Alema’s smile broadened. In a movement that was curiously clumsy and unpracticed, she raised her lightsaber and charged to swing it down at Waroo.
Leia raised her own blade, catching Alema’s seemingly unpracticed attack; their blades met, sizzled, sparked. Waroo rolled away from the two of them and sat up, swinging his bowcaster off his back and aiming it at Alema. The weapon, built tough to Wookiee standards, did not seem to be damaged.
“No!” Leia lashed out with her foot as Waroo fired. She connected first, kicking Alema backward, and angled her own lightsaber to catch the bowcaster bolt; it sizzled out of existence against the blade.
Puzzled, Waroo offered an offended growl. He rose to his feet and hastily recocked his bowcaster. Leia got her feet under her and leapt toward Alema, positioning herself between the Twi’lek and the Wookiee. She caught Alema’s next strike, this one as suitably swift and ferocious as any Jedi’s, before it could sever her right arm, but she did not press her attack. “Waroo, don’t shoot. There’s something wrong. Trust me.”
Waroo offered a little grumble of complaint. He aimed but did not fire.
Leia strained against Alema’s blade, panting from pain and exertion. Their blades sparked and sizzled as they pressed against each other, slid along each other’s lengths.
Alema tried to disengage and strike, but Leia simply followed her step for step, staying close, fighting purely defensively. Alema struck a second time and a third, all shots toward one of Leia’s limbs, but Leia blocked two of the blows, dodged the third.
Alema’s smile did not fade, but after another moment her strength seemed to. She sagged back as Leia continued to push. “Fine.” Her tone was light, but there was a forced, brittle quality to it. “We will meet later.”
She leapt up and backward, landing on the main corridor wall above, her motion so light and graceful that it seemed she could not possibly be affected by the Falcon’s constant upward acceleration. Then she turned and ran toward the hatchways to the circuitry bay and crew quarters.
Leia and Waroo leapt after her, an effort for both Jedi and Wookiee. But, though Alema had been out of sight for only a few moments, though she could not have made it as far as either hatchway, she was gone.
Chapter 2
CHIEF OF STATE’S BRIEFING OFFICE, CORUSCANT
The adviser’s voice was like the droning of insects, and Darth Caedus knew what to do about insects-ignore them or step on them.
But in this case, he couldn’t afford to ignore the drone. The adviser, whatever her failings as a speaker, was providing him with critical data. Nor could he raise a boot to crush the source of the drone, not with Admiral Cha Niathal, his partner in the coalition government running Coruscant and the Galactic Alliance, sitting on the other side of the table, not with aides hovering and holocam recorders running.
To make matters worse, the adviser would soon wrap up, and inevitably she would address him by the name he so disliked, the name he had been born with, the name he would soon abandon. And then he would once again feel, and have to resist, the urge to crush her.
She did it. The blue-skinned Omwati female, her feathery hair dyed a somber black and her naval uniform freshly pressed, looked up from her datapad. “In conclusion, Colonel Solo…”
Caedus gestured to interrupt her. “In conclusion, the withdrawal of the entire Hapan fleet from Alliance forces removes at least twenty percent of our naval strength and puts us into a game of withdrawal and entrenchment if we are to keep the Confederation from overrunning us. And the treachery of the Jedi in abandoning us at Kuat is further causing a loss of hope among the segments of the population who believe that their involvement means something.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you. That will be all.”
She rose, saluted, and left silently, her posture stiff. Caedus knew she feared him, that she had been struggling to maintain her composure all through the briefing, and he approved. Fear in subordinates meant instant compliance and extra effort on their part.
Usually. Sometimes it meant treachery.
Niathal addressed the other aides present. “We are done here. Thank you.”
When the office door whooshed closed behind the last of them, Caedus turned to Niathal. The Mon Calamari, her white admiral’s uniform almost gleaming, sat silently, regarding him. The stare from her bulbous eyes was no more forbidding than usual, but Caedus knew the message that they held: You could fix this mess by resigning.
Those were not her words, however. “You do not look well.” Hers was the gravelly voice so common to her species, and in it there was none of the sympathy that Admiral Ackbar had been able to project. Niathal was not expressing concern for his health. She was suggesting he was not fit for duty.