[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(103)

“All right,” Karathas said. “We find ourselves in the unenviable unacceptable, but unavoidable-position of having to wage a battle against enemy forces occupying the center of one of our own cities. We cannot do this without a gruesome toll in the lives of our own people, which could very well swing public opinion against us … which would be increasingly harmful to our defense of the Corellian system. Nor can we just ignore the enemy beachhead, as leaving it intact will allow them to reinforce it, expand it, and begin bringing more and more potent offenses against our insystem positions. Their command post in Rellidir on Tralus has to be obliterated … and so Operation Noble Savage has been designed to obliterate it. And to turn what would be a public opinion disaster into an asset.” Her voice did not convey military confidence. If anything, it carried more than a hint of regret, and even resentment.

Han saw Leia shiver. He gave her a questioning look.

“She didn’t say anything about minimizing expected civilian deaths,” she said.

Han leaned forward to give Karathas a closer look. “Maybe she’s getting to that.”

“Maybe.”

Below, Karathas gestured to someone out in the shadows along the big room’s walls. A hologram sprang into existence above the center of the table-a view of the center of the city of Rellidir, inverted so that those at the table, looking up, were actually looking down into the monolithic block of spacescrapers as if from a great height. Some wavered at the unsettling perspective, but most were or had been pilots-amateur, professional, or military-and had no problem with the view.

The disc-shaped hologram began a slow rotation, and then a large region at the center of it-a massive, circular white building with eight narrowing points around its rim, giving it the appearance of a royal crown-began blinking, red-white-red-white. The building was easy to make out among all the spacescrapers, as it was surrounded by a broad belt of green occasionally decorated with narrow gray lines-a large city park with foot trails tracing through it. Small wire-frame objects in blinking red were scattered around the building, arrayed in rows and columns, but they were too small for Han to make out; a few larger wire frames in the same color scheme appeared to be troop transports and corvettes.

“This,” Karathas continued, “is their command post; they have occupied the Navos Center for the Performing Arts. This was a very good choice, speaking from a military point of view. It’s commodious, has an extensive underground storage area not accessible through any of the city’s normal underground infrastructure, and commands a good view of the surrounding airspace. Shield generators have been set up inside, powering a two-level shield defensive system.” On cue, a hologram wire grid of defensive energy shields appeared, blinking on and off in orange, just outside the green park areas surrounding the command post, and another wire grid, this one in red, began blinking several blocks out in all directions, a greater dome enclosing the smaller dome.

“It’s also sound strategically because the center is right in the heart of one of the most densely occupied portions of central Rellidir,” the admiral continued. “Any standard action waged there will result in thousands of civilian casualties. One concussion missile missing its target could bring down an entire superhabitat building … and inevitably there will be missiles missing their targets. Many of them. Our grim task has been to turn that terrible but inevitable consequence of war to our advantage.” Karathas’s voice was raspy and faint on those last words.

“However, despite their good choices, the GA has made some poor ones, too. Situating several starfighter squadrons and some planet-landable fighting vessels around their command post as a show of strength gives us more things to destroy-explosively, catastrophically, and most important, recordably-when we do hit that site.”

“This is bad, bad, bad,” Han said. He couldn’t keep an edge of anger out of his voice.

The wire-grid shield indicators began blinking more erratically. “In the first part of our operation,” the admiral continued, “teams of commandos will be infiltrated into Rellidir. They will attempt to reach the shield generators and destroy them with high explosives. Success on their part is to be considered a bonus to our plan, but the plan does not rely on it.”

“Who came up with this plan?” Han didn’t speak loudly enough to be heard down on the floor or in adjacent observation chambers, but his voice was rising. “See-Threepio could have done better. This is exactly what the GA is going to be expecting.”

He could see Leia tense. It couldn’t be in response to his anger; she was used to that. She had to be growing unhappier because she suspected the plan was going to get even worse.