Текст книги "Sacrifice "

Автор книги: Karen Traviss

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 34 страниц)

the troops."

"I'm all for that." Mara sat down in the rickety chair across from his desk —Jacen believed in being seen not to spend budget on himself—and crossed her legs. She'd taken to wearing a gray jacket that looked more like battledress, an indication of her state of mind lately. "I've come about Ben."

"He's doing well. He's doing very well, in fact."

"You've certainly focused him. Quite the responsible young man now." Mara glanced at the open doors as if they troubled her. "Let's get to the point. I know Lumiya's trying to kill him. Whatever he did or didn't do, Lumiya thinks he killed her daughter. Now, seeing as we also found evidence that Lumiya has a mole in the GAG, that concerns me somewhat. A lot of somewhat. If anything happened to my boy from inside the GAG, I'd take it pretty badly, I think."

Ah. Has she worked it out? Has Mara actually seen what's coming?

Jacen felt a moment of sinking dismay as he wondered if this last mystery about his path was transparent to everyone. She was Palpatine's Hand. If anyone on the Jedi Council can see it, she will.

Jacen managed to project genuine concern. His link was still open: Lumiya could hear all this. "I've investigated that, and I can assure you I found nothing to support it."

"Is Ben around? I don't see much of him these days."

Ben was out on patrol, on routine weapons searches. Mara didn't need to know that. "He's doing some research for me."

"Okay," Mara said. "Just asking you to bear in mind that it's not the Confederation that's most likely to threaten his life, and even if you don't think Lumiya has an insider in your ranks, then I'm assuming she has until I'm convinced otherwise." She stood up slowly, and Jacen was on the edge of believing that she could see what was happening. "Just ask yourself

Jacen expected to hear some sigh or other reaction from Lumiya, but either she was more concerned with the passage of the amendment or she couldn't hear after all.

"I'll certainly ask that question, Aunt Mara," he said. "Just bear in mind that Ben's learning to take care of himself."

"And are you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if nobody else is going to say it to your face, I will.

What's happening to you, Jacen? Why did you run out on your parents like that? Okay, there's a warrant out on them, but—"

Jacen wondered why it had taken so long for anyone to confront him.

He'd expected Jaina to be the first, given her perpetual sulk with him, but Mara probably felt her defense of him had now made her look stupid.

"My fault," he said. "I assumed they were okay and could get to safety, so I decided to get to where I could make a difference to the battle—my ship."

"Right," said Mara. "Just a lapse in judgment."

"I'm human."

"We all have times when our judgment lets us down. I certainly do."

Mara gave him an unconvincing smile, turning for the doors. "Thanks for your time."

She knows.

She knows because it's inevitable, and that proves it has to be Ben.

It wasn't his parents, or Tenel Ka, or Allana. It was Ben. He wondered how long he could go on facing the boy, knowing that. How would it happen? Would he have to kill him in cold blood? Or would they end up in some violent confrontation, where death was so much easier to deal out?

Lumiya's voice was a breath in his ear. If anyone overheard her, she sounded like any bureaucrat having a discreet comlink conversation, not a Sith planning the greatest coup of all time. "I think my former colleague will be looking for me now, with maximum disapproval."

Jacen closed the doors with his remote control. "It was you who engineered the attack on Ben on Ziost, wasn't it?"

"He'll never be your successor. He hasn't got what it takes to be your apprentice. It's my duty to retire the unsuitable."

"Stay away from him from now on. You've gone too far, and I think Mara suspects what's happening."

"My former colleague can't touch you if—wait, they're taking your amendment out of sequence. Someone has asked to speak on it."

"Who?"

"Someone in the public gallery—they've invoked the right to address the council, and they've identified themselves as Citizen Watch."

It was interesting to note how fast things could come unraveled.

The civil rights lobby was largely drowned out by events, but he still didn't want them to point out what nobody seemed to have spotted hidden in his amendment. "You know what you have to do."

"Indeed." Lumiya went very quiet, her voice almost inaudible. "I think . . . that they're going to decide . . . that they wish to ask if this is going to be retroactive legislation . . . yes, they have. How vigilant."

If she thought she'd redeemed herself in his eyes, she was wrong.

She was becoming a risk. But that was always the Sith way; always this struggle between two.

He turned the audio back on while the amendment was discussed.

HM-3 was right. Senators chewed over the sums involved and satisfied themselves that the budget wouldn't be exceeded without authorization from the Treasury. Nobody seemed to see that the finely tuned wording by HM-3 would enable Jacen to change other legislation, too.

