Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 05_ Allies - Christie Golden [157]
“I’ve no reason to refuse Admiral Niathal’s request. Subject closed.”
Cha Niathal, dead, too, now. The ghosts were lively in this snippet of the past. The recorded Tahiri sighed softly, then there came another rustling sound.
“Please, Admiral, just do it.” A click. The safety catch was now off. There were enough beings in the room who were familiar with blasters that a slight gasp rippled through the room as the sound was recognized. “Call off your fleet and give Jacen Solo a chance. He needs to win at Fondor.”
“Win …”
“Destroy its capacity to threaten the GA again. It’s a practical matter but it also shows the rest of the galaxy how high the stakes are for them.”
Tahiri resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands. She’d forgotten just how it all sounded. At the time, it had made sense, but now—
The jury members were turning to look at her, not bothering to hide their stares. Some of them had disgust and contempt on their faces. Others were confused. Still others looked betrayed, as if this was a personal attack. And Tahiri supposed it was. Eramuth had led the jury on a journey to get to know Tahiri. To sympathize with her, to see how step by step she had been ruthlessly broken and then just as brutally remade. But that flat voice spouting such things—
“No. I won’t ignore a surrender, and I won’t enable the bombardment of civilian centers afterward, and I will not lend the Empire to a petty despot.”
How would it be possible for any jury to hear those words, and not feel sympathy and admiration for the one who uttered them? How would it be possible for them to then decide that the one who killed that man was not guilty of murder or treason?
“You know you’re going to die.”
Angry murmurs, now, and Tahiri closed her eyes. She did not want to see this anymore. Did not want to watch as a jury that had been growing increasingly sympathetic over the last several days lost that concern in a matter of minutes. Did not want to see Eramuth’s ear twitching. Did not want to see the growing smirk of satisfaction on the prosecuting attorney’s face.
She had not lied. Pellaeon was seconds away from his death—at her hands.
But she was going to die, too. She wondered if Pellaeon in some way understood and felt any satisfaction from beyond the grave. He and Natasi Daala, his old crony, would have the last laugh.
“I’m ninety-two years old. Of course I’m going to die, and quite soon, but it’s how I die that matters to me. Please—get out of my cabin.”
How he died. Tahiri suddenly and painfully thought of Anakin and how he had died. Making a difference. Sacrificing his bright, beautiful life for others. And she was going to die executed, for firing a blaster at a ninety-two-year-old unarmed man.
Jacen had lured her to the dark side with the temptation of love, of sweetness, of a last kiss. What bitter, brutal irony it was that that love, the love of a good and true young man, was the tool that man’s own brother had used to turn Tahiri into someone capable of this.
Suddenly Tahiri was fiercely glad that Anakin Solo was dead—dead and where he could not see this.
She hoped.
She wished with all her being that she had just “gotten out of his cabin.”
The recording continued mercilessly.
“Last chance. All you have to do is call a halt. The Moffs obey you.”
There was a long, heavy silence. Then Pellaeon’s voice.
“Pellaeon to Fleet. Fleet, this is Admiral Pellaeon. I order you to place your vessels at the complete disposal of Admiral Niathal, and take down Jacen Solo, for the honor of the Empire—”
The sound, the inevitable sound, of a blaster being fired, the slam of a body hitting the bulkhead. This time, the gasp was not a ripple throughout the courtroom. It was loud, sincere, accompanied by hands clapped to mouths and angry, wide stares. Then the sounds of shock were hushed, as all present strained to listen to the last words of a good