“It isn’t the same,” Leia said. “Kueller was a troubled man lashing out around him, and the New Republic was trying to stop him without looking to everyone like we were becoming a new version of the Empire. What Caamas is going to do is polarize good, honest people, all of whom genuinely want justice but differ violently as to what that justice should consist of.”
“It’ll still be okay,” Han insisted, taking her by her upper arms and pushing her far enough away to peer sternly into her eyes. “Let’s not give up before we even get started, okay?”
He stopped, a sudden horrible suspicion digging into him. “Unless,” he added slowly, “it’s already over. Do you know something I don’t?”
“I don’t know,” Leia said, her eyes slipping away from his gaze. “I’m sensing something about the coming days. A-I don’t know-a crisis point, I suppose, where something vitally important could go either of two ways.”
“About Caamas?” Han asked.
“I don’t know,” Leia sighed. “I’ve tried meditating, but so far I haven’t been able to get anything more. All I know is that it started when I met Karrde on Wayland and we read the Caamas datacard.”
“Mm,” Han said, wishing now that he’d tried to talk Luke out of his private pirate hunt. He might have been able to help Leia focus this feeling of hers. “Well, don’t worry, you’ll get it. A little quiet time-a little husbandly affection-and it’ll pop right out at you.”
Leia smiled at him, some of the tension leaving her face as she did so. “Is that what you want right now? A little wifely affection?”
“First thing I want is to get you out of here,” Han told her, taking her arm and starting her toward the door. “You need some peace and quiet, and once the kids get back from their classes, there’ll be precious little of either. Let’s grab it while we can.”
“Sounds good to me,” Leia sighed. “I don’t imagine they’re doing anything out there right now except arguing about justice and revenge. They can do that without my help.”
“Sure,” Han said. “Nothing important’s going to happen in the galaxy for the next hour.”
“You sure?”
Han squeezed her arm reassuringly. “I absolutely guarantee it.”
***
There was a flicker from the bridge lights, and through the viewports the mottled sky of hyperspace faded away.
But not into the usual pattern of starlines. This time when the mottled sky vanished, it vanished into total blackness.
And into total blindness.
For a long moment Captain Nalgol gazed out the Tyrannic’s viewport at the emptiness, fighting against the queasy feeling of vulnerability. True, jumping his Imperial Star Destroyer while cloaked had brought them into the Bothawui system completely blind and deaf, which was a potentially disastrous position for a combat ship to be in. But in this case, of course, the cloaking shield also worked the other way, concealing them from their enemies. Still, all other things being equal, it wasn’t a trade-off he would have voluntarily chosen to make.
“Report from the hangar bay,” the fighter control officer called. “Scout ships are away.”
“Acknowledged,” Nalgol said, scanning as much of the blackness out there as he could see without moving his head-it wouldn’t look good for the bridge crew to see him looking back and forth at nothing. He caught a glimpse of one of the drive flares coming out from beneath the hull; and then the scout crossed the cloaking shield boundary and vanished.
He took a deep breath, wondering yet again what in the Empire he and the others were doing here. Sitting there in Moff Disra’s office with Trazzen and Argona and Dorja, it had all sounded reasonable enough. Out here in the wilds of the Bothawui system, millions of kilometers from anywhere, it didn’t seem nearly as clever anymore.
On the other hand, how many of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s schemes had ever looked even vaguely reasonable until they were sprung on the enemy?
Nalgol snorted under his breath. He’d never served directly beneath Thrawn, or any of the Emperor’s other Grand Admirals for that matter, so he’d never been able to form a personal opinion of their skills. Still, even viewed from the edges of Thrawn’s war machine where the Tyrannic’s duty had taken it most of that time, Nalgol had to admit the Empire had been doing pretty well while the Grand Admiral was in command. Before he’d been murdered by that Noghri traitor Rukh.
Or had apparently been murdered. That had been a nifty little sleight of hand. How had he pulled it off, anyway?