the opportunity that created.
"They're firing through their shields, Skids--the beam scatter will
give us the exact range to the boundary."
"Working on it now," Skids answered, his head down over his control
displays.
"Hurry," Tuketu said. "Drop point coming up fast."
There was an induction crackle as an ion bolt passed within twenty
meters of the bomber. "Red Leader, Red Five--are you hearing this
stuff on the command comm?"
The moment the question was asked, Tuketu realized that there were
other voices in the cockpit. "Cut the chatter, Red Flight," he said
automatically. "C One has to stay open."
"Red Leader, that's not us--and it's all over the spectrum, C One, C
Two, the task force frequency, the Fifth's hypercomm--are you listening
to it, Red Leader?
Do you hear what they're saying?"
The drop point was almost on them. Esege Tuketu forced himself to
focus on the sounds he had been disregarding as extraneous.
"--I am the Kubaz called Totolaya. I reside in the colony Morning
Bell. I am a hostage of the Yevetha. If you attack, I will be
killed--" On C2 the message was, "I am Brakka Barakas, an elder of New
Brigia. I am a hostage of the Yevetha. If you attack us, I will be
killed--" "Red Leader, Red Four. Shall we break off?"
"Red Two here--Tuke, what do we do?"
The decision had to be made in an instant. "Stay on target. Make your
drops," Tuke snapped.
Just then an ion bolt from one of the thrustship batteries caught Red
Four full on the port engine foil.
The charge danced angrily over the surface of the bomber. Before it
could reach the eggs, Red Four's weapons tech released them.
"Eggs away!" Skids cried.
"--I am Liekas Tendo, a Morath mining engineer.
I'm in a security cell on some kind of starship. They say these
creatures holding us are Yevetha. They say if you attack us, I'll be
killed. Please don't attack us--" Tuketu pulled the stick back
sharply, kicking in the big slant-mounted third engine. The power of
it quickly changed the bomber's attitude and trajectory, pushing it out
and away from the ship, the shields, and the explosions to come. As
always, the pullout took Tuketu right to the brink of nconsciousness.
"--I am Crandor Ijjix of the Norat Sovereignty. I have been taken
hostage by invaders and held on their ship. To all vessels of the New
Republic--do not attack, or we will be eradicated--" Red Four never
made its pullout move. Disabled by the ion bolt, the K-wing continued
falling in toward the thrustship, trailing its own torpedoes by a
fraction of a second. When the plasma eggs reached the shield
perimeter, Red Four was enveloped by the double fireball. The
fragments that were hurled out of the cloud were closer in size to dust
than to a spaceship.
"Jojo--" Tuke closed his eyes for just a moment.
"Skids, report results of bombing."
"Negative--negative, the shield's still up," Skids said disgustedly.
"Red Two, Three, and Five did not drop their eggs, repeat, did not
drop."
"Red Leader, this is Red Three weps. Tuke, I'm sorry--I just couldn't
do it. Not with hostages begging me not to."
"Son of a--you're looking at a court-martial, Condor."
"I'll accept the consequences. But I wasn't going to help murder the
people we came here to help."
"Blue Leader to Red Flight--you guys had better work it out back at the
barn. Target is launching its own birds. Ten on the wing and more
coming."
After one glance at the tracking display, Tuketu pushed the throttle
forward and wheeled his bomber around so that the nose pointed back
toward Indomitable. "Red Two, Red Three, Red Five, find a safe place
to dump your bomb load. Everyone take it home, best possible speed.
Red Leader to flight boss--five coming in, ETA four minutes."
It was four minutes of hell. The Yevethan fighters were fast and
lethal, and the outnumbered E-wings couldn't hold them off. Red Three
was picked off returning from its bomb dump. Red Five took a hit on
the port wing and another just behind the cockpit, and exploded in
flames just before it reached the cover umbrella of the cruiser
Gallant. Blue Flight fared even worse--only one of the bombers made it
back to the comparative safety of Indomitable's hangar bays.
Helmet under his arm, his eyes hollow and his face drawn, Esege Tuketu
stood near the flight boss as the casualties were posted on the status
board. Jojo. Keek.
Dopey and the Bear. Pacci. Nooch.
When Miranda's name went up, he no longer could stand the bloody litany
and turned and slipped away.
With his skin cold and pale, General A'baht watched from the bridge of
Intrepid as variations on the same theme played out all over the battle
zone.
