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It was four minutes of hell. The Yevethan fighters were fast and lethal, and the outnumbered E-wings couldn’t hold them off. Red Three was picked off returning from its bomb dump. Red Five took a hit on the port wing and another just behind the cockpit, and exploded in flames just before it reached the cover umbrella of the cruiser Gallant. Blue Flight fared even worse—only one of the bombers made it back to the comparative safety of Indomitable’s hangar bays.

Helmet under his arm, his eyes hollow and his face drawn, Esege Tuketu stood near the flight boss as the casualties were posted on the status board. Jojo. Keek. Dopey and the Bear. Pacci. Nooch.

When Miranda’s name went up, he no longer could stand the bloody litany and turned and slipped away.

With his skin cold and pale, General A’baht watched from the bridge of Intrepid as variations on the same theme played out all over the battle zone.

Every attack bomber, every cover fighter, every capital ship from both Task Force Aster and Task Force Blackvine received a continuous broadcast of hostage appeals on every comm channel used by the Fleet. Enough gunners hesitated and enough pilots turned away that not a single Yevethan capital ship was touched.

And in the retreat—both the confused one that started spontaneously and the official one he ordered minutes later—nineteen of the Fleet’s small warbirds were destroyed. A hangar fire on the carrier Venture consumed fourteen more and left all three portside bays unusable. The cruiser Phalanx took a bow shot while pulling a crippled E-wing inside its shields with a tractor beam, and the damage went all the way back to the number 14 bulkhead.

The cost in lives, counting the loss of Trenchant, ran to well over a thousand.

But the full cost of the defeat went far beyond that, A’baht knew. And the ultimate cost in blood was beyond measuring.

They are not afraid of us. They are not afraid of dying. There is nothing we can use to restrain their behavior but force—the war we didn’t want to fight.

Intrepid lingered, hidden in the glare of Doornik 319’s star, while the Fifth Fleet forces jumped out of the system in ones and twos. Only when the carrier was the last ship remaining did A’baht turn away from the view-screens and descend to the main bridge on unsteady legs.

“Captain Morano,” he said. “Take us out of here.”

Behn-kihl-nahm walked the empty Memorial Corridor with long, impatient strides. Two maintenance engineers, neither accustomed to moving at that pace, struggled to keep up with him.

At the end of the corridor he turned right, stopping under the sign over the entrance to the Senate Hall. He glanced up at it only briefly, reading it with a sigh in his heart.

1000 DAYS WITHOUT

A SHOT FIRED IN ANGER

Remember,

Peace Is No Accident

Then the chairman turned and looked back, waiting for the maintenance men to join him. When they did, Behn-kihl-nahm pointed up at the sign.

“Turn it off,” he said. “Take it down. Take it away.”

One of the engineers squinted up at the sign. “Do you want it put in the Senate storeroom?”

Behn-kihl-nahm shook his head. “No. Just get it out of here, now. We won’t have any more use for it.”

Then he hurried away from the broken dream and toward the Defense Council hearing chamber. The emergency meeting on the situation in Koornacht Cluster was waiting on his arrival to begin.

Chapter 14

The Senate messenger at the gate to the President’s residence was as determined to be admitted as the security droid was determined to bar him from entering.

“I don’t care what your protocols say—I am here on the authority of the acting chairman of the Ruling Council of the Senate, and my instructions are explicit,” the messenger was saying as Leia approached the gate from the inner walk. “I must deliver this message, and I may only deliver it into the hands of the Princess herself.”

“Very well. Here I am,” Leia said.

“Princess,” the messenger said, turning quickly and bowing his head slightly. “I apologize for the disruption—”

“It’s not your fault,