .
Zekk’s green eyes opened, and the smile on his face was replaced by a confused squint. He blinked two or three times, then glanced at the lightly-clothed female body over which he’d draped himself and raised his brow. Jaina sensed a distinct click in the back of his mind. His eyes slid away from hers, and she felt his emotions swinging from disbelief to bewilderment to guilt.
“Well,” Jaina said, hoping to set a casual tone. “Interesting night.”
“Yeah.” Zekk pulled his arm and leg off of her body. “I—I thought it was a dream.”
Jaina cocked her brow. “You’re saying it wasn’t?”
Zekk’s eyes widened. “No, it was fun!” he said. “Great, even. I just . . . it just didn’t feel real . . .”
Zekk let the sentence trail off, sharing his thoughts and emotions with Jaina directly via the meld—or perhaps it was the Taat mind- instead of trying to explain. He had loved her since they were teenagers, and he had imagined waking at her side countless times. But last night had not felt like them. They had been carried along on a wave of Killik emotion. He had sought her out in the rapture of the dance, even when he knew she did not share his feelings, and found himself leading her down into the dormitory with all the Joiners—
“Zekk, we didn’t do anything,” Jaina said. She could have answered him more quickly and clearly just by thinking, but right now she needed the sense of separation that came with speaking— even if it was an illusion. “It was just a little cuddling between friends. You have a problem with that?”
“No!” Zekk said. “I just feel like I took advantage.”
Jaina clasped his forearm. “You didn’t.” She was genuinely touched by his concern—and truly relieved that it had been handsome, muscular, familiar Zekk who had taken her hand instead of Raynar. “We lost control there for a minute, but we got it back. I’m just glad Alema went home with Mom and Dad.”
Zekk remained quiet.
Jaina propped herself up on an elbow. “Hey!” She punched him in the shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking!”
“Sorry.”
Zekk blushed and turned away, and Jaina felt him closing down emotionally.
“Zekk, you can’t do that,” she said. They had to keep the meld open between them, to constantly draw on each other’s strength and resolve to remain their own little entity within the greater Taat mind. “And will you stop apologizing?” Jaina rolled her eyes, then reached for her jumpsuit. “I think I’m getting dressed now.”
She sat up and, sensing someone behind her, pivoted to find Raynar on the busy walkway at the head of their sunken bed. Dressed in scarlet and gold and surrounded by his usual retinue of assorted Killiks, he was squatting on his haunches, staring down into the hexagonal sleeping cell with no discernible expression on his melted face. A sense of overwhelming awe arose inside Jaina—Taat’s reaction to UnuThul’s presence—and she felt her mouth broadening into an adoring grin.