Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 07_ Conviction - Aaron Allston [22]
CORUSCANT
“SOMETIMES I THINK THIS PLANET IS NOTHING BUT A HELLHOLE.” Chief of State Natasi Daala’s voice was unusually soft, subdued.
But that was appropriate in this place. It was late at night in the medcenter. The brilliant, horizontal streaming lights of Coruscant’s endless airspeeder traffic, outside the high-altitude chamber’s viewport, were not accompanied by traffic roar; the room’s sound insulation kept that noise at bay. Yet the streaks’ steadiness and beauty were actually soothing. Faint light from dimmed overhead glow rods suffused the chamber, turning stark medical whites into calming grays, turning machinery-packed walls and corners into shadows illuminated by unblinking star-like glows.
And turning the bed’s badly wounded occupant into what plausibly looked like someone who was merely asleep.
Admiral Nek Bwua’tu, head of the Galactic Alliance Navy, lay as he had for so long, unmoving, faceup. A sheet covered and concealed his still-healing injuries. One arm lay exposed across his chest. Not long before, it had ended a bit below the elbow. Now it was complete again, the prosthetic hand and forearm indistinguishable from a naturally furry organic limb, except for the band of very short fur where the prosthetic had been joined to flesh—his fur had yet to grow in, completing the illusion that his arm was undamaged.
An aging Bothan, he was strong and resolute, one of Daala’s few confidants.
And she could confide in him even now. But he could not hear, could not answer, while he remained in his coma.
She continued, though, as if he were an active part of the conversation. “What amazes me is the struggle for power. I don’t mean the jockeying to discredit a rival for a Senate seat or the rank of general. They constitute real power, worth real effort and risk. I’m talking about the way people will resort to the same viciousness for nothing. The office martinet who’s willing to make lifelong enemies just so he can win the right to apportion the monthly allotment of datachips. The personal assistant who doles out the right to appointments with her obscure, irrelevant, powerless boss just so she can curry favor with people equally meaningless.” She shook her head, a slow motion at odds with her usually brisk personality. “You’d think that they’d proportion their efforts to the value of the reward, but no. Treachery can be just as great when it’s for control of a caf cart as when it’s for control of an empire.”
Nek didn’t answer. He lay, eyes closed, this being in the midst of the hours when his eyes were scheduled for rest rather than data stimulation. His thoughts remained locked away in the damaged compartments of his mind.
Knowing that she was not under observation, for there was no one else in the chamber and her own security team swept the location prior to every one of her frequent visits, she reached out and put a hand on his chest, on the fur above the blanket’s hem. She felt the slow, shallow rise and fall of his breath. “I’m going to stay the course, Nek. I’m going to crush the ones who pursue power. Leaders of the slave rebellions, who simply want to rule where others ruled before. Politicians who look on good men and women as nothing but meat standing in their way … or as disposable assets. Jedi, with their lawless arrogance. I’ll crush them, and you’ll come back to me, and together we’ll figure out how to crush them for good. How to make them pay for their self-interest. Self-indulgence.”
There was a single rap at the chamber door, the signal from one of her security detail that someone was coming, someone they weren’t supposed to intercept. Daala jerked her hand back.
She was standing, posture-perfect, demeanor icy, when the door lifted and Desha Lor entered.
A female Twi’lek, green-skinned with darker stripes on her head-tails, she wore a blue gown that set off her skin color attractively. One of her brain-tails, or lekku, was wrapped