The Black Fleet Crisis_ Tyrant's Test Part 17

As Han gritted his teeth Tal Fraan peered past him out the viewport at the ma.s.sive Star Destroyer Pride of Yevetha, which had just come into view.

"Such a splendid vessel. The sight of it still inspires my blood,"

he said with open pride. "You should count yourself honored that the viceroy has allowed you to make it your new home."

From the moment Han knew where he was bound, he had been picturing himself alone in one of the tiny isolation cells of a standard Imperial detention block. A Super-cla.s.s Star Destroyer had six such detention blocks for crew discipline alone, and ten additional high-security blocks for enemy prisoners.

But to Han's surprise, his four-guard escort led him to a different part of the s.h.i.+p, and a different sort of prison. Three of the s.h.i.+p's cargo areas had been designed for the secure transport of large numbers of slaves, refugees, or prisoners of war. Located adjacent to the large landing bays used by the SSD's bulk shuttles, each of the holding areas was equipped with minimal facilities--water taps, ventilation, and food dispensers--considered adequate for up to a thousand people.

The holding area to which Han was taken, number two, was not even remotely that crowded. At a glance, Han guessed that there were no more than a hundred prisoners huddled along the walls or sprawled on the hard deck.

Most took little or no notice of his arrival, but a small group, perhaps twenty strong, formed a large, ragged circle around him as he made his way toward a water tap. More than half a dozen species were represented in the circle, and they looked upon him with a mixture of dull-eyed curiosity and suspicion.

"What world are you from?" asked a young woman in a brown fire-scorched caftan. She was either human or Andalese--her tousled hair might have concealed the latter's horn points, and the caftan was shapeless enough to hide the symbiosis grafts.

"Coruscant," said Han. "And you?"

"I was at the Morath pholikite mine number four, on Elcorth."

The others began to crowd closer around him as they recited their own answers.

"Taratan, of the Kubaz, nested at Morning Bell--" "I am Brakka Bar.akas, dothmir of New Brigia--"

"Bek nar walae Ithak e Gotoma--" "Fogg Alait, a.s.signed to Polneye-- " "I am called Noloth by my brothers of the L'at H'kig--" "My home was Kojash. I am known as Jara ba Nylra--" "My stars," said Han, turning slowly, hands raised as though to fend them off. "Are there survivors here from all the colony worlds?"

"All our homes were attacked by the silver spheres," said the woman who had spoken first. "Are we the only survivors?"

"How much longer will we be here?" asked Noloth.

"Do you think we can go home soon?" asked a slender alien who had not spoken before.

Han swept his gaze across their faces. "I don't know," he said uncomfortably. "I'm just like you are--I don't know what's going on out there. "

The days immediately following the presentation to the Senate of a pet.i.tion of recall against President Leia Organa Solo were full of the kind of moments that made Hiram Drayson despair of leaving the government in the hands of civilians.

Moving quickly in the wake of the Ruling Council's vote, both Fleet Intelligence and New Republic Intelligence had intervened to prevent the news of Han's capture by the Yevetha from being released with the pet.i.tion. Stripped of its supporting argument by the blue and silver SECURE seals, the pet.i.tion ought--by all rights--to have foundered on arrival.

But a Ruling Council had never pa.s.sed such a judgment against a Senate President before, and novelty alone gave the pet.i.tion an undeserved gravity. And the threat of prosecution for security violations could do nothing to rein in the rumors and leaks that blossomed to fill the information vacuum.

Within twelve hours, Drayson's information filters had picked up an uncensored copy of Beruss's original complaint, an anonymous interview with one of Tampion's escort pilots, and even a holo that purported to show Jedi "commandos" in training for an imminent rescue mission. When Coruscant Prime led its morning packet with a feature t.i.tled "Where Is Han Solo?" and the New Republic Newsgrid answered with "Princess Leia's Personal War," Drayson knew that the battle had been lost.

