[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(44)

“I just wish we’d gotten more,” Lando said. “Janson figured it was probably a theft-and-defection gone wrong.”

“Yes, it does look that way,” Be! Iblis said, fingering his mustache thoughtfully. “But somehow I don’t think it was.”

Lando eyed him. “Then what was it?”

“I don’t know yet,” Be! Iblis said. “But consider the facts. The Empire hasn’t got nearly enough Imperial Star Destroyers left to waste one on a simple chase mission. And they wanted him taken alive; and they wanted to make sure he didn’t talk to anyone.”

“And he knew you were here,” Lando pointed out. “You can almost hear the words General Bel Iblis’ in there.”

“Yes,” Bel Iblis agreed. “Though keeping track of my whereabouts is no big deal anymore. We don’t keep things nearly as secret as we did even five years ago.”

He swiveled over his computer and began punching keys. “It seems to me you can also hear the name Vermel’ mentioned. If I remember right, there was an Imperial officer of that name on Admiral Pellaeon’s staff.”

Lando looked out the viewport at the curve of the planet below, and at the distant flares of the X-wings still circling around in the distance. “Seems to me that would add weight to the defection theory,” he suggested. “They wouldn’t want to kill someone of that rank out of hand, and they certainly wouldn’t want us to know he’d tried it.”

“Perhaps.” Bel Iblis peered at the display. “Yes, there he is. Colonel Meizh Vermel!.”

Lando spread his hands. “There it is, then.”

Bel Iblis fingered his mustache again. “No,” he said slowly. “My instincts still say no. Why use a Corellian Corvette if you were going to defect? Why not something faster or more heavily armed? Or requiring a smaller crew, unless all hundred-odd crewers were defecting together?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either.” Bel Iblis slid out the datacard of Lando’s recording. “But I think I’ll make a few copies of this and see if I can find out.”

Lando cocked an eyebrow. “In all your copious spare time?”

The general shrugged. “I’ve been needing a hobby anyway.”





CHAPTER


7


The Grand Convocation Chamber of the New Republic Senate had been completed only three months earlier, its construction stepped up out of necessity after Kueller’s bombs had weakened the structure of the old Senate Hall beyond repair. And while there were still bits of trim and scrollwork left to be finished, the overall effect was every bit as impressive as its designers had promised. The old arrangement-with the delegates’ seats arranged in concentric semicircles, descending inward toward a raised dais-had been replaced by a series of variably sized, variably shaped blocks of seats, connected to each other by short stairways or ramps that had been arranged at apparent random, yet which maintained a consistent grace and style. Separating the seat groups were clear glass panels, or carved lattices, or merely short railings and a meter or two of vertical height, as the designers’ fancy had taken them. Each block of seats had an unobstructed view of the central dais, as’ well as a display that could be adjusted to show either a closer view of the dais or any of the other blocks of seats in the chamber.

In many ways the place reminded Leia of the magnificent Corioline Marlee theater back on Alderaan, a renowned palace of the arts that had always been synonymous in her mind with courtesy, culture, and civilization. It had been her secret hope that the Grand Chamber’s similar design would help encourage those same qualities in the Senators who assembled there.

But for today, at least, that was clearly not going to be the case.

“Let me be certain I understand you, President Gavrisom,” a rough Opquis voice called over the chamber’s sound system. “You’re telling us that the Bothans were the key to the destruction of Caamas and the near genocide committed against the Caamasi people. Yet at the same time you tell us you will not seek justice for this heinous act?”

“That is not at all what I have told you, Senator,” President Ponc Gavrisom said mildly, twitching his tail once and resettling it against his hind legs. “Allow me to repeat. A small group-a small group-of as yet unidentified Bothans were involved in that tragedy. If and when we are able to learn their names, we will certainly dispense in full measure the justice I know we all seek. Until then, though, it simply cannot be done.”

Why not?” an alien with shaggy blue-green hair and a long, thin face demanded. A Forshul, Leia tentatively identified her, representing the eighty-seven inhabited worlds of Yminis sector in the Outer Rim. “Councilor Fey’lya does not deny Bothans were involved. Very well, then: let them be duly punished for this monstrous blot on galactic civilization.”