Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 03_ Tyrant's Test - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [69]
Nil Spaar directed his gaze out at the great vessel beneath and before him, noting how the unfiltered light of N’zoth’s golden sun made lines and edges gleam like burnished metal.
“Then what course do you now counsel to remove the infection from these stars?” he asked at last.
“We have not managed to make them fear us,” said Tal Fraan. “But there are already shadows they will not enter. And the greatest of these is the fear that the horrors of the past will be repeated. The strength of her challengers feeds on this fear. We can confirm their prophecies. We can help them to destroy her.”
With more than fifty connected structures and twenty thousand rooms and chambers, the great size and complexity of the Imperial Palace had inspired many stories.
It was said that near the end of construction, eight workers were lost for nearly a month when their comtracker failed. Rumors persisted about a chamber with no doors, sections with a hundred or more rooms that had never been occupied, and the hidden treasure compartment of “the pirate general,” Toleph-Sor.
There were at least eleven offices and nine other rooms with their own true stories of murder, plus the grisly tale of Frona Zeffla, who died at her desk and went undiscovered for more than a year. Longtime staffers recalled how the children of Palpatine’s aides, given free rein to roam at will, played three-day-long games of “Hunter” in the lifts and corridors.
Though much of the old palace had been damaged or destroyed by the clone Emperor’s Force Storm, what survived or had been rebuilt was still easily large enough to either hide in or get lost in. That was a key reason the first administrator had required everyone above the third rank to carry a comlink and to keep it active. Nearly everyone above the third rank required those who served below them to carry them as well.
But Engh’s edict did not apply to Leia, whose comlink was typically off as much as it was on. So at the outset of the Yevethan crisis, Alole and Tarrick had conspired with the security teams to make certain that someone with an active comlink was constantly in touch with the President whenever she was in the Palace.
Alole had had the duty that afternoon, but in a busy moment, Leia had slipped away unannounced through her office’s second exit. The aide did not discover the President’s absence until General Rieekan’s red-border alert pushed everything else off the comm displays throughout the suite.
Her first call was to The Sniffer, who should have been standing by at the only entrance to the executive level. “Are you with the President?” Alole asked.
“No, ma’am. She has not left the floor.”
Next Alole paged Tarrick, who by then had already heard about the alert. “Have you seen the President?”
“No. She’s not with you?” he asked.
“She scampered sometime in the last half hour.”
“I’ll query the spotters,” said Tarrick, referring to their private list of nine offices and seven ministry officials it was Leia’s habit to visit. “Have you looked in the cave?”
“I’m on my way there now.”
Her feet carried her flying down the back corridor toward the little-used private spaces in the adjacent tower. Mon Mothma had used them as an extension of the President’s office, holding private meetings in the small, intimate lounge, taking air and exercise in the sunny garden courtyard. Leia rarely went there—when her office walls closed in on her, the Princess usually preferred to escape the executive level entirely.
But that was where Alole found her—dead asleep on the triangular corner bed in the privacy room. Looking down on Leia’s peaceful expression, Alole hesitated to wake her. Leia’s fatigue had been obvious to everyone that morning, and this was the first time in many days that she had seen Leia’s face unmarked by tension and frown lines.
Then, sighing, Alole reached out and took hold of the golden-green metal post at the nearest point of the triangle. Shaking