Star Wars_ X-Wing 08_ Isard's Revenge - Michael A. Stackpole [42]
Her chin came up. “Then you called me here to tell me the application has been approved?”
“No, and you know that is not true.” Borsk slid the datacard across the desk toward her. “I want you to withdraw the application.”
“What?”
“Please, Asyr, you know how impossible this is. You are involved in a liaison with a human—you want to marry him. It might add a bit of exotic luster to your image on Bothawui, but the vast majority of Bothans consider it something of a perversion. He’s all but furless and his face is so squashed it’s, well, hideous. That you have found something in him that attracts you, this I can understand, but you cannot allow this infatuation with him to last.”
“It’s not an infatuation. We love each other.”
Borsk Fey’lya raised his hands and waved away her declaration. “Infatuation, love, lust, whatever you call it, it doesn’t matter. What matters is this: We were prepared to indulge your dalliance, but no more. You cannot be permitted to marry him and create a family with him.”
“His name is Gavin Darklighter, and he’s every bit as much a hero as I am.” Asyr’s clawed hands came around and gripped the back of the nerf-hide chair. “I cannot believe you have the impudence to sit there and tell me what I can and cannot do with my life.”
“No?” Borsk kept his voice low and even, meeting her hot stare with a cold one of his own. “And I do not believe you can stand there and have the impudence to totally abrogate your responsibility to your people.”
“What?”
Borsk spread his arms, resting his hands flat on the desk. “I have told you before that you have become a role model for young Bothans. The Martyrs represent what we all hope we could achieve, what we hope we would be willing to do when called upon. They are shining examples of what we are at our best. Their greatest virtue is that they are dead. They are defined by the moment of their death, and nothing that went before matters. All their weaknesses, their frailties and vices were washed away when the Empire spilled their blood.
“You, my dear, are different. You have accomplished much and you still live. You provide an ongoing example to our people. When a young female faces a decision, she might ask herself, ‘What would Asyr Sei’lar do?’ You defied your parents and entered the Bothan Martial Academy. You’ve taken up with a human. You have no interest, apparently, in bearing children of your own, but are content to raise a mongrel pack of children salvaged from the ruins of the Empire. Yes, humans certainly see that as charitable and enviable, but it is not the Bothan way. By following your example, others will destroy the Bothan way of life.”
Asyr shook her head. “No, it is not fair to put the blame for change on me. Bothan society was repressed by the Empire and by turning inward, by maintaining our strength, we survived that oppression. Now things are different, change is happening and there is no way to stop it.”
“I don’t want to stop it, Asyr, but I do need to direct it.” Borsk paused for a second, less for dramatic effect than for a genuine need to gather his thoughts. If I cannot convince you of your part in the salvation of the Bothan people, other steps may have to be taken. He admired the steel in her spine, the energy blazing from her eyes, but if he could not control her and the direction she took, the disaster he saw looming on the horizon would swallow the Bothan people.
Desperation fueled inspiration.
He sighed heavily. “The Empire put forward the idea that any species that was not human was inferior. Humans were held up as the absolute acme of accomplishment. If we were to aspire to greatness, we had to aspire to be human or more than human. That is a message we had beaten into us during the Imperial period. Children