Fate of the Jedi: Backlash (25 page)

“Not your fault.” Han sighed. “Heredity and environment are to blame, just like usual.”

Leia gave him a close look. “Usually it’s enough for you to say
It’s
not my fault
, without actually coming to a conclusion about what
is
to blame.”

“Yeah, well. Unusual times. Threepio, go ahead and knock off. We’ll let you know when we’ve figured out what to do.”

“As you say, sir.”

Han waited until the golden droid waddled his way aft. “I hate to say it, but we’ve got to go back to Coruscant.”

“I know.”

“If Daala’s mad enough to throw Mandos at the Jedi—at our
daughter
—we’ve got to do something about it.”

“I agree.”

He gave her a narrow look. “Since when did you become so agreeable?”

“Since when did you become so responsible?”

Han glanced over his shoulder toward the aft sections of his ship. He couldn’t see her through intervening bulkheads, but Allana would be back there now, asleep, at peace. “Since we got another chance—and I’m not making the same mistake again.”

“Oh, I think I can count on you to foul up this time, too.” There was no real sting in her words, just amusement.

“Now, that’s the disagreeable girl I married.” He grinned at her and turned around to begin a preflight checklist. “You want to call Luke and let him know?”

“No.”

He glanced at her, puzzled.

“Just being disagreeable.” She leaned forward to activate the comm board.

Somehow, while Daala wasn’t looking, the funeral of Admiral Cha Niathal had been transformed into a morning procession to be followed by a public service scheduled for broadcast on major news services.

In her quarters in the Senate Building, Daala struggled to straighten her freshly pressed white dress uniform jacket while keeping
her comlink and datapad in hand and watching the coverage of the pre-procession preparations on the wall monitor. “So Coruscant Security signed off on the procession itself. But, specifically, who?”

The voice from her comlink was male and sounded defensive. “Well, it’s spelled three different ways on three different forms. It appears to be something like Captain Koltstan.”

“And is there a Captain Koltstan in Coruscant Security?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then that’s not the name. Find out who it
was
. And who paid for the transportation and for the drum line and for the security deposit.” Her door chimed to announce the presence of a visitor—and since it was a chime and not a query from a security agent, it was someone with standing authorization to enter. “Come.”

The door slid up and Wynn Dorvan walked in. Seeing the rows of buttons on Daala’s dress jacket unfastened and the jacket gaping open over her undershirt, he turned his back with an unobtrusive grace that suggested he had, in fact, dropped in to study the Super Star Destroyer holo prominently framed on the white wall before him.

“Oh, don’t be an idiot.”

“Ma’am?” That was the voice on her comlink.

“Not you. You, go away and get me answers. Daala out.” She flipped the switch on her comlink with enough force to break a device built to less than mil-spec standards. She hurled the comlink onto an off-white sofa, then threw the datapad after it. “Any more delays and I’m going to be late to the procession.” She got to work on her buttons. “What is it?”

Dorvan hazarded a look over his shoulder, then turned to face her. “Security estimates that the threat level for the service is rising.”

Daala blinked. “I was just speaking with security.”

“Yes, with their investigative arm. I’m talking about the arm that handles protection of high-profile targets such as, oh, you.”

“And they’re estimating increased danger for high-profile targets?”

He shook his head. “No, just for you.”

She finished with the top buttons and turned to look at a blank section of wall. “Mirror.”

The wall panel slid aside, revealing a full-length mirror. Daala couldn’t stand the notion of having such a testimonial to vanity on display
at all times, but she did need one for any self-examination before a public appearance, and having one hidden behind a wall panel was her compromise. “Would you be more specific?”

“Your public approval rating has been dropping since the announcement of Niathal’s suicide, and Security thinks someone might take a shot at you during the service. It’s that simple.”

“Niathal was on Most Hated lists as recently as—”

“As recently as the day before her death. Now she’s being looked on as a noble officer who took a blaster bolt for the squad. And you’re the officer who attacked Mon Calamari a while back.”

“So it’s dissident Mon Cals and Quarren we have to worry about?” She swept her hair up, freeing strands from her collar, and let it fall into place against her back again. “What do you think—loose, braid, or up?”

“That’s a very girlie question coming from you.”

“That’s why I’m asking
you
. I have no idea what the right answer is.”

“Braid. But don’t go. It’s not just Mon Cals and Quarren. There are Mon Cal sympathizers, crazy Confederation holdouts, anti-Imperial extremists, Niathal admirers, Darth Caedus admirers …” He shrugged, apologetic. “Security considers the individuals who might want to harm you an unorganized and irrational threat, but numerous enough that they’re taking it seriously.”

She stared at him, trying to keep frustration from showing on her face. “I can’t win here.”

“No, you can’t.”

“If I show up, crazies get to take a shot at me. If I don’t show up, I’m the insensitive Chief of State whose callousness led to Niathal’s death and who can’t spare the time to acknowledge her.”

“You’re right.” Dorvan spread his hands, palms up, a
What can I tell you?
gesture. “So if you’re going to lose anyway, I’d prefer that you lose and be alive, so we don’t have to attend two admiral funerals back-to-back.”

Daala breathed a long sigh. “Do you have any good news for me? Public reaction to the raid on the Jedi Temple?”

“Still hostile. The Jedi are now being looked at as trying very hard
to take care of their own problems, such as the Solos taking the mad Jedi off to be cured, and we look stupid for not being able to stop them.”

“You mean
I
look stupid.”

“Using the Mandos is being interpreted by the armed forces as a sign that you don’t have confidence in their abilities. Special forces are especially offended.”

Daala rolled her eyes skyward, as if seeking aid from a Super Star Destroyer parked in low planetary orbit. “Is there some force I’m not aware of? Some massive conspiracy devoted to the destruction of the career of Natasi Daala?”

