Part 26 (1/2)

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 care-less 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 dam-aging 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 frag-ile 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 battles.h.i.+p 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 ma.s.s of ordinary beings crushed by the badly used power of a hand-ful. 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 ac-cepted 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 depen-dency 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 ap-proaching-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 ap-peared like a sharp edge in the Force sometimes. ”Go ahead.”

”When Niathal arrives, how can this a.s.sault possibly work? How are you going to be able to continue working with her after this?”

Not Anakin, then. The future; good. ”That's rhetorical.”

”No.” Tahiri seemed to be making an active effort to learn as much as she could on this mission. ”I don't understand what options are open to you. You can't get rid of her.”

”Why?”

”Even you can't control the whole fleet, all the time, every day, because even a Sith has finite time. So you need as many loyal officers as you can get. If anything happens to Niathal, they'll worry that n.o.body's safe from you.”

”You're impressing me these days, Tahiri.” And you'll want my job.

And there I was worrying where I might find a worthy replacement for Ben Skywalker. ”I think Niathal is going to make a mistake. I'm just giving her the prover-bial cord with which to hang herself.”

Tahiri looked as if she were chewing the words and then digesting them, but not enjoying the taste.

”The landings on the orbital yards.... the a.s.sault force commanders are getting anxious. I can hear them on the bridge comlinks nagging Captain Nevil. They need the re-a.s.surance of times and coordinates.”

”I can't give them that yet, but they have intelligence on the layout of the yards, don't they?” Caedus thought of Nevil, given that he'd flung his captain against a bulkhead in the Tebut incident, and wondered just how low he'd sunk in the Quarren's estimation. He'd have to get Nevil back on his side. ”And Nevil is rea.s.suring them?”

”Yes.”

”It's just nerves.”

”Okay, sir.”

”Tell you what, Tahiri, ”Caedus said, remembering the Jacen Solo who could get a whole hangar deck of troops cheering him, ”I'll show them that I'm not sitting here in comfort filing my nails.”

Caedus opened the locker hatch where his flight suit and other abandoned working kit was stowed. He used to look like one of his own troops; it was time to restore that com-forting symbol for this task force. He slipped his black cloak off his shoulders and pulled his flight coveralls over his pants and tunic.

Caedus pressed the desk comlink. ”Delta Hangar, ready my StealthX, please.” Tahiri looked as if she was expecting to follow. ”Just a sortie to get a closer look. I know the kind of things they say on the mess decks. Commanders who hang too far back from the front line get awarded the Coruscant Star by the ranks. I don't want them giving me that decoration. Ever.”

Niathal's estimated time on station was one hour. That was ample to check out at least a couple of Fondor's...o...b..tals. As Caedus made his way through the Destroyer's hatches and pa.s.sages, he picked up the mood of crew members, their lack of confidence, their uncertainty, and he suppressed the anger that threatened to well up. On the hangar deck, the ground technicians seemed puzzled.

Make them believe by succeeding. You used to inspire them. It takes time to build a reputation but a second to lose it. It was just a second.

Just a slip. Just a lesson.

”Time I did a recce, ”Caedus said, blending back into their language and community. ”I'll never ask anyone to do what I'm not prepared to do myself.”

The StealthX dropped out of the hatch into the void and hyperjumped for the orbitals. When it fell out into real-s.p.a.ce moments later and within striking distance of Fon-dor, it was just a small black patch of undetectable nothing that blotted out stars-so vivid, so stark from s.p.a.ce-for an instant as it pa.s.sed. Sometimes Caedus wondered if this was what it felt like to be a ghost, seeing everything so clearly yet not being seen.

As he streaked high over the first orbital, a metallic ar-rowhead kilometers long, he could see the outlines of Star Destroyers flanked by buildings, cranes, and webs of pipes and cables. His senses told him that living beings huddled down there waiting for an attack. Around the curve of the planet, the next orbital ahead was oriented head-on, a slab with structures extending from top and bottom. It resolved into an industrial city as he pa.s.sed above it. He could ob-serve at his leisure. Again, a workforce waited for the worst, radiating anxiety and aggression in the Force; and everywhere, on orbitals and planets, Caedus felt weapons and vessels ready to repel him. Fondor was small in galactic terms, but the whole planet was a dockyard with bil-lions of staff. It had to be the GA's a.s.set again: or it had to be put out of action.

I really wouldn't trust the Imperial Remnant to play nicely with this toy.

The Moffs had Borleias and Bilbringi. They'd be kept busy admiring those baubles for a while, giving Caedus time to restore stability and remove any temptation to step in and impose their own kind of order, just to be helpful.

For a moment, Caedus thought he could feel familiar presences in the Force, but the sensation pa.s.sed. It was re-placed by his Sith battle awareness of his captains and commanders, a living grid of interconnected reactions that tilted, panned and zoomed like a holochart marked with transponder icons. Caedus had a better picture of the the-ater of war than instruments could give them, he knew; it was a hard act of faith for them to surrender judgment to something so nebulous.

Something blipped in his field of vision, and was gone again.

Maybe it had never been there. That was a drawback with battle awareness. The more he could see with the technique, the more detailed it became, and the harder it was sometimes to separate the images in his inner eye from what he could physically see.

The orbitals he managed to observe before running short on time were packed with s.h.i.+ps, many looking as if they were near the final phase of construction, and more than he'd ever realized Fondor had in build.

This wasn't just a symbolically important planet to bring into line. It was a legitimate target.

It would have been so much simpler with the mine net-work in place.

He hyperjumped briefly to bring him closer to his flag-s.h.i.+p. The technique alarmed non-Jedi X-wing pilots; they once said he'd fall out of hypers.p.a.ce smack into the hull of an SSD one day if he kept bouncing around blind like that. But Caedus knew instinctively where he was in three di-mensions, and even in the higher ones. He knew.