[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(41)

The odds also were that none of them would ever know for sure.

***

Officially, the planet was named Muunilinst—unofficially, it was known to many as Moneylend. And if Bastion was the political center of the Empire, Muunilinst was its financial core.

The reasons for its status were many and varied, a long history that dated back well into the days of the Old Republic. The fact that it still retained its role in these darker times was as much a triumph of inertia and habit as it was the two Golan III Defense Platforms tracing their lazy orbits high overhead.

Standing at the conference-room window, Pellaeon glanced up as one of the platforms passed in front of Muunilinst’s sun, momentarily dimming its light. Back when the Imperial capital was moved to Bastion, he remembered, Moff Disra had tried to get those two Golan IIIs transferred there as well, arguing that the Empire’s governmental center deserved the protection more than the credit shufflers did. It had been one of Disra’s rare miscalculations, and one of his most embarrassing political defeats.

Behind Pellaeon, someone coughed discreetly. “Yes?” Pellaeon asked, tuning again to face the table.

All six of the senior officers gathered around the table were looking back at him. “I presume, Admiral,” High General Suit Ramic said quietly, “that this is not simply a trial suggestion. You and the Moffs have already agreed on this offer, haven’t you?”

For a moment Pellaeon studied the other’s face. General Ramic, commander of one of the Golans up there, was the senior man of the Muunilinst defense setup, in experience and respect as well as in rank. If he chose to resist the proposed peace agreement, the others would most likely fall in line behind him.

But no. The question hadn’t been a challenge, merely a question. “The Moffs have approved it, yes,” he said. “For what it’s worth, they were no more pleased by the idea than any of the rest of us are.”

“I thought you were the one who made the proposal,” General Jaron Kyte put in, his voice and eyes dark with suspicion. “How can you say now that you oppose it?”

“I didn’t say I opposed it,” Pellaeon corrected him. “I said I didn’t like it. But in my professional judgment, we simply have no other options left.”

“I was under the impression we had revolutionary new systems and equipment ready to come on-line,” Ramic said.

With perfect timing one of the lights on Pellaeon’s comm blinked on. “Some of those systems haven’t proved as workable as their designers had hoped,” Pellaeon said, stepping to his seat and leaning over to tap the confirmation button. As for the equipment, some of it has been tainted by decidedly treasonous activity.” Across from Pellaeon the conference door slid open&mdash

And a lean man wearing the traditional Muunilinsti banker’s shawl and pendant stepped inside.

His reaction to the roomful of officers might have been interesting, but Pellaeon wasn’t watching him. His eyes were instead on the officers themselves, as their expressions of surprise or indignation at his veiled accusation were interrupted by this unexpected intrusion. They turned, most of them obviously irritated, to see who it was who had presumed to intrude on Fleet business.

And midway down the left side of the table, General Kyte twitched.

It wasn’t a big reaction, little more than a twitch of the head and a flicker of shock across his face before he got himself back under control. But set against the backdrop of the others’ more or less indifferent curiosity, it stood out like the guidelight on a landing bay.

“Ah, Lord Graemon,” Pellaeon said, focusing on the banker at last. “Thank you for coming. If you’ll wait in the other room there, I’ll be with you shortly.”

“As you wish, Admiral Pellaeon,” Graemon said. His eyes, Pellaeon noted, flicked once to Kyte as he crossed to the inner chamber and disappeared inside.

“And what was that all about?” Ramic asked.

The man was shrewd, all right; clearly, he’d recognized that the banker’s interruption wasn’t entirely a coincidence: “I was speaking of treason,” Pellaeon said, waving a hand toward the inner chamber. “Lord Graemon is one of the threads in that web.”

A fresh ripple of surprise ran around the rest of the table, but Ramic himself didn’t even twitch. “You can prove this?” he demanded.

“Enough of it,” Pellaeon said. “He’s one of the money men helping funnel Imperial funds to a consortium that’s building the Preybirds that are now supplementing the more traditional TIE-class starfighters aboard our ships.”

“I don’t see any treason in that,” someone snorted. “Seems to me that the Empire’s getting its money’s worth with those Preybirds.”