Before the Storm - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [11]
Leia quickly turned her head away, struggling to control her expression, and to conceal the struggle. The stunned silence was broken by embarrassed coughing and the squirming, shuffling sounds of officers and Council members shifting uncomfortably in their seats.
“Chairman! Chairman Behn-kihl-nahm!” Senator Tolik Yar exclaimed, finding his voice at last. “I want him reprimanded! I want him brought before the Review! This is intolerable. The Seventh must send someone else to represent it. Intolerable, do you hear?”
“We all hear, Senator Yar,” Behn-kihl-nahm said in his most silken, soothing voice as he moved toward Leia. “President Organa, allow me to apologize for Senator Peramis’s regrettable lapse—”
Tolik Yar snorted. “Why not apologize for the Emperor’s regrettable lapses as well? It would mean about as much.”
Behn-kihl-nahm ignored the comment. “You may remember, Princess Leia, that the hand of the Empire fell heavily on Walalla. Tig Peramis remembers all too well. He was only a boy, watching his world conquered, his people’s spirit destroyed. The memories fill him with a passion which inspires his diligence but betrays his good sense. I will speak with him. I am sure he already regrets his intemperate words.”
Behn-kihl-nahm’s exit was the cue for the room to empty. The others nearly fell over each other in their eagerness to excuse themselves, the ritual etiquette of salutes, congratulations, and good wishes so rushed that it took on the flavor of farce. Almost before she knew it, Leia was alone with Admiral Ackbar.
As she lifted a weary face to Ackbar’s sympathetic gaze, she attempted a wry smile. “I thought that went well—didn’t you?”
Just then, an image of General A’baht appeared on the primary display screen. “Etahn A’baht, reporting to Fleet Ops, Coruscant, with copy to president of the Senate,” the image said. “Live-fire exercise Hammerblow satisfactorily concluded. Detailed report on casualties, deficiencies, and the performance of individual commands to follow. Recommend that the Fifth Defense Task Force be considered operational this date.” Then the display went dark.
Ackbar nodded, and clasped Leia’s shoulder with one large hand in a friendly and comforting gesture. “Well enough, Madame President,” he said. “Better to face bitter words than to face more fighting and dying. I think we have all had enough of that for a lifetime.”
She stared out the doorway through which Peramis had exited. “How could he be so foolish?” she asked plaintively. “After Palpatine, Hethrir, Durga, Daala, Thrawn—one after another, with hardly enough time in between to heal the wounds and patch the hulls—how could he think we love war so much?”
“I have found that most foolishness begins with fear,” said Ackbar.
“I’m not accustomed to being feared.” Leia shook her head. “Especially for no reason. It makes me angry.”
Ackbar grunted sympathetically. “I intend to go to my quarters and bite the head off a frozen ormachek. I suggest you go home and find something ugly to smash.”
Leia laughed tiredly and patted Ackbar’s hand. “I just may do that. You know, I think we still have that Calamari blessing pot you gave Han and me at our wedding—”
Chapter 2
A hot, humid, breeze blew across the crown of Temple Atun, the steepest of the ruined temples of the Massassi on Yavin 4. Luke Skywalker turned his face into the wind and looked out over the vibrant jungle that stretched unbroken to the horizon. The enormous orange disk of the gas giant Yavin dominated the sky, hanging just above the edge of the world as its fourth moon turned toward night.
Even after five years, Luke found it a compelling, nearly overwhelming sight. He had grown up on Tatooine, where the only stars in the night were pale speckles of white on a black canvas, and where the terrible daytime heat came from two disks he could easily block from view