He'd think of things that needed changing.

Once I kill Ben Skywalker, once Mara and Luke find out that it's me—and that day will have to come—then they'll hunt me down. I'll bring down the whole Jedi order on my head.

Who would be his apprentice then?

It'll finish the Jedi.

He just wanted things to become clear when the time came. He had to trust his destiny. He was too far along the path to stop now.

"Item three fifty-seven, carried. Next item, variance of regulations regarding the licensing of air taxis . . ."

And that was it.

The amendment had been passed, and when the revised statute came into effect at midnight, Colonel Jacen Solo—and Admiral Cha Niathal, because it applied equally to her—would be able to order whatever the defense forces needed, and get it fast.

And change any other administrative legislation within existing budgets, without recourse to the Senate.

They'd handed him an extraordinary power, and one that he'd use to change the way the galaxy was governed. He'd use it to take down Chief of State Omas: he wasn't sure of the details yet, but he could do it, and soon. The Galactic Alliance would fall, not with a clash of lightsaber blades, or ion cannons fired, or troops surrounding the Senate, but with a sheet of flimsi and a nod of heads.

"Well done," he said softly. "Nicely influenced."

"Not me," Lumiya said. He could hear the smile in her voice. "They reached the decision themselves, without any help from me. I just redirected a little opposition from the gallery."

The irony was too delicious sometimes. Jacen didn't know whether to be satisfied at the outcome, or angry that Senators were so stupid that they let him get away with this.

They deserved to be ruled by the Sith.

They needed to be.

chapter six

Reports are coming in of a major battle between Sikan forces and invading Chekut troops on the Sika homeworld. The Sikan administration has called for Galactic Alliance forces to intervene in what it calls "an act of opportunist aggression," and share prices have tumbled over fears that the invasion will draw more planets in the Expansion Region into the conflict.

–HNE newsflash

GALACTIC ALLIANCE WARSHIP BOUNTY.

ON STATION WITH ALLIANCE FRIGATE DARING.

BOTHAN SECTOR

It was a tidy-looking vessel, she had to admit that. The new Bothan frigate wasn't even in their database. Admiral Niathal watched it on Bounty's bridge screen, curving out of Bothawui orbit trailed by five small unarmed tenders. The profile and signature were immediately logged in the ship's recognition systems.

"Looks like the Bothans have been shopping after all," she said.

"At least the intel was right on that."

"Seems they're still doing work-ups, too," said Captain Piris. The warship was being assisted by the tenders, or maybe it was simply feigning helplessness: Niathal never took Bothans at face value. "Let's see what specs we can collate on them before we scratch the paintwork. I hope they kept their receipts . . ."

"KDY construction, do you think?"

"Tallaan," Piris said. "We'd know if Kuat was building them."

"Well, they're not going to level Coruscant with those, but they certainly will spread us thin if they've got as many as Intelligence estimates."

Admiral Niathal shared a number of military philosophies with Jacen Solo, and being seen on the front line was one of them. She also liked to see things for herself, especially if Galactic Alliance Intelligence was involved. The current overstretch gave her cause to wonder what Cal Omas was playing at—an anxiety that might have been visible to the bridge crew as she paced up and down, glancing over shoulders to check screens and readouts.

"We need every hull we can hang on to, Admiral." Bounty's commanding officer, Piris, had been on the bridge far too long. He was a Quarren, evolved for an amphibious existence, and the atmosphere on board was too dry to keep pulling double watches; his uniform was sealed tightly at the cuffs and neck, but he kept wiping his face with a moist cloth. He needed a rest in his humid cabin. "If the Bothan fleet is growing as fast now as Intelligence suggests, then I fail to see how we're going to contain it if we have to support Sika and every other local skirmish, too."

"Looks like the Kem Stor Ai dispute will be the next to boil over."

Niathal had a brief moment of wishing that she could target one world, reduce its surface to slag from orbit just to make her point, and then ask who else wanted some of the same. But it passed. It always did.

"Every backworld with a grievance is resurrecting old fights in the guise of Alliance loyalty and asking us to help out. And Omas thinks he can hold the Alliance together by placating every call for a backup fleet across the galaxy."

"When is he going to admit he can't?"

"When I give him no other option, I think."

Maybe the Bothans were ahead of the curve. Instead of commissioning more capital ships—juicy, high-value targets in battle—they'd opted for a big fleet of smaller, more agile warships that could be stockpiled without anyone panicking about the escalation in arms.

