“I saw him myself,” Han repeated.
“Describe him,” Fey’lya said. “What did he look like?”
“He wasn’t human,” Han said. “At least, not completely. He had a roughly human build, but he had light blue skin, a kind of bluish black hair, and eyes that glowed red. I don’t know what species he was.”
“Yet we know that the Emperor didn’t like nonhumans,” Mon Mothma reminded him.
Han looked at Leia. The skin of her face was tight, her eyes staring at and through him with a kind of numb horror. She understood what this meant, all right. “He was wearing a white uniform,” he told Mon Mothma. “No other Imperial officers wore anything like that. And the contact I was with specifically called him a Grand Admiral.”
“Obviously a self-granted promotion,” Fey’lya said briskly. “Some regular admiral or perhaps a leftover Moff trying to rally the remains of the Empire around him. Anyway, that’s beside the immediate point.”
“Beside the point?” Han demanded. “Look, Councilor, if there’s a Grand Admiral running around loose-“
“If there is,” Mon Mothma interrupted firmly, “we’ll soon know for certain. Until then, there seems little value in holding a debate in a vacuum. Council Research is hereby directed to look into the possibility that a Grand Admiral might still be alive. Until such an investigation has been completed, we will continue with our current inquiry into the circumstances of the Sluis Van attack.” She looked at Han, then turned and nodded at Leia. “Councilor Organa Solo, you may begin the questioning.”
Admiral Ackbar’s high-domed, salmon-colored head bent slightly to the side, his huge round eyes swiveling in their sockets in a Calamarian gesture Leia couldn’t recall ever having seen before. Surprise? Or was it perhaps dread?
“A Grand Admiral,” Ackbar said at last, his voice sounding even more gravelly than usual. “An Imperial Grand Admiral. Yes. That would indeed explain a great many things.”
“We don’t actually know that it’s a real Grand Admiral yet,” Leia cautioned him, throwing a glance at the stony look on her husband’s face. Han, clearly, had no doubts of his own. Neither did she, for that matter. “Mon Mothma’s having Research look into it.”
“They won’t find anything,” Ackbar said, shaking his head. A more human gesture, that, of the sort he usually tried to use when dealing with humans. Good; that meant he was getting back on balance. “I had a thorough search made of the Imperial records when we first took Coruscant back from the Empire. There’s nothing in there but a list of the Grand Admirals’ names and a little about their assignments.”
“Erased before they pulled out,” Han growled.
“Or perhaps never there to begin with,” Leia suggested. “Remember that these weren’t just the best and brightest military leaders the Emperor could find. They were also part of his plan to bring the Imperial military more personally under his control.”
“As was the Death Star project itself,” Ackbar said. “I agree, Councilor. Until the Grand Admirals were fully integrated both militarily and politically, there was no reason to publish details of their identities. And every reason to conceal them.”
“So,” Han said. “Dead end.”
“It appears that way,” Ackbar agreed. “Any information we’re going to get will have to come from current sources.
Leia looked at Han. “You mentioned you were with a contact when you saw this Grand Admiral, but you didn’t give us the contact’s name.”
“That’s right,” Han nodded. “I didn’t. And I’m not going to. Not now, anyway.”
Leia frowned at that unreadable sabacc face, stretching out with all her rudimentary Jedi skills to try to sense his purpose and feelings. It didn’t get her very far. If only I had more time to practice, she thought ruefully. But if the Council had needed all her time before, it was going to need even more than that now. “Mon Mothma’s going to want to know, eventually,” she warned him.
“And I’m going to tell her, eventually,” he came back. “Until then, it’s going to be our little secret.”
“As in ‘leverage’?”
“You never can tell.” A shadow of something crossed Han’s face. “The name’s not going to do the Council any good right now, anyway. The whole group’s probably buried themselves away somewhere. If the Empire hasn’t caught up with them.”
“You don’t know how to find them?” Leia asked.