• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The bed, a large, soft mattress, piled high with pillows and blankets, was the safest place in their quarters. She and Han spent much time in the chamber, and she felt his presence strongly there. No one else came into the room without invitation, not even the children.

Sometimes she felt as though it was the only place she could be herself.

On this afternoon, she was there because it was the only place she could be completely alone and undisturbed. She also felt that she needed Han’s presence, however superficially, while she studied the hard copies in front of her.

The election results.

From Gno’s expression when he had called that morning to let her know they had arrived, she had known the news was bad. She had asked for hard copies, and then retreated to her rooms. If she had remained in her office, she would have been bombarded by well-wishers, worriers, and gloaters. She needed time to process the information on her own.

The elections had been held quickly, just as she had planned. A few places complained that they didn’t even have enough time to mobilize the electorate (Exactly what we want, Gno had said), and others requested permission to grieve for the lost senators before replacing them. That request was denied. The swifter the business of government moved, the better. Sometimes even funerals were places for politicking of the kind that Leia and her supporters had hoped to avoid.

Leia’s hands shook as she sorted through the information before her. She checked the planets represented by critically injured senators first. Most had decided to follow the senators’ wishes and allow them to vote by proxy. Those places that hadn’t, where it was uncertain whether or not the senators would be able to function in public again, voted in politicians whose records seemed, at least on the surface, to mirror those of the officials they were replacing.

The trouble rested in the hundred other planets whose senators had died. Despite the haste, despite the precautions, only fifteen percent elected someone with the same political cast. On all the rest, former Imperials were voted into office.

Thanks to the bombing, former Imperials held a simple majority in the Senate.

Enough to defeat any proposal that required a voice vote, but not enough to win in each instance.

Just because these people had lived within the Empire didn’t mean they would all vote the same.

Or at least, she hoped they wouldn’t.

But if they did, she would have to fight for each and every important vote. The Senate had become a political body now, not a place of colleagues.

That night, she would have to respond to the results, and do so in her most diplomatic manner. She couldn’t alienate the new representatives by assuming they would oppose her, and she had to reassure her own supporters at the same time.

She put her head down on one of the pillows, crumpling half the flimsies beneath her weight. More and more she longed for the days of the Rebellion, days when most crises found an answer in the unplanned use of a blaster, in the ingenuity of the fight, in the strength of the fleet and the feeling of fighting for truth, goodness, and justice.

She was good at subtlety. Luke had told her that. Han had told her that. She knew it. She had proved it a hundred times.

But she had always been a direct woman. She preferred directness in herself, in her friends. The business of setting aside that directness for the correct thing to say left her exhausted.

Especially now. She could see the future of her government, and directness was not a part of it. As the former Imperials gained power, the Rebels would have to tone down their language for fear of insulting their colleagues. The history of the Rebellion would be changed slightly to show that the leaders of the Empire were the only ones who were corrupt. And with each subtlety came a small lie. The lies would accumulate until the truth was lost.

She sat up and pushed the flimsies away. She wouldn’t stand for this. Her speech tonight would be a warning that the policies