"It's a different kind of war. Flexibility and rapid response, that's the name of the game now." Piris put his hand on the ship's comm control. "Let's see what they're made of. Mothma Squadron, launch when ready. Qaresi Squadron, remain on alert five. Confine them to their own space, but attack if fired upon."

Niathal still wondered who'd assassinated the Bothans and kicked off this escalation. Could have been our assets, if we'd played the Bothans right. Some Intel moron, she decided. She'd get to the bottom of that sooner or later. If she was going to be Chief of State one day, she'd weed out the loose cannons first.

"If you can get our furry friends to give us a ship's tour, in one piece . . . ," she suggested. But intercepting and boarding the new frigate in these circumstances was next to impossible. The best break they'd get would be to retrieve debris for inspection. "I'd love to know their top speed."

Niathal quite liked Bothans, even if she didn't trust them as far as she could spit, which was a lot farther than anyone might have believed.

She didn't dislike Quarren, either, even if it was almost expected of Mon Calamari. Quarren were a rare sight on ships; she knew Mon Cal officers who made every effort to avoid being assigned Quarren crew, and few Quarren wanted to serve alongside Mon Cals even now. But when they were good, they were very, very good. Piris was outstanding. If she caught any Mon Cal referring to him as Squid Head, they'd answer to her, and she didn't care how many whispered that she was an apologist.

Did we have the right to take their kids for some social engineering experiment–for our benefit?

She asked herself that question more often these days, and the answer always came up negative. Jacen Solo would think she was a hopeless wet liberal.

She wondered how she was going to wipe him off her boots when the time came. It wouldn't be easy.

"Bounty, Daring, stand by."

Twelve fighters shot out of the Bounty's hangar bay, spiraling away from the warship and streaking off in pursuit of the Bothan frigate. Then the three flights separated. Observation cams in each cockpit gave Bounty's combined bridge and combat information center a composite view of the engagement. Daring sat off Bounty's starboard bow, ready to divert any Bothan retaliation from her larger charge.

"Did you ever train as a pilot, ma'am?" Piris asked.

"No. You?"

"Indeed I did. At times like this, I miss it."

"If we get any busier, Captain, there'll be a droid running this ship and you'll be flying sorties. Where that leaves me I have no idea."

"You'll be Chief of State, ma'am," said Piris.

The worst thing about Quarren was that their amusement wasn't as easy to spot as a human's. With a human, all those teeth on display made life easier. Quarren face-tentacles could hide a multitude of emotions.

"That'll be the day," she said, hoping to avoid more gossip about her ambitions. Right then being Chief of State didn't matter at all. She had a battle, and all her training and instinct kicked in to say this was where she wanted to be, not behind a desk.

The first flight to come within range of the Bothan frigate shadowed it, cutting back and forth across its path at a thousand meters.

The second flight trailed aft of it, scanning the hull and sending back data.

It took a few seconds for the Bothans to react; perhaps some of their systems were still offline. The ship picked up speed and began to move out of the Bothawui limits, its accompanying tenders trailing like escort fish.

So the Bothans thought they had a nice new asset to surprise the Alliance, but the Alliance had spotted it. Niathal waited for the reaction while the third flight of Mothma Squadron monitored the situation, weapons trained but not locked. There was no point blowing it to pieces before they'd taken the measure of the new class.

"Very heavy hull plating for a frigate," said Niathal, looking at the recce scans coming back from the starfighters. Piris pored over the images and penetrating scans, too. "At least a dozen turbolasers and twenty cannons."

"Not exceptional."

"Depends how many hulls they have."

They didn't have long to wait to find out how many vessels were out there. The weapons officer shouted at the same time as the sensor warning Klaxon sounded.

"Sir, enemy contact at—correction, multiple contacts in range.

We've got trade."

"Bounty, Daring, close up at battle stations, synchronize command information. Helm, all ahead. Qaresi Squadron, launch—Bronzium and remainder of air group, launch when ready."

Nobody said ambush. The cockpit chatter from the pilots broke in.

"Copy that. . . five, six . . . correction, ten—detecting cannons charging, will engage—"

"Targeting source."

"I make that nineteen—"

"He's got a lock on me."

"Got your six. Deploying chaff."

Piris's face-tentacles were completely still. It gave him a commendable look of calm. "Cannons, engage all Bothan vessels in range, in your own time, go on . . ."

