by Timothy Zahn
“Former general, yes,” Lando nodded, releasing his grip on his blaster and shutting off his comlink. The crowd of protesters at Bay 66 was starting to make sense now. “May I confirm in turn that this is not a chance meeting?”
Miatamia smiled thinly, the only way Lando had ever seen a Diamal smile. “You are correct,” the Senator assured him. “My aide spotted you five streets away as you were approaching.” One fan-shaped ear dipped to point at the Diamal beside him. “We have paralleled you to this point, seeking a way to confirm your identity.”
“You’ve confirmed it,” Lando said. One of the more irritating Diamalan social characteristics—annoying to him, anyway—was this tendency of theirs to trample the ground flat around an issue before actually getting to it. “Is there some service I can perform for you?”
Miatamia’s ear flicked in the direction of the crowd. “My ship is in Docking Bay 66,” he said. “There are … persons … who disapprove of my government’s stance on the Bothan issue.”
“Yes, I’ve heard,” Lando said. So it was now the Bothan issue, not the Caamas issue. Interesting. “Your government wants to forgive and forget, or some such thing.”
The Senator eyed him closely. “Would you then prefer to inflict mindless vengeance against innocents?”
Lando spread his hands. “Hey, this is politics. I’m just a simple businessman trying to turn a little profit.”
Miatamia eyed him a moment longer. Then one of his ears twitched. “As that may be,” he said cryptically. “At any rate, the protesters have made their point. I have therefore appealed to the spaceport authorities to remove them so that I may return to my ship.”
Lando nodded. After that lethal riot on Bothawui a week ago, he could understand the Senator’s reluctance to try to push his way through the crowd. “Let me guess. They refused to lift a finger.”
“There is no need to guess: I can positively state that that was their response,” Miatamia said. “We were departing from their offices when we noticed you and made our tentative identification.”
“I understand,” Lando said. “What service may I perform for you?”
Miatamia’s other ear twitched. “I wished to ask you to use your position and influence with the New Republic to intercede on my behalf.”
His influence with the New Republic. Right. “I wish I could help you,” he said. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid my influence these days is limited to a select number of friends and associates. None of whom is currently on Cilpar.”
“I see.” Miatamia was silent a moment. “In that event, perhaps you would be willing to speak to the crowd. As a hero of the Rebellion, you would have a calming influence.”
Lando snorted under his breath. “I very much doubt my past activities would get me very far with them, Senator. There’s a bad tendency these days for people to forget what happened back then.”
“Then you refuse to help me?”
“It’s not a refusal,” Lando said, trying hard to be patient. It was a language thing, of course; for all their calmly logical veneer, Diamala had a tendency to use words in nonstandard ways. One reason why a lot of people didn’t like dealing with them. “I’m simply pointing out that there’s nothing I can do to help you.”
And then a sudden thought occurred to him. “At least, nothing I can do to get you to your ship,” he continued before Miatamia could respond. “If all you need right now is to get to Coruscant or back home, that’s another matter.”
Both ears twitched this time. “Explain.”
“My ship is docked in Bay 68,” he said. “I would be honored to take you wherever in the New Republic you wished to go.”
“Others of the crew are still outside,” the aide pointed out. “Trapped away from the ship by the crowd. Do you offer them transport as well?”
“I was thinking mainly of you and Senator Miatamia,” Lando said, looking at him. “My ship has rather limited living space.”
He shifted his eyes back to Miatamia. “But it seems to me that the crowd isn’t interested in your crew, just in the attention of the Senator. Once you’re not here to give them that attention, there won’t be much point in them hanging around.”
“You speak reason,” Miatamia said. “Now speak cost.”
“No cost, Senator,” Lando assured him, waving a hand in invitation back toward his docking bay. “I would be honored to have such a distinguished personage aboard my ship.”
The other didn’t move. “Speak of the cost, please. There is always a cost.”