Every attack bomber, every cover fighter, every capital ship from both
Task Force Aster and Task Force Blackvine received a continuous
broadcast of hostage appeals on every comm channel used by the Fleet.
Enough gunners hesitated and enough pilots turned away that not a
single Yevethan capital ship was touched.
And in the retreat--both the confused one that started spontaneously
and the official one he ordered minutes later--nineteen of the Fleet's
small warbirds were destroyed. A hangar fire on the carrier Venture
consumed fourteen more and left all three portside bays unusable.
The cruiser Phalanx took a bow shot while pulling a crippled E-wing
inside its shields with a tractor beam, and the damage went all the way
back to the number 14 bulkhead.
The cost in lives, counting the loss of Trenchant, ran to well over a
thousand.
But the full cost of the defeat went far beyond that, A'baht knew. And
the ultimate cost in blood was beyond measuring.
They are not afraid of us. They are not afraid of dying. There is
nothing we can use to restrain their behavior but force--the war we
didn't want to fight.
Intrepid lingered, hidden in the glare of Doornik 319's star, while the
Fifth Fleet forces jumped out of the system in ones and twos. Only
when the carrier was the last ship remai ning did A'baht turn away from
the view-screens and descend to the main bridge on unsteady legs.
"Captain Morano," he said. "Take us out of here."
Behn-kihl-nahm walked the empty Memorial Corridor with long, impatient
strides. Two maintenance engineers, neither accustomed to moving at
that pace, struggled to keep up with him.
At the end of the corridor he turned right, stopping under the sign
over the entrance to the Senate Hall. He glanced up at it only
briefly, reading it with a sigh in his heart.
1000 DAYS WITHOUT A SHOT FIRED IN ANGER Remember, Peace Is No Accident
Then the chairman turned and looked back, waiting for the maintenance
men to join him. When they did, Behn-kihl-nahm pointed up at the
sign.
"Turn it off," he said. "Take it down. Take it away."
One of the engineers squinted up at the sign. "Do you want it put in
&nbs
p; the Senate storeroom?"
Behn-kihl-nahm shook his head. "No. Just get it out of here, now. We
won't have any more use for it."
Then he hurried away from the broken dream and toward the Defense
Council hearing chamber. The emergency meeting on the situation in
Koornacht Cluster was waiting on his arrival to begin.
CChapter 14
The Senate messenger at the gate to the President's residence was as
determined to be admitted as the security droid was determined to bar
him from entering.
"I don't care what your protocols say--I am here on the authority of
the acting chairman of the Ruling Council of the Senate, and my
instructions are explicit," the messenger was saying as Leia approached
the gate from the inner walk. "I must deliver this message, and I may
only deliver it into the hands of the Princess herself."
"Very well. Here I am," Leia said.
"Princess," the messenger said, turning quickly and bowing his head
slightly. "I apologize for the disruption-" "It's not your fault," she
said, reaching through the gate past S-EP1 for the stiff folder bearing
the royal blue insignia. "Sleepy's programming didn't include the
possibility of a summons. Someone will have to see to that,
apparently."
The messenger bowed his head again. "My apologies again, Princess," he
said, and backed away.
Leia did not open the folder before starting back toward the house. Of
all the many bodies---councils, committees, commissions, and
contractors--making up the complex organizational structure of the
Senate of the New Republic, only one had the power to summon the
President to appear before it.
That one was the Ruling Council.
Its name, which went back to the days of the Provisional government,
was no longer descriptive of its role.
Much of the power and responsibility of the transitional Ruling Council
now rested elsewhere in the Senate, the General Ministry, or the Fleet
Office. The New Republic had traded efficiency for democracy and
oligarchy for bureaucracy--and had done so willingly and knowingly.
A confederation of more than ten thousand systems could not be justly
ruled by a self-elected few.
But the one element of its old power which the Ruling Council had
retained involved a special responsibility regarding the President.
The drafters of the Charter were wary about creating too strong an
executive--one who, unchecked, might be able to accumulate more and
more power over time and become a dictator in fact if not in name. The
cold truth was that Palpatine's reign had begun not with a coup, but
with his gaining power largely by legitimate means.
As a check against that history being repeated, the Charter preserved
the Ruling Council in the form of a supercommittee made up of the
chairmen of the Senate Councils. The founders gave it the power both
to void the election of a President and to initiate the recall of a
sitting one. Ackbar had dubbed the Ruling Council "the speed brake on
the ship of state." But as often as it was spoken of, the Ruling
Council met rarely, and had never been used for its intended purpose.
