“Who is he? “
“He is Grannan by stock, Polneye by allegiance, ” Ackbar said. “His name is Plat Mallar. He’s suffering from severe metabolic disruption due to breathing his own wastes. He may not live. I thought you should see him now, just in case. “
“Why? ” asked Leia. “I’m sorry for him, of course, but… ” She left the sentence unfinished.
“Polneye? I never heard of it, ” Han said. “What happened to him? “
“According to the prowler that found him, he was trying to make an interstellar run in a TIE interceptor-“
“Why would anyone do a fool thing like that? ” Han asked dismissively. “It’s suicide. “
“Or self-sacrifice, ” said Ackbar. “Sometimes they are hard to tell apart. “
“What are you talking about? “
“It appears that Plat Mallar was trying to get a message out of Koornacht Cluster-apparently the only way he could. “
Leia’s eyes flashed. “What message? “
“I will show you, ” Ackbar said. “But let us stay here awhile longer. I do not know why it is, but the Fleet casualty officer tells me that patients with family and friends to wish them health are strengthened by it. And I am afraid this young pilot needs every edge right now. “
In the privacy of Admiral Ackbar’s offices at Fleet Headquarters, in grim silence, Han and Leia watched the holo-recordings taken from Plat Mallar’s TIE interceptor.
It was unsettling to see the familiar, forbidding shapes of warships once again at the business of dealing out destruction, and profoundly dismaying to see the cities of Polneye reduced to smoking scorch marks on the planer’s barren plains. But Mallar’s deathly ill face gave the greatest power to his words.
“-Please help us. Please-if any are still alive-try to save them. Whoever sees this-you must find these monsters and punish them. It’s wrong. It’s terribly wrong. I beg-I beg for justice for the dead. For my parents. For my friends. For me. “
When it was over, Leia pushed back from the table without a word, turning her back on Han and the admiral. Hugging herself, she stood before the galactic holomap that covered nearly one whole wall of Ackbar’s office, staring up into it with haunted eyes.
“Did you orchestrate all this to humiliate me, Ackbar? ” she said finally, still facing the map.
“No, Leia, ” Ackbar protested, surprised. “I do not understand. “
“That makes two of us, ” Han said, standing.
“What are you talking about, hon? This doesn’t have anything to do with you. “
She whirled around to face them. “Doesn’t it? Look at him-he’s just sitting there waiting for me to draw the same conclusion he has. If you wanted to convince me to resign, Admiral, you couldn’t have picked any better way. “
“I’m missing something here, ” Han said, looking to Ackbar for help.
“Princess, you are wrong, ” said Ackbar. “You could not be more wrong. You are the Chief of State of the New Republic. I would not have anyone else sit in that chair. We need your strength and dedication-and more now than we did yesterday, to answer this challenge. “
Ackbar’s praise deflected off Leia’s defensiveness, leaving
her untouched. “Whose ships were those? ” she asked, pointing at the monitor.
“You know as well as I.”
“Imperial design. Imperial fighters. What does that prove? “
“Plat Mallar got close enough to the first ship to interrogate it with his targeting system. It answered as the Imperial Star DestroyerValorous. “
“Are you arguing with me? “
“Valorouswas one of the Black Sword ships on Nylykerka’s list. “
“I know that, ” she said. “And if it was at Polneye under Yevethan command, then you’re looking at the biggest fool in the whole Republic. But we don’t know that, do we? “
“Does it matter? “
“Isn’t that why you brought me in here? Your subtle way of telling me I was wrong? “
Ackbar shook his head slowly. “I thought that before you made your decision about giving up your work, you needed to know that there’s still more for us to do. Whoever sent those ships to Polneye is the enemy of the peace you’ve tried so hard to build. “
“Isn’t there something in the apocrypha about wisdom beginning with knowing your limitations? Peace was a goal, not a guarantee. Besides-I was naive. Which would make a fine summation of my short career, ” she added acerbically.
“Admiral Ackbar’s right, ” Han said, shaking his head. “All this other stuff who burned the toast, who borrowed whose shirt, who left the light on-none of that matters. What matters is, what are we going to do now? “