So much for finding a subtle way to bring up the topic aboard the Lady Luck. “There is no cost,” Lando repeated. “However, my underwater mining operation is having problems with pirate attacks. I thought perhaps I might be able to make an arrangement with the Diamalan military to provide extra security for my shipments.”
“The primary task of the Diamalan military is to protect Diamalan interests,” Miatamia said. “However, there may be room for discussion.”
“Thank you, Senator,” Lando said. “Honest discussion is all I ask. Shall we go?”
The short trip across the street to the docking-bay door was just a shade worse than Lando had expected it would be. The two Diamala refused to run or even to hurry—a matter of dignity, apparently—and they were no more than halfway to the door when the crowd waiting two bays down spotted them. Fortunately, having no compunctions of his own against a little judicious haste, Lando had already reached the other side and was keying the door open by the time the mob started its belated surge toward them. The Diamala made it inside in plenty of time, with only a few minor fruit juice stains from glancing impacts as souvenirs.
“They are barbarians,” the aide said, his voice icy cold, as Lando sealed the door behind them. “No being should have the right to attempt such dishonoring of another.”
“Peace,” Miatamia said in the same tone as he flicked a few drops of juice from his sleeve with his fingertips. “Few other beings have the wisdom or capacity for proper expression that characterize the Diamala. Rather than considering them as barbarians to be shunned, or even as wrongdoers to be punished, you must see them as children who merely need instruction in civilized behavior.”
He looked at Lando. “Do you not agree?”
“I think any such discussions should be postponed, Senator,” Lando said, not about to let himself get dragged into that kind of conversation. “At least until we’re safely off Cilpar.”
“You speak wisdom,” Miatamia said, his ears twitching again. “Please; lead the way.”
• • •
Tierce looked up from the display … and from his expression alone Disra knew he’d hit solid ore. “You have a target?” he asked.
“I do indeed,” Tierce said. “Senator Porolo Miatamia, Diamalan representative to the New Republic.” He swiveled the display around to face the other. “And you’ll never guess who he’s hitched a ride with.”
Disra scanned the report, feeling his own eyes widen a little. “They must be joking. Lando Calrissian?”
“No joke,” Tierce assured him. “And no error, either. The reporting agent back-checked against the Mos Tommro Spaceport lift records. Calrissian, the Senator, and the Senator’s aide all took off together in Calrissian’s yacht.”
“Did they indeed,” Disra murmured. No wonder Tierce was looking so self-satisfied. The Diamala were even louder advocates of the forgive-and-forget attitude than either the Mon Calamari or the Duros. An ideal choice for the little drama Tierce had in mind.
And to have a close friend of Han Solo’s along for the ride made it even more perfect. “What’s their destination—oh, here it is. Coruscant.”
“Yes.” Tierce had called up a star chart and was laying rate-of-passage tracklines across it. “Assuming Calrissian heads straight for Coruscant, we should have no trouble intercepting them wherever we want along the way. The only question is whether Flim and I can rendezvous with the Relentless before they grab the yacht.”
“It
won’t look good if they have to wait for you to show up,” Disra warned. “This is supposed to look like one of Thrawn’s casual-omniscience tricks.”
“Kindly do not lecture me on the subtleties of my own plans,” Tierce said coldly, manipulating the tracklines across the starfield. “It’ll be a bit tight, but I think we can manage it.”
“Yes,” Disra said as he looked over the numbers himself. “I’m still not wild about this plan, Tierce. We have no idea how the New Republic will react.”
“Of course we know,” Tierce said patiently. “I’ve already explained all of that to you.”
“You’ve given me your guesses,” Disra corrected. “But that’s all they are. Guesses.”
“If you’re not willing to take some risks, you shouldn’t have started this scheme in the first place,” Tierce said, his voice chilling a few degrees. “It’s still not too late for you to back out if you’ve lost your nerve.”
Disra glared at him. “It’s not a question of my nerve, Major,” he growled. “It’s a question of not taking unnecessary risks to achieve our objective.”
