Nimbanese, a rare sight in the fleet, made excellent support staff, and this one was a CVO-a Casualty Visit-ing Officer.

It was a neutral, detached t.i.tle for someone whose job was to give next of kin the worst possible news.

"Admiral...."

Niathal turned. "Apologies, Lieutenant. Did you want me?"

"Ma'am, the minelayer squadron-I'm making a personal visit to the base. Is there anything you want me to do outside the normal arrangements?"

Congratulations, Admiral. You got a hundred of your own people killed before they even had time to take defen-sive action. That's what happens when you leak opera-tional details.

"They're all from the same area, I understand."

"Yes, ma'am." The lieutenant kept glancing at her datapad, and when Niathal caught sight of the screen it was a blur of text, a table of short lines. Names. "The squadron is a small and tight-knit community, as they often are in specialist units. It's a large number of casualties for them in a single engagement. We'll be offering extra support."

Extra support. It was hygienic, unemotional language, which was the only real alternative to disruptive outpour-ings of emotion. There were thousands of dead in this war so far. Niathal had learned to accept that very early in her career, but today she was looking at her own handiwork, a datapad screen of information that had left her hand and had come back to haunt her as a list of names, real beings, real families-her own doing. Officers took decisions knowing that some crew members wouldn't return, but this was totally new and shocking.

What did you think would happen to the information you gave Luke Skywalker? What did he think would happen?

Did you think Fondor would just send vessels to scare the minelayers away? A few shots across the bow?

They blew them out of the sky. As you would have done.

It was always the small, stark incidents that became the pivots that changed everything. They were on a scale that an individual being could comprehend, like Captain Nevil's son Turl, or Lieutenant Tebut.

Niathal gave up ex-amining the continuum of blame-inevitable combat deaths, deaths caused by having to sacrifice a mission for a more critical one, deaths caused by incompetence-because there was only one category left beneath hers, callous and underhanded tactics, and that was personally taking a sub-ordinate's life.

That would put her in the sewer currently occupied by Jacen Solo.

I spied for the enemy. The families of those crews won't be any the less bereaved for knowing that I gave intelligence to a decent, honest Jedi to thwart the plans of a little tyrant ready to do anything, expend anyone, to win some ill-defined war on chaos.

"Tell them I'm sorry, "Niathal said at last. "Give them my personal and sincere apologies."

"Very good, ma'am."

Niathal had to make an effort to get her attention back on the status boards and charts in the darkened ops room. The elements of the Fourth Fleet that Jacen had deployed were one hour into the operation and should have been sitting out a blockade. Now the task force was exposed, the Fondorians knew it was there, and Jacen's options were to abort, to attack, or to hold position while a new strategy was cobbled together.

Battles went awry of plans all the time. But not like this. She had waited long enough at the comlink.

"Colonel Solo, "she barked. "Will you talk to me now, or not?"

She had holovid and audio between Ops and the Anakin Solo. The holding screen shivered and Jacen appeared, standing with his hands clasped behind his back in front of the bank of weapons sensor consoles.

"Admiral, we have an intelligence leak."

Keep your nerve. "I realize that. What are your immedi-ate plans?

We have reports that Fondor is sitting tight and expecting an attack."

"I realize that."

"This might be the time to reopen talks now you have their attention."

"We've lost the advantage of locking them in." Jacen was totally calm. For a moment, Niathal was distracted by the arrival of Captain Piris in the ops room; another Quar-ren, the commanding officer of Bounty. Niathal didn't share the common Mon Cal wariness of Quarren, and now felt an increasing bond with them that was only partly due to their common homeworld. They seemed more resolutely honest in the face of Jacen's growing eccentricity than most humans. "Admiral, I plan to begin simultaneous attacks on four orbitals s.p.a.ced around the planet, draw out their fleet, and neutralize it."

Orbitals usually carried defensive cannon, but were out-gunned by Star Destroyers. Fondor would have to send support. In that respect, Jacen made sense. But that was where it ended.

"You'll blow the yards to pieces."

"That may well happen."

"This is a complete departure from what we agreed. It's turned into a sabotage run. What are you thinking? Good grief, Colonel, you can't make up battle plans on a whim..."

"I trust my Force awareness."

"To do what, exactly? What?"

"To make an example of Fondor."