Until now.
The Council had already been seated, apparently arguing behind closed
doors, for nearly an hour before Leia was brought in. Though a seat
was provided for her, Leia chose to stand in the shallow well of the
chambers.
Even that only placed her at eye level with the seven senators seated
around the arc of the panel. At the center was Doman Beruss, the
crystal pyramid and striker resting near his hand. Behn-kihl-nahm was
to his left, but would not look at her.
"Madame President--Princess Leia--in the normal rotation, it would be
Senator Praget's turn to chair this session," Beruss said. "However,
due to the present circumstances, the Council has decided to advance
the rotation to the next designated chair, so as to avoid any
procedural conflicts. Do you have any objection to my chairing this
session?"
So that's what the delay was about, Leia thought. "I have no
objection."
"Very well," said Betuss. "President Leia Organa Solo, you have been
summoned before the Ruling Council for the discussion of a petition of
recall against you.
"A duly constituted member of this body has presented articles calling
for a vote of no confidence on the following grounds One, exceeding
your Charter authority.
Republic. Three, issuing illegal orders to initiate hostilities
against a sovereign state. Four, incompetence to properly carry out
the duties of office.
"Do you understand your rights and obligations in regard to a petition
of recall? If so, please state them in your own words."
"I have the right to hear a specification of the cause of action. I
have the right to present whatever witnesses and evidence I choose in
defense of my actions and performance," Leia said. "I have the
obligation to answer fully and truthfully all questions which may be
put to me, as well as the obligation to appear before the Senate in
assembly should you vote to sustain the petition."
"Very well," said Betuss. "Senator Praget has brought the petition,
and will lay out the specific articles."
That took Leia by surprise--she had been expecting the complainant to
be Borsk Fey'lya. "Senator," she said with a nod.
Krall Praget eyed her briefly before he began, his gaze measuring her,
judging her, ultimately dismissing her. For the duration of his
presentation, he looked down along the curving table from his seat at
the right end, addressing himself to Beruss and the other Council
members, virtually ignoring Leia.
Praget spoke for not quite an hour, then yielded back to Senator Beruss
without asking Leia a single question.
She could not tell whether he had decided he was unlikely to succeed in
getting her to betray herself, or thought his case so strong that that
was unnecessary.
In contrast, Senator Rattagagech had a long series of very specific
questions, but they were far less accusatory in tone than Praget's
exposition, or even his glances.
The Elomin was trying to reconstruct the calculus of Leia's decisions
in painstaking detail, and even Praget grew impatient with him.
"You either know what you stand for, or you don't," Praget said.
"Relevance, Chairman, relevance--please instruct the Senator to be
relevant or yield. The petition is offered on actions and results, not
motives or intentions."
Rattagagech drew back in surprise. "Senator Praget, your fourth
charge, of incompetence, demands a thorough assessment of the
President's judgment--" "Chairman, permission to amend the petition?"
Beruss nodded. "As you wish."
"I strike and withdraw the fourth article in its entirety," Praget
said, then looked at Rattagagech. "Are you finished now?"
The Elomin showed a peevish expression. "In light of the amendment,
Chairman, I have no
further questions for Princess Leia."
"Very well," said Beruss. "Senator Fey'lya." sault, the killing blow,
to come from Borsk Fey'lya.
Praget's obvious eagerness to give the Bothan the floor only confirmed
that expectation. But Fey'lya changed direction abruptly, leaving
their expectations falling to the floor as dust.
"President Organa Solo," Fey'lya said, smiling politely.
"I'm sorry we've had to take up so much of your time at such a critical
juncture. I have just one question for you this morning. If you could
revisit any of these decisions of the last several days, with no more
knowledge than was available to you the first time, would you change
any of them?"
Leia blinked in surprise--Fey'lya might as well have laid his coat
across a puddle for her. Praget gaped, then fell into a coughing
fit.
"No, Senator," Leia said, unable to see a trap. "I believe we were
right to demand that the Yevetha withdraw, and that I consulted
properly with the Defense Council before doing so. I believe we were
right to try to enforce the ultimatum with a blockade, and that I
consulted properly with the Supreme Commander before doing so. I
believe we were right to respond to the Yevethan ambush immediately