CAPTAIN’S DAY CABIN, ANAKIN SOLO; OFF FONDOR
If I were them, I’d have blown me out of the sky by now.
While Caedus waited for Niathal’s task force to show, he used the time to gather Force impressions of the Fondorian defenses. They were waiting. He could wait, too.
I’m not omnipotent. I have to understand my limits. I still need people to carry out my plans.
There was nothing moving between the planet and the orbital yards now, not even routine shuttle traffic, but that was to be expected if they were battened down against an imminent attack. And there was no sign of the Fondorian fleet.
They’ll come out of hyperspace. They had a warning, like they had warning of the minelayers, so they jumped.
And they’d be back when it was most inconvenient, but he’d be ready. He thought he could sense a great flurry of hyperspace activity, like the pressure he would often feel behind his eyes in the hours before a thunderstorm. There was movement out there, far more than just the elements of the Third Fleet or Pellaeon’s Imperials converging on this position.
And she has to go.
Niathal. The leaked intelligence had to be one of Niathal’s cronies-none of his own crew would be so careless or treacherous. It had to be one of her Mon Cal or Quarren buddies undermining him to shake his crew’s faith in him, or even set him up for a defeat that would enable Niathal to take sole control.
Endex, Admiral. I just have to work out the least damaging way to get you out of my hair.
Caedus still expected her to try to oust him every time he left Coruscant, but she never had. Either she wanted the war won before she moved in to take credit for it, or she was waiting for him to get killed. That’s your single biggest mistake. If you’d seized sole power in my absence, I’d have had a hard time retaking Coruscant. Not hard militarily, but a counterattack on my own capital, on top of the fragile recovery from the last war…. no, Coruscant wouldn’t recover psychologically from that. It’s the heart of my new empire. I need that heart unbroken.
Niathal was a fleet officer to her core. She could never think like a galactic leader. She’d want to do things by the naval rules riveted deep in her psyche, to engage him from the bridge of a battleship as if that somehow sanctified her actions. Her and Pellaeon, both: he trusted neither. They went along with him because the pressure from beneath them, the rank and file, the Moffs, the crews, kept them from openly opposing him.
Tebut…. yes, I wish I had done things differently. Was her destiny to show me that a Sith’s true anger is meant for larger targets? I have to think she had a purpose. I set out on this path for all the Tebuts in the galaxy, the mass of ordinary beings crushed by the badly used power of a handful. I’d never waste a life like that…. would I?
Caedus had dreaded discovering that he might be sliding down his grandfather’s disastrous path. Every day, though, he saw confirmation that he wasn’t; there had been plenty killed like Tebut in Vader’s day, people said, not just one shocking act. But Vader had been crippled by love, and his command tainted by a demented fool of an Emperor. In Caedus’s here and now, there was neither distracting love nor any higher authority stifling him.
Yes. Tebut’s death had been a wake-up call from the Force, he was sure of that.
Death? Say it. I killed her. Face it. Learn from it.
The past couldn’t be changed, just observed. Watching history was pointless unless lessons were learned from it and used to shape what could be changed-the next mo-ment, and the next, because that was all the future was, a series of decisions taken differently. Tahiri hadn’t quite accepted that, even if her rational mind told her Anakin was gone forever, and that each backward glance paralyzed her life in the present; but he would wean her off that dependency on regret for her own sake, as much as for his.
Niathal is coming. It’s not a threat. It’s an opportunity. How do I take the chance that’s offered to me? What have I learned?
In any war, officers died too.
He would recognize the chance when he saw it. No need to alienate Niathal’s crews by making her look a martyr. I need them on my side. I can’t do it all on my own, and fear doesn’t keep order forever.
“Sir?”
Tahiri’s voice filtered through. He’d known she was approaching-he was sure, he thought-but let it wash over him. “Yes, Tahiri?”
“Something’s bothering me.”
If it was about Anakin, he’d be disappointed. She appeared like a sharp edge in the Force sometimes. “Go ahead.”
“When Niathal arrives, how can this assault possibly work? How are you going to be able to continue working with her after this?”