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He smiled inwardly. It took a great deal to shock Jaxton, and the man was now staring like a slack-jawed idiot. Parova, too, looked startled, but she managed not to gape, and a small smile turned up the corners of her full lips. Stavin Thaal revealed his surprise only with a quick flash of his pale blue-gray eyes; otherwise, his expression remained unchanged.

“You’re the mastermind behind this?” Parova asked.

“Mastermind is not quite the correct word.” Lecersen nodded to the droid, who poured him another cup of caf. “You should all know by now that I make it my business to know what is going on in as many places as possible. One never knows when the perfect opportunity will arise. Intelligence reached me some time ago that there were small, isolated events involving rebelling slaves on a few distant worlds. Nothing that would attract any real attention from anyone. When I looked into it, I realized that it could potentially be turned to my advantage.”

“Unleashing this madness on the galaxy?” Jaxton’s voice was rising. “This is something I’d expect from the Solos, or someone else of that temperament, not from a Moff!”

Lecersen refused to let Jaxton’s sputtering rattle him. “Think about it,” he said. “Think of what a fire wasps’ nest it could become for any politician who had to deal with it—especially someone who opted to come down on the quote-unquote morally wrong side of the situation. Someone like Daala.”

Jaxton’s expression changed. “Ah, now I see.”

“Mmmm. When Senator Treen first approached me,” Lecersen continued, “she very wisely recommended that we have a crisis ready to erupt at some point. What was it you said, my dear? You were working on some useful potential crises, and perhaps I could, as well?”

“Indeed, I believe that was precisely how I phrased it.”

“Well. It turned out I had a perfect crisis all ready to erupt.”

“So … it was in existence before, but now you’re running this show?” Jaxton pressed. “What happens if it is traced back to you?”

“As I believe I just said, no, I’m not running the show, and tracing anything back to me would be quite impossible. I organized a few things at the outset, and then let it do what it would. The late little Devaronian interviewer who was so passionate about the Freedom Flight had it quite right—the chain of command is clear only for a few links.” He sighed, glancing at his caf.

It had worked splendidly—for a while. The attempted assassination of Admiral Nek Bwua’tu, which Lecersen, Bramsin, and Jaxton had also arranged when it became clear that he would not willingly join with them, coincided beautifully with the greatest surge of the various uprisings. At first, Lecersen had lamented that Bwua’tu had survived, but the tension that the coma coverage had generated in the public eye had also played into their hands.

Daala had made some bad choices while under both of these pressures. She had brought in Mandos, generating sympathy for the Jedi, whose Temple had been laid siege to, and the other worlds, such as Blaudu Sextus, when she had ruthlessly put down the rebellions. The attack on Bwua’tu had also kept her from thinking as clearly as Lecersen knew she could.

Despite those auspicious moments, however, the pesky Freedom Flight had taken on a life of its own. Like a child, it had outgrown its original form and was asserting its independence. There was no way Lecersen could manipulate or even direct anything at this point.

“It pains me to admit that it has gotten rather beyond our control. But not all plans perform perfectly, and it has done a great deal of damage to Daala’s administration. If those inconsiderate slaves had stopped there, all would have been well, but alas, the GA is now being flooded by shiny new advocates for their worlds.”

“Ah, ah,” Treen chided cheerily, “there can be opportunities there too, Drikl. Every cloud has a silver lining.”

“And nearly every world has someone who can be corrupted,” added Parova. “Such as Kameron Suldar, if all goes well.