“Understood, sir.”
“Anakin Solo standing by.”
The hologram of Admiral Limpan vanished.
Caedus’s datapad tweetled, indicating that he had received a message, and the intelligence officer called, “That’s the breakdown of enemy forces, sir. All old ships. Some of them nearly derelicts. Some are still listed as decommissioned.”
Caedus didn’t bother to read the listing. “Very good. Communications, put the enemy commander on. Let’s get this farce moving.”
There was no hologram this time-the Valorum was either too old to have a holotransmitter or too strapped for resources to use one. Monitors all over the bridge, including those near the bow viewports, flickered simultaneously to show an aging woman, long-faced, in the uniform of a Corellian Defense Force captain.
Caedus moved up to stand before one of the monitors. Tebut nodded to him to let him know its holocam was now broadcasting. Caedus allowed a little discontent to creep into his voice. “A captain? They sent only a naval captain for this negotiation?”
“Captain Hoclaw.” The Corellian woman gave him a nod of mock-friendly greeting. “Technically, you’re a colonel, as I recall. But we both have the power and authority to enter into binding negotiatons.”
“I suppose. So you’re prepared to surrender?”
“I’m prepared to come to the best agreement that is in everyone’s interest, involving the Corellian system’s return to the Alliance. But if your first words are going to be, So you’re prepared to surrender, this could take even longer than it has to. I see you’re standing. Perhaps you should summon a chair.”
Caedus could see that Captain Hoclaw was seated in a comfortably padded officer’s chair at the back of her bridge. “Thank you, no. Let’s begin.”
Chapter 16
Jag and Han got the panel covering the main motivators for the hangar exterior doors down and to the floor, revealing the machinery beyond.
Jag shook his head. “I do fine with mechanical gear, but I prefer to have manuals and charts on hand. Jaina’s better at this sort of thing than I am.”
Han smiled in combined pride and self-appreciation. “Don’t worry. She got it from me.” He pointed a long, cal-lused forefinger at an expansive cluster of chips. “The main security module will be there. We just have to figure out which chip.”
“Out of, oh, three hundred or so.”
“Sure, no problem.” Han took a moment to wave at his daughter, who was visible in the bridge viewpoint of Jacen’s shuttle, then bent for his tool kit. “Just stand back and learn something.”
Alone, all but forgotten except by a black-clad Guardsman at the door into the Command Salon who watched her every movement, Leia stood listening to the exchange between her son and the Corellian captain. Frowning, she moved to a monitor at the stern end of the bridge and leaned in so close that her right ear was adjacent to the device’s main speaker.
She shook her head and returned to the center of the bridge walkway, then stepped clean off of it, dropping nimbly to land beside the bald-headed intelligence officer who had been providing Jacen with data.
Rather than being alarmed, he offered her a sardonic smile. “Is this an attack?”
“If it were, it would be over by now. Can you give me an isolated audio feed of just the Corellian’s side of the transmission? So I can hear it without all this ambient noise?”
“I could, of course. But I won’t. Technically, you’re a prisoner of war.”
“You mean I’m the enemy.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“I’m also Colonel Solo’s mother, and this vessel was named for my other son. I don’t want to see either one destroyed. Which might happen if my worst-case suspicions turn out to be true and I don’t get some cooperation.”
The officer looked at her for a long moment, then sighed. Over Leia’s shoulder, he called, “Tebut! Isolation helmet, please.”
Tebut opened a cabinet drawer beside her station and withdrew a helmet. Not a piece of protective gear for pilots, it was smaller, smoother, with a full-face polarizing visor. She lobbed it to the intelligence officer, who set it beside his monitor, typed a pair of commands on his keyboard, and then handed it to Leia.
She donned it and immediately heard Captain Hoclaw speaking.”… asking us to bear a tremendously disproportionate burden of the cost of rebuilding. If I agree to the numbers you suggest, the Corellian system would be reduced to poverty for generations.” There was a long pause.
“No, that’s not justice. That’s vindictiveness, and it presupposes that the entire burden of blame, that every wrong done in the course of these events, should be laid at the feet of the Corellian government.”