"You may as well release everything you have concerning Han,"

Drayson told Ackbar. "At this point, the official silence, the denials, look like admissions that there is something to hide. Leia should be getting a flood of sympathy over Han's situation--but with Borsk Fey'lya leaking everything he can get his hands on, and Doman Beruss appointing himself the champion of the public's right to 'full disclosure,' her stock is dropping almost by the hour. "

"I have urged her to that course," said Ackbar.

"But she is protecting the children--they still do not know what has happened to their father."

"That can't last much longer."

"She is determined not to burden them with the truth," said Ackbar, shaking his head. "Leia has told them that Han is on a secret mission for her, that they are not to believe anything they hear anywhere else.

And Winter is keeping them away from anyone and anything that might contradict Leia's version."

"Children aren't stupid," said Drayson. "Particularly not those children. I expect that they already know quite a bit more than she realizes."

"It would not surprise me," said Ackbar. "But until events force her hand, Leia is determined to protect the children from the knowledge that their father is a prisoner of war. And I have personally promised to support that fiction."

Disgruntled, Drayson retired to his private office with the ever-growing catalog of message packets, grid dispatches, comlink captures, and electronic graffiti a.s.sembled for him by the Maxwell filters that were riding the planet's busy communication channels. Later that afternoon, reports began to come in from his contacts in the palace complex and Fleet headquarters.

By that time, Drayson had already made a decision about what was needed to change the tone and tenor of the public and political consciousness.

His hastily jotted notes to himself read: Must erase the perception of selfish act--replace with the reality of selfless one. This crisis must have another face.

Drayson spent the next hour browsing through the personnel records of the casualties of the engagement at Doornik 319. He marked four of them for further consideration husband-and-wife pilots from the battle cruiser Liberty, a female crew chief who died fighting the hangar fire aboard Venture, and the Ha.s.sarian captain of the ill-fated Trenchant.

Each story had a powerful emotional hook; But their effectiveness in deflecting the focus from Leia and Han would be undercut by the fact that, coming so late in the crisis, all four deaths could be as easily blamed on Leia's actions as on Nil Spaar's. The tragedy was obvious; that the Yevetha were to blame was less so.

So Drayson set the casualty records aside and retrieved his data folders concerning the eight destroyed colonies in Koornacht Cl.u.s.ter, including the stasis probes' doc.u.mentation of the devastation.

a.s.sessing the cold realities of emotional kins.h.i.+p, Drayson knew that the most ready identification would be with the humanoid Brigians, the hard- working Morath miners on Elcorth, and the largely human inhabitants of Polneye.

Which, in the end, brought Drayson to the same place his first instincts had said he must go, hours be-fore--to the young Grannan survivor from Polneye, Plat Mailar. It would have been better if Mallar were human, and of Polneye's historical a.s.sociations were with the Alliance rather than the Empire, but those problems could be dealt with if addressed head on.

The only question remaining was which provider was to receive the benefit of Drayson's gift-wrapped leadline scoop. Over the years, he had cultivated mutu ally helpful relations.h.i.+ps with understanding producers in news organizations of all sizes, but rarely had the material been this hot or the stakes this high. He needed someone who not only would set the proper tone for the copycats hustling to catch up, but who also had the courage to risk a shutdown order, even the seizure of the studio facilities, to break a big story first, In the end, it came down to an old friend or a young idealist, and Drayson settled on the latter.

"Open message to The Life Monitor, blind and secure," he said.

"Personal to Cindel Towani. This is your shopping service. I want to alert you to a special offer, limited availability, your signature required... . " The initial release of the sixty-second issue of The Life Monitor reached fewer than a hundred thousand subscribers, and Belezaboth Ourn, extraordinary counsel of the Paqwepori, was not among them.

But the lead producer of Capitol Scavenger was, and within an hour a licensed crosslink to Towani's feature had appeared in the rolling CS queue. That brought Plat Mallar's story to the attention of nearly half a million more viewers, including the senior night producer for Sunrise and the Senate correspondent for Roll Call.

