[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(92)

“This claim, too, is valid, and just, and moral—regardless.”

“Is there any reason at all to think that anyone else on Polneye survived the Yevethan assault?”

“There is no evidence either way,” said Ackbar.

“Why does it matter?”

“If Plat Mallar wants to sit in the Senate—” “Plat Mallar wants to sit in the cockpit of a fighter.

The Senate seat for Polneye will remain vacant, unless other survivors are found—as a reminder.”

“I see your handprints all over this, Ackbar.”

“I am trying to help the boy,” Ackbar admitted.

“But he has his own mind.”

“Let me ask a different question,” Leia said. “Have you made him aware of the offer from Jobath of Galantos, for sanctuary and membership in the Fia?”

“Plat has spoken with Jobath.”

“And?”

“In the days after Alderaan was destroyed, how would you have looked on an invitation to become a citizen of Lafra or Ithor?”

Leia placed the vellum on the table and bowed her head, pressing her palms together and touching her fingertips to her mouth. “I’m being roundly criticized already for the applications I approved when I came back.”

“If that’s so, then one more can hardly make any difference,” said Ackbar. “But it will make all the difference in the world to the Polneya. And I must add thisfor whatever it may be worth to you, I was proud of you for what you did.”

Frowning, Leia leaned forward and rested her hands on either side of the document as she studied it intently.

“You know,” she said slowly, “I felt pretty good about it, too.” She keyed her comlink with the remote.

“Alole—bring me an endorsement tablet, please. Admiral Ackbar has called my attention to an application that was overlooked.”

Belezaboth Ourn, extraordinary consul of the Paqwepori, paced restlessly in the sleeping chamber of his cottage in the diplomatic hostel.

For the tenth time, he checked to see that the tiny blind box the Yevethan viceroy had provided him was properly attached to the much larger hypercomm relay.

That was the extent of Ourn’s ability to determine whether there was some technical reason why, five hours after sending an urgent request to speak with Nil Spaar, he was still pacing and waiting.

And Belezaboth Ourn did not like being kept waiting.

His ship’s engineer had examined the sealed box with all the means at his disposal, but after a discharge from the box had destroyed his test instruments, the engineer had returned it with a shrug. All Ourn really knew is that with the blind box attached, the hypercomm conversed with it, and the box conversed with a Yevethan hypercomm at an unknown location.

Muttering an imprecation against Nil Spaar’s fertility, Ourn called for a toko bird and a slaughter knife to be brought to him. He had been stuck on Coruscant for weeks now, unable to leave, waiting on the viceroy to keep his promises. He was not about to let himself be stuck in his room, unable to eat, waiting on the viceroy to answer his calls.

Mother’s Valkyrie was still sitting on the landing pad where it had been battered by the departing Yevethan thrustship Aramadia. With the mission short of funds, Ourn had refused to authorize repairs, expecting to sell the cutter as scrap when the ship Nil Spaar had promised him was delivered. Then spaceport ground crews had covered Valkyrie with a bubble-like lien seal when the unpaid berth fees mounted.

It was embarrassing to have the Paqwepori consular ship sitting there under a debtor’s lock for everyone to see. It would be humiliating to have to stand in line to leave Coruscant on a shuttle. And it was unthinkable for the delegation to return home penniless aboard one of the rattletrap commercial liners that came calling at Paqwepori.

There was only one acceptable resolution, and Ourn clung to

it unwaveringly. Nil Spaar must keep his promise of a Yevethan thrustship in payment for the damage to the Valkyrie and other services Ourn had rendered to Nil Spaar. Then the delegation could leave Coruscant not only in grand style, but in such a way that everyone would know that the Paqwepori had powerful friends.

The only troubling matter was that Nil Spaar was so often unavailable when Belezaboth Ourn tried to reach him. The last two times he had called with information, Ourn had been relegated to speaking to underlings. And his three attempts since deciding to withhold what he knew and insist on speaking directly with Nil Spaar had gone completely unanswered.

For this, the fourth, Ourn had baited the hook, leaving a message that he had information about important developments near Koornacht. But, still, he had been waiting five hours.

The toko bird and a response from the Yevetha arrived at the same time, and Ourn rudely chased the former away so that he could receive the latter. To his delight, the face that appeared was Nil Spaar’s.