One moment they'd been watching a single fresh-out-of-the-box frigate, and the next more were dropping out of hyperspace at regular five-second intervals. Mothma Squadron picked up images on their cockpit cams: all in the same Bothan livery, all brand spanking new and unmarked by debris pocks and scrapes.

A flare of red laser blazed on the screens as one XJ cam view winked out and the fighter broke up into spinning, red-hot debris.

Pilots' voices were still audible in the background, but the focus on the bridge was on "fighting the ship"—attacking the enemy. Daring moved between Bounty and the Bothan flotilla. Her cannons and lasers showed up on the synchronized command information screen as blinking icons, fully charged and acquiring firing solutions.

"Eight contacts not firing, sir, and no sign of charging cannons."

Bounty shuddered from deflected pulsed laserfire. Niathal moved to supervise damage control, which was already under a competent commander, but there was nothing worse than an idle visiting admiral on a ship at battle stations. She needed to be occupied.

"Take them out anyway." Piris turned to Niathal. "If they cripple us, at least we transmitted the data we have. If they don't—that's a whole Bothan flotilla that never leaves home."

"I don't expect a tactical withdrawal, Captain." Three more XJs were hit: Niathal noted it as lost assets, not knowing the pilots personally, and disliked her detachment for a moment. She always did.

"We're here. Let's do as much damage as we can."

The Bothans, of course, had the same goal.

Two Bothan frigates were on a ramming course with Bounty. Of the remaining flotilla, five were firing on the XJs. Daring opened fire. The bridge crew watched as a frigate's aft section rippled with a sequence of explosions before debris blew away from it and smashed into an XJ. Five minutes into the engagement, Bounty's air group was taking a pounding, not all of it from direct hits. The second frigate veered away from the stream of fire from the XJ, a red-hot rip in its hull.

"Their targeting's not affected by chaff measures, sir." The pilot's voice was breathless with effort. "They're using narrow-range heat seekers. In future we'll need to—"

And he was gone, his cockpit cam blank and flickering.

"Air group, pull out," Piris barked. "Cannons, solutions on all targets, now."

Species perceived time differently in battle. For humans, it slowed because their brains took in far more detailed information about the threat, but that also meant they didn't notice low-priority things. But Mon Cals—and Quarren—saw it all, and factored in every cough and spit.

That was what made them good commanders. Niathal's instinct was to fight back, and for a moment she couldn't imagine why she'd ever had designs on high office. She saw the tactical displays and heard the comm chatter, and the real-time three-dimensional image in her mind showed her the whole battlefield—and she wanted to hit hard.

Nine Bothan frigates were now disabled, either drifting with no sign of power, reduced to cold debris, or venting brief bursts of flame into the vacuum as they broke up. Some of the remaining ten returned fire for a further thirty seconds, then powered down their cannons.

"Surrendering?" asked the officer of the watch.

"They're preparing to jump," said Piris. "Take take take—"

Seven frigates jumped in a tight sequence: three weren't so quick off the

mark, and took a furious barrage of laser and cannons.

Piris gave Niathal a nod of relief and leaned over the command console. "Air group, anyone too damaged to make an RV point?"

"Mothma Five-zero, sir. Slow hull breach."

"Qarisa Eight, sir."

The bridge crew waited for a few seconds, utterly silent, cannons still trained while XJs streaked back to the hangar and recovery units passed them outbound to haul in damaged craft.

"Secure hatches when ready and prepare to jump," Piris said. "Any sign of the Bothan cavalry arriving on long-range scans? No? Good." He looked at the chrono hanging from a fob on his jacket. "Not quite twenty minutes, Admiral. Now, was that a planned ambush we walked into, or are the Bothans making the best of an unfortunately timed arrival? The score's twelve-nil to us, not counting star-fighters lost. But did we win or lose?"

"I'll let you know when our public information colleagues tell me,"

Niathal said. "But this confirms my position yet again. If we're stuck with the resources we've got, then we have to focus everything on Corellia, Commenor, and now Bothawui. If the Chief of State wants to extend to every bushfire that's starting, he has to give us at least another fleet, and even if the Alliance had the credits—where would we get the personnel?"

Piris shrugged. "All empires become too big and collapse under their own weight."

"Maybe that's what we're seeing."

Her body was telling her that it was all over now. She felt hot as her biochemical defenses rushed around looking for damage to repair, and found none. The aftermath of battle was always a restless hour or two for her, so she occupied herself wandering around the bridge, patting crew members on the back, and telling them what a fine job they'd done. One