Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 04_ Exile - Aaron Allston [73]
Her voice quiet, as though she was hesitant to speak up in this exalted company, Myri said, “It also scattered the Jedi.”
Leia frowned. “What?”
Myri looked uncomfortable. “Well, it didn’t scatter the Jedi, really. I mean, the Jedi Council on Coruscant wasn’t affected. But if you look at family ties, which have made so much of a difference over the years with the Solo-Skywalker extended family, one minute you were all together, and then, boom, you were scattered across the galaxy. Some of you at odds. It was like a secret grenade.”
Leia and Han exchanged a suspicious look, and Iella regarded her daughter with interest.
“That’s an interesting interpretation,” Leia said. Her tone suggested caution, reserve. “I hadn’t considered that as a factor.”
Myri, her idea not having been shot down by the accumulated aces, began to look more comfortable. “At school, we were taught the follow the principle. Follow the money. Follow the lover. Follow the resources. The trick is sometimes in identifying the resources.”
Corran had been nodding ever since the first follow the left Myri’s lips. “You’re saying the Solo-Skywalker clan is a significant resource, and that it has been eliminated.”
“Yes.”
Leia wasn’t able to keep a little anger out of her voice. “We have not been eliminated.”
“Not as individuals, no.” Corran gave her a sympathetic look but didn’t yield. “But as a family—tell me that you can send out a call, as you could have done six months ago, and focus the attention and skills of your entire family on a single problem or enemy. Tell me that.”
Leia thought about it, then seemed to wilt just a little. “I can’t.”
“You’ve been taken out of the picture. As a united force.” Corran gave Myri a little nod of respect. “Good work, girl.”
“Thanks.” Myri seemed both pleased and uncomfortable with the praise. “So maybe we assume that breaking your family into pieces that don’t fit together anymore was one of the puppet master’s major goals. Because in the long run, if recent galactic history is any evidence, that will make a big, big difference.”
“And you’ve got to put that clan back together again,” Lando said.
Han couldn’t keep the pain from his face or his voice when he said, “I’m not sure it’s possible. I’m not sure some of the pieces will ever fit together again.”
“Lando’s right, though.” Leia’s expression became set, determined. “Han, we’ve been concentrating on the wrong things. Proving our innocence, figuring out which of Dur Gejjen’s cronies need to go down when he does…none of that is really important, not compared with fixing things. I think we need to give up on the Corellian conspirators—”
“At least,” Wedge interrupted, “until the war trials.”
“Right. Give up on the conspirators, relegate the puppet master to secondary importance, and concentrate on solving the real problems. Putting the Skywalkers and Solos back into play as a united front.”
“Sure, why not?” Han offered a crooked smile. “All Luke and Mara have to do is get themselves exiled, too. And then we can cruise the spaceways as one big, happy family.”
But something in his eyes suggested he had left something unsaid, and Lando was pretty sure he knew what it was: Except for Jacen.
Dozens of decks below, a small cargo craft rose into the main hangar bay of the Errant Venture.
It wasn’t a pretty vehicle. About forty meters in length from bow to stern, it had a front end—its main cargo hull—that was as elegant and aerodynamic as a thick nerf steak cut into a rectangle and stood up on its edge. Behind that, constituting about a third of the length of the craft, was the maneuvering shaft, a low cylinder housing the main thrusters and the servos that positioned the maneuvering fins, long wing-like surfaces that stretched laterally from the shaft.
In short, it looked like the mutant offspring of a bird and a brick, reengineered by Verpines to fly