From there, it was picked up by Coruscant Global and New Republic Primeraboth of which gave as small a nod to Cindel Towani as possible, but ran the audio-video portion of her story uncut. By dawn, Mallar's achingly poignant plea on behalf of the inhabitants of Polneye had reached more than forty million ears on Coruscant and ridden the hypercomm trails to eighty thousand other New Republic worlds.

By midday, it had even reached a dest.i.tute and dispirited Ourn.

Both the flight crew of the wrecked Mother's Valkyrie and his consular staff had long since abandoned him. One by one, they had faced up to the failure and futility of their mission and disappeared, buying cheap pa.s.sage to Paqwepori on their families' credit or with the proceeds from selling mission supplies and equipment in the no-name market halls. Cathacatin, the licensed breeder-keeper, had been the last to go, slaughtering the few remaining toko birds before he departed rather than see them suffer from neglect.

Ourn's continued presence in the diplomatic hostel was strictly a courtesy, for he no longer had either the status or the resources to command a room, much less an entire cottage. First, Mother's Valkyrie was sold for salvage in a lien auction. Then half of the mission's line-of-account was attached by the port authorities as partial payment of the balance of the herthing fees. In the final humiliation, Ourn's appointment was revoked by Ilar Paqwe himself, and the diplomatic account closed.

"You would save your parents from further embarra.s.sment by not returning to the Paqwe dominion," Ourn was advised in the termination notice.

Since that time, Ourn had clung ever more tightly to the frail reed of hope represented by the Yevethan blind-relay transmitter and the promise from Nil Spaar.

If only the viceroy could appease his peers on N'zoth and deliver the thrusts.h.i.+p as he had agreed he would--not only could Ourn repair his savaged reputation at home, but he would have a hundred generals and five hundred senators begging him for a chance to study the Yevethan vessel Ourn clung to that hope against all reason, mining the grids and the gossip in the hostel's courtyards for even the smallest tidbits of information, making himself believe that his next dispatch would be the one by which he would earn the Yevetha's confidence, and his reward.

But when he saw the stories on Plat Mallar's narrow escape from Polneye and Captain Llotta's death at Morning Bell, that hope finally evaporated. There was no escaping the truth--the pretty silver spheres were also deadly wars.h.i.+ps, and Nil Spaar would never receive permission to deliver one to Belezaboth Ourn.

"If only the peace had held a little longer," he said resignedly in the privacy of his room. "If only the Prin cess had not been so stubborn.

She has cost me everything."

He picked up the hypercomm black box and turned it over in his hands.

"So perhaps I shall ask her for my payment. Perhaps this toy is worth more than the words that have pa.s.sed through it."

There were a hundred things Leia should have been doing, a thousand better uses for her energy than lining a garden path with brilliant white sasalea blossoms, one fragrant ball--the size of Anakin's fist--to a planting. It was work a droid could do, work the residence's groundskeeper would have gladly seen to in the mornng.

But none of those other things she might have been doing that evening had half the appeal of burying her hands in the cool, moist soil, crumbling it between her fingers, cradling each sasalea plant gently into its new home. On a day where nothing she had tackled had yielded to her efforts, it was intensely gratifying to take on a task where every element was under her control--spade and earth, stalk and blossom. Her vision, her time, her labor, her triumph, her satisfaction.

It was a small triumph, a minor transformation of a tiny landscape, but it was balm for her whole beingm rea.s.surance that she was, at the end of the day, master of her own world. If you don't believe that what you do matters, it's awfully hard to get up in the morning.

"Princess--" Leia looked up from her work in surprise at the voice.

"Tarrick. What are you doing here?"

"There's someone here--back at the gate, actually-who I thought you might want to see. He came to the office early this afternoon sounding like a typical hem-tugger, and we sent him out on the usual off-list runaround. He came back," said Tarrick. "But the second time, he got to the point. We sent him down to see the moles. When Collomus and his people were done talking to him, we all agreed you should hear what he has to say."

