Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 02_ Shield of Lies - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [100]
The private door was open to Han, of course. And Mon Mothma, who had chosen to distance herself from the Palace since her close call with an assassin led to her giving up the office. Nanaod Engh, who had not quite become a friend, but whose duties made him an everyday visitor. Behn-kihl-nahm, though he was too well-mannered not to observe the protocols of high office. Tarrick and Alole. And Ackbar.
Or so it had been before the Yevethan matter had escalated to a crisis. But Ackbar had been jarred by the discovery that he was locked out of the President’s residence, his key disabled, his status as a member of the family suddenly withdrawn. So he had chosen to approach the President’s suite on level fifteen through the front door, and tried to prepare himself for another rebuff.
But the security guards outside the suite made no move to stop Ackbar, and though the staff inside showed some slight surprise at seeing him there, no one moved to bar him from the back rooms.
“Good morning, Admiral,” Alole said, looking up from her greatdesk with a smile. “Go right on in—she’s in her conference room, reviewing last week’s Senate debate.”
When he reached the doorway from the office to the conference room, Ackbar hesitated. Leia was standing at the end of the room with her back to him, hugging herself as she looked up at her holoviewer. The image on the screen was of Senator Tuomi. His tone was earnestly reasonable, his words subtly inflammatory.
“Is this door still open to me?” Ackbar’s voice boomed in the confined space.
Leia turned away from Tuomi only long enough to steal a look back over her shoulder. “If you didn’t have to shoot your way past Tarrick, then the door’s still open.”
“I shall try to remember to take a cue from the presence of weapons in the reception area.”
Pausing the playback of the recording, Leia turned toward Ackbar. “Did you really think you might not be welcome here?”
“We have not had a chance to talk since you returned, and we only spoke once while you were away—a short and businesslike conversation, as I recall,” Ackbar said. “Before that—well, I am not sure that I would have been included in the meeting the night of the pirate broadcast if it had been convenient to exclude me. I have been afraid to try my key again.”
“Then you haven’t seen Han, either? I told him to tell you it was fixed. And here I thought it was me you were avoiding,” Leia said, coming to where he stood and hugging him. “I can’t stay angry at you for long. And besides—you’re one of the few people I’ve told myself I have to keep listening to, even when I am angry at you.”
Patting Leia on the back with one large hand, Ackbar sighed. “That is good to know.”
“I’ve missed you,” she said, easing out of the embrace. “Anakin misses you. No one on the staff’s caught sight of you for days. What have you been up to?”
“I have been preoccupied,” Ackbar said, and gestured toward the viewer. “Why are you bothering with this? It can’t be pleasant to hear yourself be talked about that way, and I cannot see the use of it.”
Leia glanced back over her shoulder at Tuomi’s face. “I suppose I have a morbid curiosity about whether anything is considered out of bounds.”
“ ‘Greed has no limits, envy no boundaries, in the heart of a petty man.’ A favorite quote from Toklar, a much-quoted Mon Calamari philosopher,” Ackbar added.
“Was he also the one who said, ‘Don’t look back—something may be gaining on you’?” Leia asked lightly.
“I do not believe so,” Ackbar said. “But Toklar did write, ‘One sting is remembered longer than a thousand caresses.’ For every voice that supported Tuomi’s challenge, there were a hundred saying it was foolish, unjust, and cruel. Listen to them instead.”
“I’m not offended for myself,” Leia said, pointing her controller at the holoviewer and ending the projection. “But it’s hurtful to those of us who are left to hear Alderaan spoken of that