[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(117)
Chapter Twenty-Six
CORUSCANT
IT WAS LAKE A REPLAY OF THEIR FIRST CONFERENCE FROM DAYS EARLIER, with Cal Omas, Admiral Pellaeon, and Admiral Niathal occupying the same seats at the conference table when Luke was escorted into the chamber. They and their aides looked up as the Jedi Master entered, and even before he seated himself, Omas said, “So it appears you have good news for us.”
Luke looked startled. “What makes you think that? If I may ask.”
“Your expression,” Omas said. “You were smiling. In these times, a smile from a Jedi is a hopeful sign.”
“Oh.” Luke let his expression fall into more serious lines. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mislead you. I just had some good news about my boy, Ben. He managed to save a number of lives on Lorrd just a few hours ago.”
Niathal nodded, her protruding eyes surprisingly adept at projecting cool displeasure. “Admirable. I’m sure he’ll grow up into a fine Jedi Knight … years and years from now, when this new Corellian crisis is behind us. For now, though-“
“For now,” Pellaeon interrupted, “we could use some more universal hopeful signs from the Jedi.”
“I’m not sure about hopeful,” Luke said. “Useful, perhaps. As you probably saw in the report I forwarded, there’s little doubt that Thrackan Sal-Solo sabotaged the Toryaz Station conference-or, at least, through his inaction permitted it to be sabotaged.”
Omas’s mouth turned downward. “Unfortunately, the difference between those two behaviors is the difference between the most serious sort of crime and a noncrime.”
“Noncrime.” Luke looked appalled. “You’re joking.”
“No.” Omas, for this moment, looked like a man impervious to humor-certainly not a generator of amusement. “Assuming that he did not pay for the information offered in the message he received, can you prove that he took the message seriously? That it was credible to him? Because he can always claim that he did not consider it a credible offer, that it was a communication from a crank, and therefore did not need to be acted on in any capacity.”
Luke shook his head, unhappy to be thwarted by so negligible an obstacle. “Still, if a strike team were able to capture him and bring him to Coruscant, a criminal trial based on the assumption that he did buy the information could drag on for months. Or longer. Keeping Sal-Solo out of commission during all that time. And that would be a boon to the peace process.”
The others exchanged glances. “That,” Niathal said, “is a far more pragmatic suggestion than I expected from a Jedi. I like it.”
Luke leaned back. “Jedi are among the most pragmatic beings in the galaxy. We tend to operate under the assumption that it’s better to get things done than to observe all the niceties-we consider justice to be of more consequence than law, for instance. Even justice is often overrated. Sometimes the imposition of justice prevents redemption.”
“We’ll consider that recommendation,” Omas said. “But we have to consider it against the precedent it sets. If we kidnap a planetary ruler, even a subruler who theoretically still belongs to our own government structure, despite our evident right to bring a suspected criminal into custody for trial, it opens a pragmatic precedent for the kidnapping of rulers within the Galactic Alliance. I might, in effect, be setting the stage for my own eventual kidnapping.”
“We might have the blessing-even the unofficial blessing-of Sal-Solo’s chief rival on this,” Luke said. “My sister reports a surreptitious meeting with Prime Minister Denjax Teppler, and a subtext of the meeting was apparently Teppler’s concern that he’ll survive, both politically and as a living being, only so long as Sal-Solo views him as an asset.”
Pellaeon snorted, his expression amused but derisive. “That’s what I love about politics,” he said. “We and a Corellian puppet ruler might have to conspire to remove a politician who’s an impediment to us both before we can make headway in the peace process. How much sense does that make?”
Luke spread his hands, palms up. “I can’t always make sense at the tables of politics. Let’s see … I’ve finished bringing the underaged Jedi trainees off Corellia, removing them as potential targets for retaliation. Mara came away from Coronet with information about Corellian midlevel government officers that you might be able to use as leverage on them-a matter for Intelligence. My report included evaluations from many of the Jedi elsewhere in the galaxy, all pointing to a rise in support of Corellia’s position in specific planetary systems. And that’s most of what I had to report.”