Star Wars_ X-Wing 03_ The Krytos Trap - Michael A. Stackpole [38]
The problem is that no matter how quickly I resolve this matter, it will not be quick enough for her. It occurred to him that her messages to him suffered little reduction in their venom, despite having to be recorded and transmitted instead of being delivered in person. He would have thought that the distance between them would have insulated him from her criticisms, but it had not. She seemed to have a preternatural ability to point up to him errors he had made, no matter how slight, and that kept him constantly off balance.
He realized that if he told her he was having some of his people train for a strike on the bacta facility before he knew what that mission would take, she would point out that he was wasting time and resources. He decided he would put men into training for smaller missions that could serve as diversions or that would, at the very least, provide the training framework upon which the bacta strike mission could be built. Iceheart might maintain that he was wasting resources that could be better used to locate the bacta facility in the first place. But trying to argue that stormtroopers could be used as spies was not the sort of blunder Isard would make.
The grav-car broke free of sub-urban roadway and shot up into the night sky. Countless towers flashed past, each lit as brilliantly as the fire of the thermite charge, but not nearly as harshly. He wondered how many of the people and aliens living in those towers were rejoicing over the secret word that their worries about the Krytos virus would soon be over. Many. Too many.
Loor let his own laughter become a parody of the sound he imagined echoing through those towers. It struck him that laughter and sobbing were really not that different, and decided that he would do his best to see to it that others gained first-hand knowledge of this insight.
Before they die of the virus for which I will destroy the cure.
11
Admiral Ackbar sat back in his Council chair and tried to pull serenity from the cool mist drifting down over him. Grand Moff Tarkin, in one of his more expansive moods, had once described politics to him as “soft warfare, the elegant duel of lightsabers instead of the thunder of turbo-lasers.” Tarkin, with that description, had given no evidence of finding political fights frustrating because of the posturing and the treacherous riptide shifts of allegiances.
Or the inability to come to grips with problems in a direct manner. Ackbar had endured more reports on microeconomic fluctuations on planets he’d never heard of than any sapient creature could be expected to stand in one lifetime. Slowly, in working through the reports, Borsk Fey’lya and Sian Tevv were moving toward the matter that had been bruited about on the Provisional Council’s staff level.
Glancing over at the Bothan councilor, Ackbar could see a feral gleam in Fey’lya’s violet eyes. The Bothans thrive on this soft warfare. Ackbar had already recognized in Fey’lya a drive to lead or, when he had been outmaneuvered, a desire to vault out in front to where the leaders stood so he was placed among them. Ackbar had seen similar tactics among warriors who sought promotion, but true warfare tended to deal with such ambition in a most lethal fashion.
Mon Mothma nodded toward the Elom councilor. “Thank you, Verrinnefra, for bringing us up to date on the economies of our newest worlds. Next on the agenda is the matter of bacta. Borsk, you have a point to make?”
The cream-furred Bothan stood opposite Ackbar. “The recent mission which has liberated a supply of bacta and brought it here to Coruscant is, of course, a great victory for us and a great boon to the people