[Legacy Of The Force] - 08(40)

I wanted the top job, and I got it. Serves me right.

“Colonel Solo to see you, Admiral, “said the droid, using their military titles. Neither needed to be reminded they shared control of the Galactic Alliance, but Niathal needed to hear the word admiral, to be made to remember how she’d first signed up to serve the state. It was too easy to slide into the other role.

Jacen strode in and perched his behind on the edge of a table facing her desk. He was close to knocking off a pile of flimsi and datapads with his long black cloak, and that casualness annoyed her almost as much as the fact that his business-like black GAG fatigues had given way to this pointlessly dramatic wardrobe.

“I’m hearing interested noises from some of the Moffs about joining the GA, “he said. “They’re thinking thoughts of empire again.”

“Heard personally?” she asked. Jacen had said he wouldn’t negotiate without her explicit involvement. “Or does this emanate from their gentlemen’s clubs and smoke-filled tapcafs again?”

“Let’s say the latter.”

“How? I’m fed up guessing like this is some party entertainment.”

“The military attache was passing through Muunilinst at the same time as a Moff who has relatives there.”

“Doing charity work for bank employees, no doubt…”

“If I’d sent him to talk to the Moffs in Ravelin itself, you’d have accused me of bypassing you.”

“I would.” Niathal worried about the Moffs. The Imperial Remnant had been quiet and content to live within its borders for years, or so she’d thought. Content was a relative term. “What impression have you given them?”

Jacen slid off the edge of the table and activated Niathal’s holochart, the one she used when she had staff meetings. He zoomed in on the northeast quadrant, filling the table with translucent planets, stars, and threads of colored light representing the major hyperspace routes.

“Here’s what we’ve hinted is on the table, “he said, thrusting his fingertip into a cluster of worlds to the N’Zoth side of the Core. “Borleias and Bilbringi.”

“You’re reassuringly transparent.”

“Come on, Bilbringi is always going to be a system that they want back. We’ve not consolidated our claim on it since the Yuuzhan Vong War-all we did was defend it. Let’s just say that now we’re not going to be defending it, the mineral resources are still there, and, as they say in real estate, it’s ripe for sympathetic restoration-as shipyards again.”

Niathal thought that it was all a little too close to Coruscant for her comfort. “And Borleias gives them fast access to all the major hyperspace routes.”

“Resources, infrastructure-with a little bit of work, of course-and mobility. What more could a red-blooded Moff want?”

“Blue-blooded. They’re such snobs. I’m just concerned that they’re all dressed up with nowhere to conquer, and we’re giving them delusions of glory again.”

“They’re still not big enough to worry us. The deal is that if they commit their considerable military machine to the war effort, then their reward will be a major expansion of their territory.” Jacen tilted his head this way and that to consider the three-dimensional view of the galaxy’s flattened disk. “So I suggest we ask them to help us take Fon-dor.”

Jacen, you just can’t leave Fondor alone, can you?

It was clear that politically, Fondor irked him. It wouldn’t toe the line. It was Corellia all over again, and whether he admitted the irony or not, Jacen’s own Corellian blood made him a man who didn’t like the word no. Strategically, though, he had a point: Fondor fed ships and weapons into the Confederate war effort at a prodigious rate, so shutting down the orbital yards made sense. Taking the planet and appropriating its industrial capacity, though-that would take more resources, and an army of occupation to keep the workforce running the yards and not sabotaging them. Niathal had her doubts about that, and for several reasons.

“You realize, “she said, “that the Remnant might think Fondor is up for grabs, too, seeing as Borleias and Bilbringi would extend their range to within striking distance of that side of the Core.”

“They might well think that.”

“Don’t play games with them, Jacen. They’d be awfully close neighbors to Coruscant.”

“And with enough corridor to defend between Bastion and Borleias to keep them too busy to start getting ideas about us. And…. Pellaeon. Never forget Pellaeon. He knows how to keep the Moffs in line, so when we have his blessing, we can move.”