“Oh.” Tiu brightened. “Well, then, I’m not feeling animosity toward him, either. Can I-“
“No.” Mara glanced up as though she could see through intervening floors into the chamber by which she’d entered the bunker. “That escape craft … is it hyperdrive-equipped?”
“It is.”
“But I assume that if we were to board it and blast out of here, we’d have CorSec fighters on our tail in a few moments.”
“I wondered about that, too. And I had no way to confirm or disprove that as a theory … but I doubt it.”
“Explain.”
“It’s for Thrackan to escape in. One of the things he might want to escape from is a vengeful pursuit by new government forces that have chased him out of office, and those government forces could put CorSec on his tail. So my bet is that he’s given it transponder codes that will be registered as good and valid, no matter what, until all traces of Thrackan are scoured out of the computers.”
Mara nodded approvingly. “Which could take awhile, particularly if I pump some malicious code into this machine and wait long enough for associated computers to sample it, too. What say we steal Thrackan’s escape vehicle? If we don’t accumulate any pursuit, we can pick up my husband and go home. If we do, we can dump it over there in the ocean and leave Corellia by the route we’d planned originally.”
“I like this plan.”
Half an hour after Prime Minister Teppler’s departure, politicians and military officers began entering the room beneath Teppler’s viewing chamber. They traveled in groups, one important dignitary backed by three to five members of support staff, with the dignitary and one aide seating themselves at the large, triangular table dominating the room, the others exiled to secondary tables or far corners, there to remain until summoned.
As these people spoke in their small groups, Han and Leia could occasionally make out their words, whenever they were projected across the table or the room. Soon enough, Han realized that they were being augmented by a set of speakers in the wall beneath the long viewport.
Eventually, the highest-ranking officer so far, Admiral Vara Karathas, chief of staff for the Ministry of War and operational leader of the Corellian military, entered with her retinue. All the other officers straightened, looking busier and more efficient, and the big chamber’s upper lights came on in full strength.
“What’s keeping them?” Han frowned down at the military officers below. “They’re still not starting. We were more prompt back in the Rebel Alliance days.”
“You weren’t, you specifically.”
“No, but we were. When you didn’t wait for me.”
Even from the altitude of the viewport-side chairs in Prime Minister Teppler’s box, Admiral Karathas looked years older than the last time Han had laid eyes on her, a holonews spot broadcast the day of their first meeting with Aidel Saxan. There were no more lines to Karathas’s face, no more gray to her hair, but the ramrod-straight military rigidity that always seemed to characterize her had apparently fled. Her posture now was that of a tired woman, and her face seemed softer, no longer stretched into taut planes and sharp angles by unyielding muscles.
She didn’t look beaten. But she did look beatable. Han grimaced, not appreciating the change.
Standing at one truncated point of the triangular table, Karathas pointedly drew a chrono out of a jacket pocket and consulted it. As she did so, several of the other officers glanced in the direction of Teppler’s box-beneath it, actually, and a trifle to the left-and exchanged eye contact and words with one another, reacting to some new arrival and indicating that, at last, things might proceed.
From the direction they had been looking, Wedge Antilles, again in Corellian uniform, walked into the room, without retinue.
Admiral Karathas gave Wedge a wan smile. “Cutting it rather close, aren’t you, Antilles?” She projected her voice sufficiently that it was clearly audible in Teppler’s box-that, and perhaps the microphones that fed Teppler’s speakers were oriented more toward the main table than other portions of the chamber.
Wedge nodded and moved up to the table beside Karathas. “Admiral, if I had a credit for every time someone told me that …”
“Yes, you could probably buy our way out of this situation.” Karathas looked up, in a direction disconcertingly close to where Han and Leia sat, but her eyes seemed to be focused on a point to their left, beyond the wall that separated them from the next room. “Are we all ready? Yes? Then let’s begin. Please sit.” She did as she suggested, and there was a momentary delay as some officers fled the main table and others trotted up to it, seating themselves.