Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [121]
Karathas blinked. Finally, her face resumed the hard angles and planes that had characterized it for most of her adulthood. “General, I’m within seconds of ordering you to shut up and leave this council.”
“That would be a mistake,” Wedge said. His voice was as hard as Karathas’s had become. “If you did that, you’d prevent me from showing you how to achieve your military objectives without wantonly killing fellow Corellians. And let me point out that Operation Noble Savage, though it would probably divert the population’s outrage from our military to the GA, drastically increases the odds that we will go to war—our population wouldn’t easily back away from further confrontations if all those lives on Tralus remained unavenged, would it?”
Karathas paused. The respect with which most Corellian military officers held Antilles, and the admiral’s own evident discontent with the plan just outlined, obviously kept in check any outrage she might have felt at being addressed in that fashion. Leia felt only so much sympathy for the woman, however. Karathas had bought into a plan that was ghastly. Leia would have had far more respect for her had some other officer, Karathas’s replacement, been explaining this mission—meaning that Karathas had been replaced for her opposition to Noble Savage.
A square of light fell across the table as another of the observation rooms was illuminated from within; its occupant had obviously turned on its interior light so as to be seen from below. Han and Leia looked around the bank of observation booths, but none they could see was now illuminated, meaning that the one they were looking for had to be close to theirs.
Then a voice, electronically amplified, boomed from the room just to their left. “General, am I to understand that the operation I helped design, that I approved and am ready to set into motion, is wanton?”
Leia winced, and Han felt like drawing his blaster. That cutting voice was distinctive, instantly recognizable. It was Thrackan Sal-Solo. Han also felt a little foolish. Of course the Corellian Chief of State would have a viewing chamber near the Five World Prime Minister’s; of course Thrackan would be here to observe this meeting.
Han glanced to the left, toward the source of Thrackan’s voice. On the other side of a thin wall was a man who’d given him grief across decades. He whispered, “It’s sort of like being a kid again. Hiding in your bed because there’s a monster in the closet.”
Despite herself, Leia grinned.
Han mimed drawing his blaster and aiming it at the wall to his left. He wondered how many shots it would take for him to hit Thrackan under these circumstances, and whether he and Leia could get out of the building afterward.
It was probably not wise to try. Not this time. He sighed and mimed reholstering his weapon.
Wedge turned to face Sal-Solo’s viewport, meaning he was staring almost directly up into Han and Leia’s, as well. “No, sir,” he said. “As I’m sure your protocol droid is now telling you, my use of the word wanton referred to the unnecessary deaths of so many of our kinfolk and fellow citizens. And there’s the additional factor that, while this group might be able to maintain for years the terrible secret that we were responsible for those deaths, we wouldn’t be able to keep it forever. Secrets, like hydraulic fluids, have a nasty habit of seeping out into the open just when it’s worst for everybody.”
Sal-Solo’s voice boomed again: “Was that a threat, Antilles?”
Wedge made a dismissive