Tierce met his gaze evenly. “This one is necessary, Your Excellency,” he said. “Trust me. Now, we’ll need an Interdictor Cruiser, too.” He lifted his eyebrows slightly. “And we’re on something of a tight schedule here.”
With an effort, Disra swallowed back the rest of his argument. Tierce hadn’t sprung this new scheme on him until after his return from Yaga Minor, and he still wasn’t sure how the Guardsman had talked him into it. But if they were going to do it, they had blazing well better do it right. “Fine,” he growled. “Get out of my chair and I’ll issue the orders.”
CHAPTER
16
“Well, General,” Admiral Pellaeon said, leaning back in his seat as he accepted a small glass of Kareas brandy from the other, “how are things at Yaga Minor?”
“About the same as always, Admiral,” High General Hestiv said, waving at the distant planet centered in his office viewport as he poured a little of the brandy into his own glass and sat down again behind his datacard-strewn desk. “Very quiet.”
“I understand there’s been some recent unrest among segments of the Yagai population,” Pellaeon said.
“Completely negligible,” Hestiv said, waving a hand in dismissal. “Actually, since the overwhelming majority of the populace is completely loyal, they mostly take care of the handful of dissenters themselves. The only time we normally have to lift a finger is to protect the dissidents from overzealous loyalists.”
“Allowing you to take the moral high ground.”
“Exactly,” Hestiv said. “It makes for a refreshing change from our usual image among aliens.”
“Yes,” Pellaeon murmured, sipping his drink. “A pity the Emperor didn’t work harder at that kind of public relations himself twenty years ago.”
“A pity someone who wasn’t so insanely blind with power didn’t overthrow him while there was still time,” Hestiv countered, an edge of bitterness in his voice. “There must have been hundreds of competent administrators or Fleet officers who could have kept the Empire alive.”
Pellaeon felt a catch in his throat. “There was one, at least,” he said quietly.
Hestiv’s lip twitched. “Yes—Grand Admiral Thrawn. I’ve always regretted the fact that I never had the chance to meet him.”
For a moment the two men sat in silence. Then Hestiv cleared his throat. “But I don’t suppose it gains us anything to count the might-have-beens,” he said. “That was the past, this is the present; and I presume, Admiral, that you’re here to discuss the future.”
Pellaeon took another sip of his drink. “Yes,” he said, watching the other closely. “To put it bluntly, the war against the New Republic is over, and we’ve lost. In my professional military opinion, it’s time to talk peace.”
The muscles around Hestiv’s eyes tightened. “You mean surrender.”
“I’ll be negotiating for terms,” Pellaeon said. “If I do a proper job, I think we should be able to keep most of what we have.”
Hestiv snorted. “Such as it is.”
“We still control over a thousand inhabited systems,” Pellaeon reminded him mildly. “Would you prefer we allow the New Republic to whittle that number down further before we accept the inevitable?”
“The New Republic’s in no shape to do much whittling at the moment,” Hestiv said. “It looks to me like they’re poised to go for each other’s throats, not ours.”
“Certainly they have problems,” Pellaeon said. “But if you’re expecting them to collapse into a full-fledged civil war over Caamas or anything else, I think you’re being unrealistic.”
“Begging the Admiral’s pardon, but I respectfully disagree,” Hestiv said. “Particularly if we engaged in a little judicious pushing of our own.”
Pellaeon stifled a sigh. Yet another argument he’d heard over and over again on this trip. “So you’d have us encourage them in their self-destruction,” he said. “Emptying your shipyards if necessary; draining all the manpower and resources from your Ubiqtorate base. Leaving this system totally defenseless.”
“If it’s necessary to go that far, yes,” Hestiv said. “This is a military base, Admiral. That’s how its resources are supposed to be used.”
“Granted,” Pellaeon said with a nod. “And what do you suppose will happen when they find out we’ve been goading them?”
“There’s no reason they need to find out,” Hestiv argued. “We don’t have to use our Star Destroyers or TIE fighters or anything else obviously Imperial.”
