Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [240]
“When do you plan to return to Bastion space?” Han asked, sipping from his drink.
“Within a standard day, Captain. Which is why I was pleased to learn that you were available to visit with me on such short notice.”
“Eager to get back to your garden?” Leia asked.
“If time permits. I will have much to do, convincing some of the Moffs of the wisdom of participating openly in the Alliance. I never took the time to marry and raise a family. But I have my garden, and I tend to that as I might have my children. I may even allow a bit of randomness, a bit of ‘nature’ to enter, and stay my hand from culling the weak and unfit from the rows.”
Han laughed shortly. “A little disorder never hurt.”
“It certainly never seemed to hurt you, Captain Solo.”
“That’s only ’cause turmoil and me reached an accord a long time ago.”
“Well, perhaps I’ll attempt to do the same.” Pellaeon moved to the viewport that looked out on Coruscant. “In any event, I never realized how much I missed the Core—and Coruscant in particular. Returning here after so long a time, even under such circumstances, has made me reflect on my career, and on all the events that have ensued since the Battle of Endor.” He turned from the view to look at Han and Leia. “I feel that you have been instrumental in giving me back something I had lost, and I want to do the same for you.”
Leia smiled graciously. “That’s really not necessary, Admiral.”
Pellaeon waved his hand in dismissal. “It’s just a little something.”
Lifting a remote control from the table, he aimed the device at a screen, which folded against the cabin’s inner bulkhead to reveal the object he had been saving as a surprise. It was a moss-painting by the late Alderaanian artist Ob Khaddor, depicting a tempestuous sky sweeping over a city of pinnacles and, in the foreground a line of insectoid figures, representing the vanished species that had inhabited Alderaan prior to human colonization.
Leia stared, speechless.
“And we thought you just wanted to give us another hyperspace comm antenna,” Han said in astonishment.
Killik Twilight had once hung outside Leia’s bedroom in House Organa on Alderaan. At the time of the planet’s destruction by the Death Star, the moss-painting had been presumed destroyed, but in fact it had been returning to Alderaan as part of a traveling museum exhibit. Hidden within the painting’s moisture-control apparatus was the key to a vital Rebel Alliance spy code, which had continued to be used in the post–Galactic Civil War years to communicate with agents deep inside Imperial-held territory. Four years after the Battle of Endor, when the painting had suddenly surfaced and been put up for auction on Tatooine, Han and Leia—recently married—had attempted to retrieve it. After changing hands several times, however, Ob Khaddor’s apocryphal work had ended up aboard the Chimaera, in the possession of none other than Grand Admiral Thrawn, whose collection of priceless artworks was already extensive.
Aside from being an emotional link to Leia’s childhood with her adoptive parents, the painting had added significance for both her and Han. Khaddor’s execution of the Killiks left their reaction to the approaching darkness open to interpretation. Where Leia had seen the Killiks as running from the darkness, Han saw the insectoid race as turning toward the storm. He had interpreted the painting as an admonition that darkness could be defeated by meeting it squarely and shattering it with light, and when Leia had ultimately accepted Han’s view, it had allowed her to reconcile her ongoing confliction over the fact that Anakin Skywalker, her actual father, and Darth Vader had been one and the same person. In turn, the reconciliation had allowed her to emerge from the shadow of the Sith Lord, and decide to have children.
“Gilad,” Leia said at last, “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”
Pellaeon smiled. “It is one of the