[Legacy Of The Force] - 08(9)
Niathal nodded and carried on to her office. Captain Nevil was waiting for her. She closed the doors and swept the room for bugs with her hand scanner, but even when it came up clean, she still whispered.
“All I can hope, “she said, not waiting for him to speak, “is that when the news spreads, the crews believe it as much as I did, or think that the poor woman deserved it for some reason. Because if they do reach the conclusion that ne’s a monster, morale will collapse, and we’ve lost.”
Nevil didn’t respond. The Quarren usually kept his counsel, but he seemed to be even more tight-lipped today.
“What is it, Captain? I’ve swept for surveillance devices. You can speak freely.”
His mouth-tentacles rippled as if he was measuring his words carefully. “What are you going to do about Solo?”
Niathal’s instinct and training said to call in the military police immediately, invoke emergency powers and have Jacen arrested. But her common sense said that Jacen’s loyal Galactic Alliance Guard trumped the MPs, that the rest of the fleet was loyal to him, and that she would end up as sole Chief of State, which-whatever she might have thought she wanted a couple of years ago-was now a poison chalice.
And she was effectively Luke Skywalker’s spy. She needed to stay on the inside to arm him with intelligence. Jacen was too strong for her to confront and depose alone.
“For the moment, there’s very little I can do, “she said.
“Ma’am, you can put me on a charge for saying this if you like, but he needs to be relieved of duty.”
“Do you trust me, Captain?”
Nevil’s tentacles became still. He was wary now. “I think I still do.”
“Then if I say that I’m as appalled by this monstrous act as you are, but that I have to make sure I’m actually in a position to do something conclusive, will you accept that without further explanation?”
Niathal hoped he understood. If she told him more, he’d be compromised, too. It was the oblique talk of coups and plots; not that she was any stranger to that kind of coded conversation, having helped oust Cal Omas. Perhaps she was now getting her just desserts.
“I believe I get the general meaning, Admiral, “said Nevil.
Niathal wasn’t sure he had. “When you fire on a target like Jacen Solo, you daren’t miss or just wound him. You have to make sure he can’t return fire. Ever.”
Nevil froze, then nodded. It was a human gesture, picked up from serving alongside humans, just as they adopted expressions from other species.
“I’d expected instant mutiny, “he said. “But our tendency-all of us-is to maintain discipline and try to carry on as if nothing untoward is happening, as if that’ll make it go away.”
“There’s a war on, Nevil. Our people are too busy staying alive.” Niathal went to the window and looked out across the city, somehow expecting to see the view radically changed just as her world had been. But life went on. Coruscant was a long way from the front, and Jacen was still the heroic colonel, crusher of terrorists and son of two heroes of the old Rebellion. Well fed and defended, with distracting shows on the HoloNet, the average Coruscant citizen wasn’t about to rush to the barricades and storm the Senate, even if Tebut’s fate was plastered all over HNE bulletins. It wouldn’t be, of course. “And it hasn’t impacted the lives of civilians here - yet.”
Nevil seemed a little more reassured that he was still talking to the officer and not the politician. “I won’t ask what you’ll say to him when you meet. But he realizes you’ll know, and you’ll have to take some position on it.”
“I shall openly question his methods, as I usually do, “she said, wondering if she had already confided too much in Nevil. “And he’ll think nothing has changed.”
“So you don’t share a philosophy.”
“I’m disappointed that you might ever have thought I did.”
Nevil waited a couple of beats as if to make his point, that he wasn’t so sure an ambitious admiral wouldn’t do whatever it took to achieve high office, including selling her honor. “My son didn’t die to put a sadistic despot in power, “he said at last. “I look to you to ensure his life wasn’t wasted.”
It was a gut-punch. Niathal rode it. “I’m sorry about Turl. I truly am.”
Nevil just inclined his head politely and left. Niathal had just had some of her worst fears confirmed. While she knew that she couldn’t always be liked, and that becoming Chief of State always meant treading on a few toes, she was wounded by not being trusted-or believed.