Omas changed the holoimage to a tote board of the Senate composition. The names of most of the member planets were listed in red, but some were in blue; there were more blue names than she remembered from the last time she’d seen this list.
“Two more members seceded last night,” Omas said. “Las Lagon and Beris. Minor worlds, but let’s do the arithmetic. The more planets that secede from the GA, the fewer military assets I have to call on, and the more assets there are that are potentially available to the Confederation.”
Jacen was a master of expressionless contempt. “I think I can work that out, yes.”
“And you still believe in responding with maximum forcewithin the boundaries of ethical treaties.”
“Yes.”
“Then we’re on the downward spiral.” Omas walked into the center of the room and gave Niathal a glance that verged on pleading: Come on, you’re the military, you know this is true. “Sooner or later, secessions reach a point where the GA becomes the rumpwhere the Confederation equals and then outnumbers us.” Omas held up two fingers and counted off theatrically. “Problem one: We would be outgunned. Problem two: Where’s our legitimacy? What peace would we be enforcing? “
Niathal decided to let Jacen respond and keep her powder dry. Omas had an excellent point, but it was a politician’s point, not a chief of staff’s. Her job at that moment was to decide how to use force to achieve Omas’s objectives, not to define what those objectives should be.
That was a battle for Jacen Solo. She watched.
“In that case,” Jacen said, so softly that it was almost a whisper, “they can defeat us without a shot being fired. They can break us with a sheet of flimsi. I’d call that surrender.”
“I’d call it war-gaming the worst scenario.” Omas looked to Niathal again. “And you, Admiral, will know when we reach the military tipping point.”
Niathal had two strategiesone with all the GA pieces she had in play at the current time, and one with Coruscant-based forces alone. It made sense to work on the basis of the latter if support was falling away. She glanced at the list of red names and the growing tally of blue ones while keeping an eye on Jacenhumans always had a hard time working out where Mon Calamari were lookingand realized that the graph wouldn’t be a straight line. If there was to be an erosion of the Alliance, it wouldn’t be a tidy progression; it would be a sudden collapse.
“That point hasn’t come,” she said at last. “I’ll let you know as soon as I start getting nervous. But I can tell you that we’re already overstretched because of the geography. Multiple fronts. Not good.”
“And if we withdraw support from allies, then we magnify the problem,” Omas said. “They’ll switch.”
Jacen inhaled audibly. “This is why I advocated going in very hard and very fast in the first place.”
Omas smiled, but without humor. “Ah. I told you so. I wondered how long it would be before we reached that stage.”
“Chief Omas, I know hindsight gets us nowhere now, but we might as well be honest with each other, and recognize what we can each contribute.”
Niathal was working through her phases of Jacen. First he’d been a useful ally; then an instrument for getting the tougher decisions past Omas. He was still good for the Alliance, she thought, but he was far more the politician than the soldier lately. His language had changedless direct, more circumspect. She longed for plain talking.
But she wasn’t doing any in front of Jacen now.
“My sources tell me the Corellians failed to recruit the Mandalorians fairly early on,” she said. “For some obscure reason, they appear to be staying neutral. Unless they’ve had some collective lobotomy, I call that interesting.”
Omas looked at Jacen pointedly, hands in pockets. “Have we approached them? Have any of your shadowy little operatives signed some of them up? They were pretty handy during the last war, as I recall.”
Jacen looked sereneexcept for his pupils. “No, and I suspect we wouldn’t receive a positive response.”
“Why? Don’t tell me they’ve discovered pacifism after millennia of pillaging and destroying. They’re congenital thugs. Any excuse for a fight that they can get paid for.”
You think I don’t know what you did, Jacen. Niathal feigned mild interest. But word gets around. Let’s see if you play this straight.
Jacen was completely still except for the fact that he meshed his fingers in his lap. It looked like a meditation pose, utterly at odds with his black Galactic Alliance Guard coveralls.