“I hope we don’t have to wait very long,” she said.
“But there aren’t any deadlines. We’ll give them enough time to work through their decision. I’m sure we’ll hear from someone at that end before long.”
“What if we don’t?”
“Then everything centers on Doornik Three Nineteen,” she said. “It’s the one site we can monitor closely enough to know whether the Yevetha are packing up or still moving in. That’s where we’ll be watching.”
Waiting was hard.
An hour came and went, with the excitement of the moment making it seem like only a few minutes. The next hour lasted a day. The first day lasted forever. Anticipation became anxiety, and anxiety restlessness.
Soon restlessness became
impatience,
and
impatience
a
gnawing distraction.
The second day was even longer.
And nowhere was the waiting harder than along the Koornacht perimeter.
All 106 principal vessels of the Fifth Battle Group were on round-the- clock combat-level alerts. Flights of fully armed fighters and interceptors came and went from the launch bays of the carriers as the defensive screens were brought up to full combat density.
At the end of the second day, the ultimatum was made public, along with selected still images from the Alpha Blue intelligence. The response was surprisingly muted and, overall, supportive.
“It is comforting, but illusory,” Behn-kihl-nahm warned Leia. “The Senate is holding its criticism until there’s some sign—in the form of news from Farlax—to tell them which side they want to end up on. In the meantime, they can nobly posture as loyal supporters of the President and defenders of the Charter. And the public response—I suspect you will find that most casual observers are applauding the principle without grasping the risk. They enjoy the show of strength, and it seems right and good to them for us to dictate to outsiders.
They expect the Yevetha to meekly comply, and for this to be over in a few days. Most of all, they do not expect this to lead to war.”
Two days became three, and three stretched to five.
The ultimatum was retransmitted daily at 1700, but there was no response of any kind from inside Koornacht Cluster. It became increasingly clear that the Yevetha were ignoring the messages.
On the sixth day an Alpha Blue stationary probe came out of hyperspace near Doornik 319 and recorded the arrival of a small flotilla—three spherical thrustships and an Imperial-design Star Destroyer. The recording was relayed successfully to a repeater outside the Cluster, but the probe had been on station long beyond its endurance and disintegrated when it tried to disappear back into hyperspace.
As soon as they reached him, Drayson brought both the news and the dispatch to Leia at the residence.
“I’m afraid our probe will have left debris in realspace,” he said apologetically. “That may complicate matters.”
“All it tells them is that we’re watching—and that they can’t detect it when we are,” Leia said. “Maybe that will help us a little.”
“But the reality is that that was my last asset in that system,” Drayson said. “And placing them is harder than hiding them once they’re there. This is likely to be the last report from Doornik Three Nineteen for the foreseeable future. They’re all going to be expiring.”
“Let me get Han, and we’ll take a look,” she said.
“And we should contact Behn-kihl-nahm and Ackbar.”
“I took the liberty,” Drayson said. “Bennie is on his way over. But Admiral Ackbar is getting in some time in a TX-sixty-five and won’t be here for at least an hour.”
“All right. We’ll wait for Bennie.”
“He said not to.”
“Well,” said Leia. “Then I guess we won’t.”
Together Han, Leia, and Admiral Drayson watched the four minutes of data- -twenty capture clips, each twenty seconds long, spanning a six-hour period. They documented the arrival of four ships and landings at widely separated sites by three of them. When the recording was finished, Leia looked up in surprise.
“That’s not enough,” she said. “We can’t tell whether those ships went down empty or full. We can’t see if they left or stayed.”
“Wait,” Drayson said. “The recording is - - enhanced resolution. We can zoom on the last two clips, when the second thrustship was almost directly under the probe.”
The enhanced images resolved the ambiguity. They revealed a glassy landing pad in the middle of an empty, undeveloped plain, and a train of cargo pallets, each nearly the size of a light freighter, being towed away from the thrustship.