Leia stood, brus.h.i.+ng the dirt from her hands.

"Well--you have me curious. Bring him in."

The visitor was a Paqwe--a short yellow-green alien with a wide carriage and a sway-backed, waddling gait. He was swathed in tattered reception-hall finery and smelled strongly of bitter saks.

"Princess Leia! It is a great honor. I am Belezaboth Ourn, extraordinary counsel of the Paqwepori." Behind him, Tarrick shook his head in a slow, exaggerated fas.h.i.+on.

"I am grateful to you for taking the time to see me."

"Yes, yes," she said impatiently. "What do you want?"

"What I want--no, what I can offer. I think that we can help each other, Princess," he said, taking another step forward. "You are having difficult times with a certain party. It's said there'll be war. I may have some information that could be of use to you."

"It's a little late for word games. Be specific--what information?"

"Not information, exactly," Ourn said. "More a thing. How you can use it, what you can learn from it--that's for you to discover. But I can put it in your hands and tell you everything I know."

"And this thing is--" Ourn produced a small black box from a concealed pocket. "Is a way to send messages to N'zoth--to Nil Spaar.

Completely undetectable, untraceable. By what magic, my engineer could not divine. But you have many scientists--they will find out for you."

It was Leia's turn to take a step forward. "Where did you get this?"

"From the viceroy. His s.h.i.+p destroyed mine, you remember--at East Port, the day he left. He promised me rest.i.tution, but it was an empty promise--" "He gave this box to you before he left?"

"Well, yes, of course."

"And you've been in touch with him since he left?"

"Only to remind him of his promise--" Ourn stopped, realizing the contradictions. "We had an understanding-he was unfaithful. I will help you now."

"How did you help him? By spying for him?"

Ourn swallowed nervously and tried to smile.

"Now, Princess--how many secrets does someone like me know?

Nothing.

Less than nothing. I pretended. I deceived him--" With a single quick stride, Leia closed the distance between them. "You took my husband away from me," she said, and dropped into a Jedi fighting stance.

"Princess, surely--" It took only one blow to silence him, one more to bring him to his knees, and one last to send him sprawling, unconscious. Releasing her breath in a satisfied sigh, Leia stood straight and looked to a startled Tar-rick.

"Thank you for that," Leia said lightly, flexing her hands in front of her. "I just might be able to sleep a little tonight."

Chapter 6.

The spotlight of the next morning's staff strategy session was on the two intelligence chiefs, each of whom had been rudely surprised--and professionally embarra.s.sed---by the previous day's events.

For Admiral Graf, head of Fleet Intelligence, the problem was explaining how the Mallar recording and the holo stills of the destruction at Polneye had escaped Fleet custody. Graf also had to answer for a second, apparently separate, breach of security involving cla.s.sified data from the battle at Doornik 319.

"There are three authorized copies of the Mallar recording," Graf said.

"One here, one in the Fleet system, and one in the hands of the Threat a.s.sessment Office--plus a locked copy in the Fleet archives. We also found two unauthorized copies in private data s.p.a.ces within the Fleet system and are looking for others."

"Does that mean you have two suspects?" Leia asked.

"No," said Graf. "The thinking right now is that those look like innocent violations. But we're continuing to backtrace the access logs for all six copies. We've already interviewed everyone who had access to the Palace copy-- " "No, you haven't," Leia interrupted.

"Excuse me?"

"You haven't talked to me," she said.

"Well, of course, I presumed that any use you made of this item--"

"How do you know I didn't put a copy on my datapad and take it home? How do you know I didn't make a copy and give it away?"

Graf frowned, fl.u.s.tered. "That seems a very um likely scenario--"

"Did you talk to Mole? Tarrick? No one can work in my office without high-level clearances."

"We did not," he admitted. "Your office was exempted from the interview list."