[Thrawn Trilogy] - 02(62)
“Welcome to our base of operations,” Sena said, waving a hand to encompass the encampment around them. “If you’ll come with us, the Commander is waiting to meet you.
“Busy looking place you’ve got here,” Han commented as they all boarded the skiff. “You getting ready to start a war or something?”
“We’re not in the business of starting wars,” Sena said coolly.
“Ah,” Han nodded, looking around as the driver swung the skiff around and headed off through the camp. There was something about the layout that seemed vaguely familiar.
Lando got it first. “You know, this place looks a lot like one of the old Alliance bases we used to work out of,” he commented to Sena. “Only built on the surface instead of dug in underground.”
“It does look that way, doesn’t it?” Sena agreed, her voice not giving anything away.
“You’ve had dealings with the Alliance, then?” Lando probed gently.
Sena didn’t answer. Lando looked at han, eyebrows raised. Han shrugged slightly in return. Whatever was going on here, it was clear the hired hands weren’t in the habit of talking about it.
The skiff came to a halt beside an administration building indistinguishable from the others nearby except for the two uniformed guards flanking the doorway. They saluted as Sena approached, one of them reaching over to pull the door open. “The Commander asked to see you for a moment alone, Captain Solo,” Sena said, stopping by the open door. “We’ll wait out here with General Calrissian.”
“Right,” Han said. Taking a deep breath, he stepped inside.
From its outside appearance he’d expected it to be a standard administrative center, with an outer reception area and a honeycomb of comfy executive offices stacked behind it. To his mild surprise, he found himself instead in a fully equipped war room. Lining the walls were comm and tracking consoles, including at least one crystal gravfield trap receptor and what looked like the ranging control for a KDY v-150 Planet Defender ion cannon like the one the Alliance had had to abandon on Hath. In the center of the room a large holo display showed a sector’s worth of stars, with a hundred multicolored markers and vector lines scattered among the glittering white dots.
And standing beside the holo was a man.
His face was distorted somewhat by the strangely colored lights playing on it from the display; and it was, at any rate, a face Han had never seen except in pictures. But even so, recognition came with the sudden jolt of an overhead thunderclap. “Senator Bel Iblis,” he breathed.
“Welcome to Peregrine’s Nest, Captain Solo,” the other said gravely, coming away from the holo toward him.
“I’m flattered you still remember me.
“It’d be hard for any Corellian to forget you, sir,” Han said, his numbed brain noting vaguely in passing that there were very few people in the galaxy who rated an automatic sir from him. “But you :”
“Were dead?” Bel Iblis suggested, a half smile creasing his lined face.
“Well-yes,” Han floundered. “I mean, everyone thought you died on Anchoron.”
“In a very real sense, I did,” the other said quietly, the smile fading from his face. Closer now, Han was struck with just how lined with age and, stress the Senator’s face was. “The Emperor wasn’t quite able to kill me at Anchoron, but he might just as well have done so. He took everything I had except my life: my family, my profession, even all future contacts with mainstream Corellian society. He forced me outside the law I’d worked so hard to create and maintain.” The smile returned, like a hint of sunshine around the edge of a dark cloud. “Forced me to become a rebel. I imagine you understand the feeling.”
“Pretty well, yeah,” Han said, grinning lopsidedly in return. He’d read in school about the legendary presence of the equally legendary Senator Garm Bel Iblis; now, he was getting to see that charm up close. It made him feel like a schoolkid again. “I still can’t believe this. I wish we’d known sooner-we could really have used this army of yours during the war.”
For just a second a shadow seemed to cross Bel Iblis’s face. “We probably couldn’t have done much to help,” he said. “It’s taken us a good deal of time to build up to what you see here.” His smile returned. “But there’ll be time to talk about that later. Right now, I see you standing there trying to figure out exactly when it was we met.”
Actually, Han had forgotten about Sena’s references to a previous meeting. “Tell you the truth, I haven’t got a clue,” he confessed. “Unless it was after Anchoron and you were in disguise or something.”