"Enough, "Niathal snapped. She didn't care that this was being played out in front of the ops room staff. If she'd had any sense, she would have taken advantage of Jacen's absence from Coruscant to call an emergency meeting of the Senate, announce that she was relieving Jacen of his du-ties, and declare herself sole Chief of State. But that took time she didn't have, and created its own chaos and cas-cade of problems to follow-like where Jacen might go and what he might do with his task force. She had to go out there and intervene. She had no faith in the Force to stop him spending thousands of lives to send out a message, and this was as good a time as any to bring him down. He might never be more overextended than he was now. "I don't want to hear that you have a feeling, or that you have certainty, or that you can meld. I want to hear times, ranges, troop strengths. Colonel, I'm now activating the Third Fleet task force, and I will be at your position in a lit-tle under six standard hours."

She expected Jacen to snarl back at her or at least spite her by starting the attack right away. Instead he bowed his head a fraction, Jedi-style, and smiled.

"Very well, Admiral. With your a.s.sets, and the Imperial Remnant's support, we can attempt to isolate Fondor itself with part of the task force while the rest secures the orbitals one at a time."

Jacen never capitulated to a better idea. Niathal had her unspoken warning. She closed the link, furious-displaced rage fueled by her own guilt, she knew-and looked around at a silent ops room landscape of hunched backs as personnel tried to pretend they hadn't heard or seen the two Chiefs of State arguing, and that Jacen Solo didn't share basic information with her.

Piris stood waiting.

"He's gone too far. He has to go." Niathal knew everyone must have heard her. "Captain, are we ready?"

"Yes, ma'am. The fleet is ready to slip. Admiral Makin sends his regards and says he's kept Ocean's seat warm for you."

A fleet speeder picked them up outside the building and whisked them to the fleet base. "You know what I miss most?" she said to Piris, wondering how she'd come to this after such a solid, predictable career.

"Not having my own command."

"You're the Supreme Commander and Jay-Coss-One, ma'am. You've got your own navy."

"It's not the same, Piris. I move from ship to ship, like some visiting mother-in-law, trampling over other comman-ders' territory, shoving them aside for the while, giving orders when they're used to being the voice on the bridge... I miss the simplicity. I miss the days when I knew a ship was my personal responsibility, and felt like home when I came on board, opened the cabin hatch, and stowed my belongings."

"Flexible and responsive fleet, they call it, remember."

"I'm very old-fashioned."

"That's commendable, but you're no longer required to go down with your ship..."

Jacen was very attached to the Anakin Solo but it struck her as being in an accessory kind of way, like wanting the snazziest sports-speeder in town. Suddenly she had a holotoon-type image of a caricatured Jacen in his black flapping cloak, scrambling into the Destroyer's last escape pod while poor Captain Nevil stood bravely on the Ana-kin's burning bridge, mouth-tentacles courageously straight, hand held rigid against his brow in a final salute as he did the decent thing that Jacen wouldn't.

Let him burn, Nevil.

The Third Fleet element of the task force had been stand-ing by to leave orbit and jump since the Anakin Solo had pa.s.sed out of comm contact. If she told Piris that she hadn't actually planned to confront Jacen Solo like that, he wouldn't have believed her. What-ifs and contingencies had a habit of turning into reality for very good reasons, seeing as they were extrapolated from the possible twists and turns of the original plan, but sometimes.... they seemed to express a subconscious wish.

If Niathal was going to relieve Jacen Solo of command, then it was best done away from Coruscant, with s.p.a.ce to let the fleet bring its power to bear.

Coups needed planning; she knew because she'd helped Jacen stage one. She'd been seduced a step at a time by what had looked pragmatic, and now she could look back and see how far she had fallen with him. It was time to halt the rot, as best she could.

"It's the small things, isn't it, ma'am?" Piris said as he followed her into the launch that would transfer them to Bounty and Ocean. "It's a snowflake that triggers the avalanche."

Or a son.

Or a hundred strangers.

Or looking back on who you used to be, before all this began.

"I don't know how many of the commanders will follow me, "Niathal said.

She didn't define her destination. Clipping Jacen's wings would be opportunistic, a risk taken in an instant, and at least that left no conspiracy to be uncovered or others to be implicated if she tried and failed.

Piris ran his hand down over his mouth-tentacles like a human stroking a beard in thought.

"And we'll never know for sure until the moment it happens, "he said. "But one thing I do know-we won't be alone."

' _ 11.

How can I insert troops without decent plans? Even if it all has to change at the last moment, I still need somewhere more solid to start.

