Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 02_ Dark Apprentice - Kevin J. Anderson [6]
It seemed that whenever Leia tried to spend a week, a day, even an hour alone with her family, something interrupted. She seethed inside each time, unable to show her feelings because she had to wear a calm political mask.
In her younger days Leia had devoted her life to the Rebellion; she had worked behind the scenes as a princess of Alderaan, as Senator Bail Organa’s daughter; she had fought against Darth Vader and the Emperor, and more recently against Grand Admiral Thrawn. Now, though, she felt torn between her duties as Minister of State and her duties as Han Solo’s wife and as mother to three children. She had allowed the New Republic to come first. This time. Again.
Beside her in the cockpit Admiral Ackbar moved his amphibious hands fluidly as he manipulated several control levers. “Dropping out of hyperspace now,” he said in his gravelly voice.
The salmon-colored alien seemed perfectly comfortable in his white uniform. Ackbar swiveled his gigantic glassy eyes from side to side, as if to take in every detail of his craft. Through the hours of their journey, Leia had not seen him fidget once.
He and the other inhabitants of the watery world Calamari had suffered much under the Empire’s iron grip. They had learned how to be quiet, yet listen to every detail, how to make their own decisions, and how to act upon them. Working as a loyal member of the Rebellion, Ackbar himself had been instrumental in developing the B-wing class of starfighters that had taken such a huge toll on the Imperial TIE fighters.
As Leia watched him pilot the stretched-out, cumbersome-looking fighter, Ackbar seemed an integral part of the gangly craft that appeared to be all wings and turbolaser turrets mounted around a dual cockpit. Ackbar’s crew of fishlike Calamarians, led by his chief starship mechanic, Terpfen, had expanded the former one-man craft into Ackbar’s personal diplomatic shuttle, adding a single passenger seat.
Through the curved dome of the cockpit windows, Leia watched as multicolored knots of hyperspace evaporated into a star-strewn panorama. The sublight engines kicked in, and the B-wing streaked toward the planet Vortex.
Leia’s dress uniform felt damp and clingy, and she tried to adjust the folds of slick fabric to make herself more comfortable. As Ackbar concentrated on the approach to Vortex, Leia pulled out her pocket holopad, laying the flat silvery plate on her lap.
“Beautiful,” she said, peering out the viewport to the planet beneath them. The blue and metallic-gray ball hung alone in space, moonless. Its atmosphere showed complex embroideries of cloudbanks and storm systems, racing spirals of clouds that swirled in horrendous gales.
Leia remembered her astronomical briefings about Vortex. The sharp tilt of the planet’s axis produced severe seasonal changes. At the onset of winter, a vast polar cap formed rapidly from gases that froze out of the atmosphere. The sudden drop in pressure caused immense air currents, like a great flood going down a drain; clouds and vapor streamed southward in a battering ram to fill the empty zone where the atmosphere had solidified.
The Vors, hollow-boned humanoids with a rack of lacy wings on their backs, went to ground during storm season, taking shelter in half-buried hummock dwellings. To celebrate the winds, though, the Vors had established a cultural festival renowned throughout the galaxy.…
Deciding to review the details one more time before they landed and the diplomatic reception began, Leia touched the icons etched into the synthetic marble frame of her datapad. It would not do for the New Republic’s Minister of State to make a political faux pas.
A translucent image shimmered and grew out of the silvery screen in a miniaturized projection of the Cathedral of Winds. Defying the hurricane gales that thrashed through their atmosphere, the Vors had built a tall ethereal structure that had resisted the fierce storm winds for centuries.