[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(104)
On the upside-down view of Rellidir, half a dozen green dots appeared at various points along the view’s rim and sped toward the enemy command post, each followed by a stream of red dots.
“In the second part of the operation,” the admiral continued, “Corellian YT-Fifty-one-hundred Shriek-class bombers will assault the shielded region from all sides, closely pursued by Galactic Alliance starfighters and warships. They will bombard the shields, if any survive, and then continue their bombardment of the command post until it is destroyed.”
The admiral mopped her brow with her sleeve. Her voice turned pained. “The Shriek-class bombers have been chosen because they are distinctly, uniquely, unmistakably Corellian. Designed by the Corellian Engineering Corporation, they have not entered full production yet-only ten late-model prototypes and a few earlier prototypes arc in existence.” The city view abruptly winked out of existence and was replaced by a slowly spinning view of a sleek gray saucer shape with forward-projecting mandible, like a streamlined Millennium Falcon without the side-mounted cockpit projection.
“The pursuing spacecraft,” Karathas continued, “though bearing the colors and insignia of vehicles and vessels of the Galactic Alliance fleet, will actually be units of the Corellian Defense Force. Instead of shooting down the Shrieks, other than hitting them with a few reduced-strength laser blasts for cosmetic effect, their mission will be to reinforce the firepower of those bombers … and to reassign blame for civilian deaths to the Galactic Alliance.”
Silence fell in the wake of the admiral’s words. Leia put her face into her hands-not an expression of grief, but a way to keep her composure. Han took a long, deep breath. It had gotten worse.
Wedge turned a brilliant, bitter smile on the admiral. “It would seem,” he said, “that the plan would actually benefit if we maximized civilian casualties.”
Leia lifted her head, her eyes wide.
Admiral Karathas’s face relaxed into a nonexpression, as though she’d just been hit by a blaster set to stun. “General Antilles, that might be the most callous thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
Wedge looked scornful and made a dismissive gesture. “Admiral, let’s call a skifter a skifter. Operation Noble Savage is, as you yourself said, designed to take what is inevitably going to be a public relations nightmare-the deaths of thousands of civilians from friendly fire-and turn it to the advantage of the Corellian independence cause. It will take outrage that would have been directed against us and turn it against our opponents. That outrage will stiffen Corellian resistance against the GA, allowing us to hit harder, more ferociously. By an inevitable progression of logic, the more horrible the offense we can blame on the GA forces, the greater that outrage. Correct?”
Karathas blinked. Finally, her face resumed the hard angles and planes that had characterized it for most of her adulthood. “General, I’m within seconds of ordering you to shut up and leave this council.”
“That would be a mistake,” Wedge said. His voice was as hard as Karathas’s had become. “If you did that, you’d prevent me from showing you how to achieve your military objectives without wantonly killing fellow Corellians. And let me point out that Operation Noble Savage, though it would probably divert the population’s outrage from our military to the GA, drastically increases the odds that we will go to war-our population wouldn’t easily back away from further confrontations if all those lives on Tralus remained unavenged, would it?”
Karathas paused. The respect with which most Corellian military officers held Antilles, and the admiral’s own evident discontent with the plan just outlined, obviously kept in check any outrage she might have felt at being addressed in that fashion. Leia felt only so much sympathy for the Woman, however. Karathas had bought into a plan that was ghastly. Leia would have had far more respect for her had some other officer, Karathas’s replacement, been explaining this mission-meaning that Karathas had been replaced for her opposition to Noble Savage.
A square of light fell across the table as another of the observation rooms was illuminated from within; its occupant had obviously turned on its interior light so as to be seen from below. Han and Leia looked around the bank of observation booths, but none they could see was now illuminated, meaning that the one they were looking for had to be close to theirs.
Then a voice, electronically amplified, boomed from the room just to their left. “General, am I to understand that the operation I helped design, that I approved and am ready to set into motion, is wanton?”