“Don’t jump the gun,” said Omas. “I have to table this as an emergency motion. We have to carry the rest of the Alliance with us.”
But it was a foregone conclusion as far as Niathal was concerned. Jacen followed the admiral out into the corridor and into her offices at the far end of the floor. They didn’t speak until the doors were closed behind them and she had pressed a key set in her desk.
“Just to be certain,” she said. “This is the secure link that doesn’t go via Fleet ComCen.”
“You’re recalling those two fleets, aren’t you?”
“I don’t have to ask the Senate’s authority to move assets already committed to exercises.”
“So you just bring them back home for exercises… here.”
“Almost.” She hit a few more keys. “No point letting the enemy prepare for a blockade, or it just prolongs the thing. I’ve drawn up plans for the blockade.”
“Total exclusion zone?”
“No, two exclusion zones. One to stop Corellia resupplying Centerpoint from the surface. If we rely purely on isolating Corellia from the outside, then the embargo will take years to bite. If they can’t get materiel up to Centerpoint, then that does the job a lot faster.”
Jacen thought about the mass of industrial orbiters strung around the planet.
“That means creating two picket lines as sterile zones.”
“That’s why I need both fleets. I’m going to share the plan with the fleet commanders. Then they stand off a couple of hours’ jump from Corellia and they’re ready to deploy the moment the Senate gives the word.”
“You’re sure you can trust them?”
“They’re both Mon Calamari. Yes, I trust them.”
“Omas is getting cold feet.”
“They can get as cold as he likes, but Sal-Solo is not just refusing to disarm, he’s rearming. I think that’ll get the Alliance’s attention.”
Jacen heard Lumiya’s voice within him, reminding him of the inevitability of it all, and that if he embraced his role-his duty-he could bring order to the galaxy.
He thought of his five years of studying every arcane school of Force philosophy and wondered what more Lumiya could show him to bring him to the status of a Sith Master. He couldn’t imagine it. So he simply seized the tenuous ideas and thoughts that welled up in his mind, not knowing their source or validity but eager to accept that his intuition might be the key.
He was running on instinct, not intellect.
Feel, don’t think.
Even the Jedi taught him that.
See, you don’t think of yourself as a Jedi any longer.
Jacen had no idea whose voice that was-his, Lumiya’s, another’s entirely-but he surrendered to it.
“I would like to play a role in the blockade,” he said.
Niathal projected a holochart of the Corellian system onto the wall and stood back to study it. “You’re a fighter pilot, aren’t you? Like your sister.”
“I’d like a command.”
“A ship?”
“A squadron. I’m confusing you, aren’t I?”
“I thought you already had quite a substantial command as head of the Galactic Alliance Guard.”
“I’d like to show that I’m prepared to fight in the front line,” Jacen said.
“I think everyone knows that from your combat record.”
“That wasn’t against my father’s homeworld.”
“Ah, the ultimate loyalty test,” said Niathal.
“If you like.”
“Very well. You can have temporary group command. That’ll include the squadron your sister commands. Unusual to have one colonel under another, but it’s not unknown. If that doesn’t demonstrate that the Solo family puts nation before family, I don’t know what will.”
It’s more than that. I have to have the respect and support of more than one admiral. I need the rank and file to see me as their own, too, just in case you can’t deliver their loyalty-or you change your mind about me.
“Thank you, Admiral.”
Admiral Niathal gave him a tightlipped smile and moved icons of battleships around her chart with the motion of one finger.
“Time I brought the exercises to an end, then.” The icons had become a three-dimensional net around Corellia, separating the planet from its industrial facilities, which lay entirely in orbiting stations far above the pleasantly rural planet. The Corellians’ wish to keep unspoiled countryside free from industrial sprawl now made them very vulnerable. “I’m calling Endex five days early. The commanders know what I have in mind now.”
Niathal went to her desk comm, and the message that would effectively start the war was, ironically, one that usually brought maneuvers to a halt.