“Just like I know that speech,” Han said, his mouth twisting into a wry, crooked grin. “That’s your ‘I’m going to poke at him until he’s just mad enough to blurt out what he’s thinking’ speech. And it doesn’t work anymore.”
“So why don’t you just tell me, before we’re both worn out from wrestling?”
“It really doesn’t mean anything—” “Why don’t you skip the cushioning-the-blow part this time, too?”
“Women,” Han sniffed in mock indignation. “They always want you to tell them what you’re thinking, but whatever you say is wrong.”
“As long as you understand the ground rules.”
“Oh, yeah. What’s scary is watching Jaina figure them out, too.” Han sighed. “A couple of days ago I heard from an old smuggling buddy who’s settled down to the straight life out on Fokask. Haven’t had any contact with him in years.”
“So why now?”
“He sent me a copy of a commentary and half a dozen letters from The Fokask Banner, which I guess is what passes for a newsgrid out there.
The title on the commentary was something like ‘Does Princess Crave Lost Crown?”” “Mmm. What did it have to say?”
“Aw, I didn’t read it that closely—why would I want to?” Her eyes prodded him gently. “Something about how they’d always thought of you as a steward of the best Old Republic values, but now you were starting to look like a fan of an even older idea, the divine right of monarchs—whatever that means. I probably got it at least partly wrong. You can read it yourself, if you really want.”
“And what did your friend have to say?”
Han pursed his lips and avoided her eyes, clearly looking for a way to not answer.
“Just tell me.”
“Well—he didn’t have much to say, actually. After the last of the letters from the Banner, he just added a short note. ‘Is there something in the water there on Coruscant?
She seemed like such a nice girl.”” Han shrugged. “It doesn’t mean anything, except that now I have to kill him.”
“No, you don’t.”
He nodded, deadpan. “Do. Insulted my girl. Have to kill all of them.”
“Stop that, before the children hear you,” she said, punching his shoulder and then resting her head against it.
Han wrapped an arm around her. “I might let him off if he takes it back.” After a long pause, he added, “But he has to mean it.” There was another pause, during which his tone turned serious. “And, what you said—before the children hear him.”
Leia said nothing then. But as she cuddled with Han and watched Jaina, Jacen, and Anakin playing by the waterfalls, four words burned in her ears: before the chil dren hear. When she returned to the fifteenth floor, she quietly asked Alole to find her a sample of the messages received in recent days on the ministry lines. Not long after Alole provided them, Leia called Nanaod Engh.
“I’ve thought some more about what you said,” she said. “Please see what can be done.”
“We’ll get after it right away,” Engh promised.
Young and old, fresh and seasoned, the Grannan and the Mon Calamari left their Fleet speeder and walked in unconscious lockstep across the parking apron toward the red-and-white snub fighter sitting high on its skids a dozen meters away.
“Here’s what I wanted to show you,” Admiral Ackbar said. “Have you ever seen one of these before?”
“Yes,” Plat Mallar said, ducking under the locked foils and studying the wingtip spars. “In my grandfather’s enemy vessel silhouette drill set. It’s some variation on an Incore T-sixty-five X-wing, isn’t it?”
“Correct. But notice the wider profile through the fuselage, and the side-by-side cockpit.”
“Dummy laser cannon on the wingtips, too,” Mal-lar said. “Trainer?”
Ackbar nodded. “This is a TX-sixty-five primary trainer. The X-wing may no longer be the Fleet’s front-line fighter, but every pilot in the Fleet took his first hundred hours in one of these, and every new pilot probably will for some years to come.”
Mallar crouched and peered under the fuselage. “A lot different from a TIE interceptor.”
“Indeed. Including one difference you should be able to particularly appreciate–hyperdrive.”
A wry smile creased the boy’s face, then vanished.
“One of these crashed the day I came out of the tank, didn’t it? I heard the medics talking.”
Ackbar turned and pointed across the field. “Right over there, on taxiway twenty-two. Not the first, or the last,” he said with a little shake of the head. “Sometimes, despite everything we do, they come out of the simulators with the idea that if they make a mistake their mentor pilot will just reset the exercise.”