• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Mon Mothma! She never said a word about this—”

“She found the machinery of the New Republic unwieldy when it came to certain aspects of statecraft—getting information into the right hands, projecting policy into ambiguous situations. I try to address those shortcomings.”

“Who do you answer to?”

“The same as you do, Princess—the same as anyone at our level does,” Drayson said. “I answer to my conscience and my sense of duty. And yes, if either ever fails us, we can do a great deal of harm—and probably hide most of it, too. But that’s all there is, isn’t it? Conscience or obedience. Leader or follower. Whose orders do you obey?” He pointed at the datacard. “Who will tell you what to do about that? You see? Conscience and duty.” He bowed again. “Good evening, Princess.”

She let him go.

Turning back to her datapad, Leia watched the recording a second time and then a third. The images were sharp and unambiguous. The design of the ships was distinctive and incriminating. Yevethan colonists were setting up housekeeping on a world which one day earlier had belonged to the Kubaz.

Leia dug her comlink out of the drawer where she had thrown it the night before and selected a familiar channel. “Han,” she said. “You can stop hiding from me now. Where are you? Please—come talk to me.”

“Murderers,” Han muttered as he watched the recording from Doornik-319. He shook his head disbelievingly. “I’ve been around enough to see some cold moves pulled, but killing a family one day and moving into their house the next is right up there with anything our old buddy Palpatine ever thought up.”

Leia nodded. “I’m beginning to wonder if the greatest indignity that the Empire subjected the Yevetha to wasn’t holding them to a higher standard of behavior,” she said.

“Now, that’s a picture, isn’t it? The Emperor’s stormtroopers setting the example for good manners,” Han said. “Like arming protocol droids with blasters.”

He tried to win a smile from her, but she had looked away to gaze at the map of Koornacht Cluster displayed on the main screen, and he turned his attention there as well. “Look at what they’ve done—it makes no sense at all,” he said. “It’s not like any of these settlements were crowding the League worlds. Or that real estate is getting scarce in there.”

“I’m afraid it makes perfect sense,” said Leia, propping her chin on folded hands. “So much of what he said sounds different to me now—almost as though he lied to me with the truth. ‘What we want more than anything is to be left alone.’ I remember that clearly, from the first time we met. He mentioned how strange it was to see so many different species. He told me the Yevetha didn’t need our protection.”

“No,” said Han. “It was the Kubaz who needed protection.”

“He as much as told me that, too,” said Leia. “He said it was his mission to protect his people—and he did. He kept them inside that ship, safely away from us. He controlled his own exposure to us—as though he were afraid of contamination. That’s why those setdements were destroyed, Han. This wasn’t a boundary war, or a matter of competing territorial claims. It was an act of revulsion.”

Han looked dubious. “Maybe so. But there’s something else, too. Look at the results. Doornik-319 sits nearly on a line between Coruscant and N’zoth, just where you’d want a forward base. These other targets—it’s like they burned a firebreak between themselves and all of us.”

She reached out and touched the point of light that was Doornik-319. “Or dug a moat. Complete with gate and drawbridge, maybe.”

“Yeah,” said Han. “So what are you going to do?”

Withdrawing her finger, Leia shook her head slowly. “It seems as though it’s already all over. All I can see to do now is try to make sure Nil Spaar stays on his side of the moat. Protect the settlements that haven’t been torched—Galatos, Wehttam, The Marais.” She looked up at Han. “I’m going to have to send the Fifth Fleet back to Farlax.”

“I thought that might happen,” Han said. “I left the Fleet at readiness high—no shore leaves, no major