the major for help. "Are there special circumstances I wasn't made
aware of--" "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."
CChapter 12
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 fecundity," 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 thisfor 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
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.
Th at 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
&nb
sp; 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