“No.” Pellaeon shook his head. “We can keep up such a charade for a while, maybe even a long while. But in the end, they’ll find out. And then they’ll unite again, at least long enough to destroy us.”
Hestiv looked out the window at the blue-green sphere in the distance. “At least that way we’d go down fighting,” he said with obvious difficulty. “Your way … there’s no honor in surrender, Admiral.”
“There’s no honor in wasting lives for nothing, either,” Pellaeon countered.
Hestiv smiled wryly. “I know. But at least if you’re dead you don’t have to live with the shame of it.”
“There are some in the Fleet who would call that a noble warrior attitude,” Pellaeon said. “Personally, I’d call it stupid. If we’re destroyed—if we all die—the concepts and ideals of the New Order die with us. But if we surrender, we can keep those ideals alive. Then, if and when the New Republic self-destructs, we’ll be positioned to rise again. Maybe then the galaxy will finally be ready to accept us.”
Hestiv grimaced. “Perhaps.”
“There’s no disgrace in backing out of a no-win situation, General,” Pellaeon said quietly. “I saw Grand Admiral Thrawn do it more than once, forthrightly and without embarrassment, rather than waste his men and ships. That’s no more or less what I’m proposing we do now.”
Hestiv swirled his drink restlessly in his glass. “I presume you’ve already consulted with the Moffs about this.”
“I have,” Pellaeon said. “In the end, they agreed.”
“Reluctantly, I suppose.”
“None of us is exactly enthusiastic about it,” Pellaeon said. “We simply recognize that it has to be done.”
Hestiv took a deep breath, exhaled it. “I suppose you’re right. I wish you weren’t.” He lifted his glass, drained it in a single swallow. “Very well, Admiral. You have my support, which I presume was the real reason you came to Yaga Minor. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“As a matter of fact, there is,” Pellaeon said, pulling out a datacard and handing it across the desk. “First of all, I’d like you to run this list of names through the Ubiqtorate base’s computer system.”
“Certainly,” Hestiv said, sliding the datacard into its slot and keying his terminal. “Anything in particular you’re looking for?”
“Unaltered information,” Pellaeon told him. “These are people I suspect of having
shady financial ties to Moff Disra, but we haven’t been able to track the connections.”
“And Disra wouldn’t let you look through the Bastion records?” Hestiv suggested with a wry smile.
“I’m sure he would have,” Pellaeon said. “I just don’t happen to think I’d be able to trust what those records said.”
“Well, you can trust these,” Hestiv assured him, keying his board. “No one gets into my records without proper and double-confirmed authorization. That major from the Obliterator—Tierce—certainly found that out when he tried to—”
“Major Tierce?” Pellaeon interrupted him. “Major Grodin Tierce?”
“Yes, that’s the one,” Hestiv said, frowning. “He was here on behalf of Captain Trazzen, only we couldn’t make contact with the Obliterator to confirm the authorization so we wouldn’t let him into the system. Why, is something wrong?”
“Yes,” Pellaeon gritted. “Major Tierce isn’t attached to the Obliterator. He’s Moff Disra’s aide.”
Hestiv’s expression turned to stone. “Is he, now.”
Pellaeon gestured toward the terminal. “Is there any way to tell which records he might have tapped into?”
“I just told you he didn’t get in.”
“Oh, he got in, all right,” Pellaeon said darkly. “Through a terminal no one was watching, or perhaps he brought one of his own and tapped in at a junction point. But he most certainly didn’t leave without whatever it was he came here to do.”
Hestiv was keying his board. “You’re right, of course. I’ll order a check; and while we’re at it, let’s have them run his ID again.”
The examination took just under an hour; and in the end, they found what Pellaeon had begun to suspect they would find.
Nothing.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Hestiv growled, glaring at his display. “We know he was here, and presumably not just for his health. But there isn’t a single sign of access or tampering. So what in blazes did he do?”
“Did you check all the records?” Pellaeon asked, swiveling the display around and running an eye down the listing.