Daala can hear all this anyway. I just want to hear her take on this. She’s more at the Jacen end of the ruthless spectrum. Pellaeon wondered if he simply wanted to hear a friendly voice, and took his comlink from his tunic. At least it’ll be over sooner rather than later. Then the hatch opened. He’d locked it.
Tahiri Veila stepped in, head slightly lowered as if she was sorry to interrupt him.
“Sorry, sir, but I had to speak to you.”
Pellaeon felt his nape prickle. He’d have to factor in anti-force-user security in the future, just in case-if such a thing could be made. “There’s always knocking…”
“Sir, there are lives on the line. If you let the GA tear itself apart, everyone loses.”
“I’m not letting it do anything, Lieutenant, “he said. “I’m giving practical support to an ally.”
“If Colonel Solo is deposed, the GA will revert to its indecisive self and there’ll be chaos.”
“I’m afraid I can’t agree with you, my dear, but then I don’t have to. Loyalty is a fine thing, don’t think that I don’t respect that-but Jacen Solo’s the chaos, not the cure.” Pellaeon stood, expecting her to try some feminine charm. The comlink to Daala was still open: she’d be finding this amateur routine very amusing. “Is there anything else?”
“The Moffs will break off if you tell them to.” Tahiri took a step back. “I witnessed the influence you wield. Moff Quille was ready to defy you, but you just put him back in his place. I can feel things in beings that even you can’t see.”
“I’ve no reason to refuse Admiral Niathal’s request. Subject closed.”
Tahiri pressed her lips together and sighed, mild annoyance, possibly joking, but the GA-issue officer’s blaster she drew from her belt was quite serious.
“Please, Admiral, just do it.” She flicked the safety catch off and aimed it at his chest. Her voice had a harder edge and lower tone now. “Call off your fleet and give Jacen Solo a chance. He needs to win at Fondor.”
“Win…”
“Destroy its capacity to threaten the GA again. It’s a practical matter, but it also shows the rest of the galaxy how high the stakes are for them.”
Ironic. Jacen Solo would have found Alderaan’s demise within his ideology. Pellaeon wondered what Leia would have made of that.
“No.” Pellaeon calculated whether he could draw his weapon before she could fire-if she would fire-but she was a Jedi, and a third his age. A horrible certainty gripped his gut. For a few moments all he could feel was the sensation of intense cold flooding his thigh muscles. He’d felt it before, under fire, when he knew how close he was to annihilation. But he was also used to working through that reflex. “I won’t ignore a surrender, and I won’t enable the bombardment of civilian centers afterward, and I will not lend the Empire to a petty despot.”
“You know you’re going to die, “said Tahiri.
Pellaeon was past the adrenaline ice stage and into the phase of letting his body and training take over to resolve the threat. It was a shame he was just a little too old now to do it with a display of physical force. He’d make his last punch count, though.
“I’m ninety-two years old. Of course I’m going to die, and quite soon, but it’s how I die that matters to me. Please-get out of my cabin.”
“Last chance.” Tahiri leveled the blaster. “All you have to do is call a halt. The Moffs obey you.”
“My son died to defeat the Yuuzhan Vong, and Jacen’s as set on destroying everything I hold dear as they were.”
Pellaeon knew death, all too closely glimpsed for too many years, and the end that he’d most feared was slow decline. He could feel death most days lately, tapping to get his attention like an anxious bird at the window. Now the bird was gone, and the dread with it. It was the cleaner death standing alongside him again now, the one he knew from combat, the one that he preferred, and few ever got to choose the way they left the world quite like this. He grabbed the privilege and opened his comlink.
“Pellaeon to Fleet, “he said. Tahiri paused, probably expecting him to cave in to her threat, like she would. Life mattered more to her than how it was lived. “Fleet, this is Admiral Pellaeon. I order you to place your vessels at the complete disposal of Admiral Niathal, and take down Jacen Solo, for the honor of the Empire - “
The blaster bolt hit him square in the chest and flung him back against the bulkhead. The pain was so fleeting that he was sure he was already dead; he’d always expected black oblivion, not this numbness like getting a crushing kick from a faulty power circuit. Tahiri leaned over him, eyes wide, the smell of blaster and burned fabric clinging to her. He wasn’t dead yet.