“Every politician I’ve ever met has asked the same question about his or her career at some time. The answer is usually no.” Dorvan looked thoughtful. “Which means, of course, that it’s sometimes yes.”

Daala returned her attention to him. “All right. I’ll remain in my offices and deal with any of thirty lesser crises. But I need something to divert public attention from me. Just for a day, or a week. Build a fire under the prosecutor’s office and get them hopping on the Tahiri Veila case. Make sure every development is well covered by the press.”

“I’ll do that.”

“And make sure everyone knows that she’s an assassin, yes? That, unlike me, she actually
killed
an admiral? That she’s not a sweet young orphan who sells baked goods door-to-door?”

“I’ll try to remember that part.” Dorvan spun and headed for the exit.

From the chilly safety of her gleaming white office, Daala watched Admiral Niathal’s funeral events on her monitor.

Niathal was laid out in a transparisteel display casket mounted atop a repulsorlift-based flat-topped vehicle that moved at a serene pace from its starting position at the Mon Calamari embassy grounds toward the distant Plaza of the Founders, the great circular public gathering place erected in the wake of the Yuuzhan Vong War. The procession was, of course, aerial—a marching event would have to take place down in the dark, dank surface levels or along winding, narrow
elevated pedwalks high in the air, neither of which promoted a sense of somber elegance—and so all participants rode speeders of various types, mostly fully enclosed dark vehicles suited to politicians.

Immediately before and after the casket craft were large barges carrying units of the Galactic Alliance Navy Drum Corps. As the procession moved along Coruscant’s permacrete canyons, they played a martial percussive rhythm that echoed off the skytowers. It was a stirring performance suited to Niathal’s career and temperament. It sounded like distant thunder organized into music.

After the drum corps craft came the dark airspeeders of the attending ambassadors, officers, and other important beings who had regularly dealt with Niathal in life. It was a long train of vehicles.

The procession cruised at one of the standard traffic altitudes, a height where civilian pedwalks were common, and the walkways along the entire procession route were thick with citizens. Daala saw not just faces but also signs in that throng, some of them hand-printed placards, some flashing diodes on thin sheets of flexiplast. One read
GA OUT OF MON CALAMARI
. Another flashed
THE GREAT CURRENT WELCOMES YOU
. A third, its lettering black and blocky, read
DAALA, MURDERESS
.

As the procession continued, the velvety tones of holocaster Javis Tyrr floated out from the monitor, describing the action. “… passing Medway Avenue. The drum corps has begun, I believe it’s a percussion arrangement of ‘Tialga Hath Fallen,’ a traditional Alderaanian air about a warrior-queen who makes a stand against impossible odds so her children can reach safe haven. Yes, that’s it indeed, and you can hear the polyphonic tones of the sequential bells substituting for Alderaanian flutes in this arrangement. Just passing under the midlevel Medway Avenue pedwalk, which you can see is raining silver flimsi confetti down on each vehicle in a constant downpour—ah, I’m given to understand that this is symbolic of tears, this would be the tears of the admiral’s non-aquatic mourners, since the natives of Mon Cal do not cry—is the vehicle carrying Jagged Fel, Head of State of the Galactic Empire. There are reports that Fel faces increased political opposition within the Empire, so it’s very generous of him to take a day off from interplanetary matters to pay his respects to the fallen admiral. Next is the vehicle of the Mon Calamari embassy, notable for its
liquid-filled rear compartments and topside entrance hatches. Curb weight of the Mon Cal vehicle in its liquid-filled configuration is in excess of thirty tons, and it can only set down on specially reinforced landing pads owing to its high kilograms-per-square-centimeter ratio. Next …”

Daala muted the sound. While she would not object to a drum corps participating in her own funeral, the thought of her ceremony being
narrated
bothered her to a degree she had not anticipated. Just the notion of someone like Tyrr participating in any capacity was disturbing. She would not have wished it on Niathal.

The procession finally reached the Plaza of the Founders. The casket vehicle and the first thirty or so speeders turned to starboard and began a slow spiraling approach to the center of the plaza, where temporary stages and landing pads had been erected. The casket vehicle landed on the tallest pad. The other speeders set down in a series of semicircles, looking like parentheses bracketing the stages, and participants streamed out from them to ascend the construction.

An elegant middle-aged man, fit but prematurely white-haired, wearing the dress uniform of a Starfighter Command general, took the central stage’s lectern. The words
GENERAL TYCHO CELCHU, GA STARFIGHTER COMMAND (RETIRED)
flashed up under his face as he began speaking.

Daala sighed and cradled her head in her hands. Of course it would be someone like Celchu. He’d worked with Niathal during her final years in office and retired when she had, but he had not dealt with Jacen Solo and was untouched by Solo’s corrosive legacy. He was a good speaker, popular with both enlisted and officer ranks. He would make a speech that would cause the listeners to resent even more bitterly the loss of Niathal. People visiting Niathal’s memorial would have only to touch a button on the marker stone to have the address pop up before them in holographic form, preserved forever.

Daala sighed. Nothing was going right.

Nothing was going right.

T
HE MORNING AFTER THE SPARKFLY ATTACK, THERE WAS A DIFFERENCE
in the atmosphere at the clan conclave. Even though he was an outsider, Ben could feel the difference, in part because of his sensitivity to the Force, in part through simple observation.

Men and women of the two clans were more alert, suspicious. That wasn’t good, because members of each clan were naturally more suspicious of the other. But there was also a new pride in their walks and voices. They’d weathered two Nightsister assaults and were still together, still advancing toward their mutual goal. Ben could see a growing conviction of their inevitable success in their eyes.