Solo used to be sharp, knew what we needed, and noiv it's all vague Force stuff, and I can't work with that. He's changed. And what if it's not the Force guiding him? What if he's just hearing voices?

-Colonel Pichaff, Rapid Deployment Commander, GA task force at Fondor MANDALMOTORS, KELDABE.

"So the Jedi hasn't come to buy any Bes'uliike, "said Jir Yomaget.

"Too bad. The thousandth export airframe just rolled off the line."

"She came to learn how to arrest her brother, "Fett said. The hangar was crammed with everything but Bes'uliik fighters; this was the prototype department. Some of the vessels around him were eccentric, to say the least. "I'm being helpful. So's Beviin."

"Subtle. I'll build her a vibro-mallet."

"She's handy with machinery. If we're saddled with her for much longer, she'll earn her keep here."

"Do we want a Jedi poking around in our technology?"

"It won't help her much. She knows how a beskad works, but that doesn't make her Beviin on a battlefield."

It was much the same with the export market. The Bes'uliik fighters being sold to other governments-and the occasional wealthy gangster-were de-enriched spec, as Yomaget called it: slower, lighter beskar armoring, fewer Verpine-produced weapons refinements. They still beat an X-wing, so the customers were happy. But even if they'd been allowed to buy a top-of-the-range Bes'uliik reserved solely for Mandalorians, they wouldn't know how to fly or fight like a Mando pilot.

"It's like sticking beskar'gam on a bantha, "Yomaget said. "Good for a laugh, and the bantha might feel safer if it understood armor, but it doesn't turn it into a soldier."

"So..."

"Oh, yes. The Tra'kad. If you have an opening to field-test one, I'll grab it."

"Whole war going on out there. Plenty of room."

"We're neutral."

"It never stopped anyone doing mercenary work..."

"It's yours if you can find a use for it."

Fett thought the Bes'uliik was a work of art, but the Tra'kad-there was no other word for it but a brute. He'd seen one test-flying in the last couple of weeks, and grace wasn't the first word that sprang to mind.

But the slab sides and maneuverability-now, those were handy. Fett could see himself using the vessel to insert troops into high buildings, hatch flat against a window or a hole in a wall, or provide close air cover to troops on the ground. He climbed up on the hull and stood on a turret turntable. The ship was a twenty-meter slab of beskar plate with a cannon turret on each corner, topside, and lower hull, and rotating modular weapon platforms on the top. Fett did a few mental calculations and worked out that the ship had completely overlapping arcs of fire. It had no blind spots. n.o.body was going to surprise it.

"And the Verpine didn't want a joint deal on this?"

"It's all old tech, "said Yomaget. "No advantage to them, but ideal for us."

One of the top hatches flipped open and Baltan Carid's head emerged, plastered with a satisfied grin. "I hope you're not claustrophobic, Fett. Get in."

Fett squeezed through the hatch and dropped into a cramped compartment packed with machinery. There were pipes, hatches, and handwheels everywhere, as if the inte-rior had been taken from an old holodrama. On the port side, light spilled from an open inboard hatch along with a faint metallic sound like someone spinning a handle. When Fett stuck his head through the opening, his a.s.sessment was spot-on. Ram Zerimar, the sniper he'd first met when Corellia had been keen to hire Fett's elite Ori'ramikade-supercommandos-was turning gear wheels to aim one of the cannons, winding frantically. He came to a sudden halt as if he'd hit an end-stop and checked a gauge.

"Keeps you fit, Mand'alor, "he said. "Just seeing how fast we can acquire a target."

Carid pointed to more hand-wheels and valves. "See? The whole ship can operate on zero power for a while if everything goes to osik. If we're fried, all the critical systems can be operated manually by gearwheels, cables, or compressed gas. We've even got zero-power fiber-optic screens that kick in so we can aim or see what's going on topside.

Okay, it's hard labor, but this is a real beauty for getting out of trouble." He winked. "Or causing it."

Fett squeezed into alcoves and peered down a hatch that went straight through the belly of the Tra'kad, good for defended troop extractions. It was a perfect ship for a pes-simist or a very unlucky man.

Would have been good to have this when we fought the Vong. Dinua's mother might have survived.

Fett wondered if Dinua thought about her mother as much as he thought about his dad. "How many crew?"

"One pilot can fly it in an emergency, and from various positions in the ship. Crew-five. How many bodies can you cram in? Haven't tested that yet. Next one will have waterborne capability."

"Another multimission vehicle, "Fett said. Yomaget squeezed in behind him. He was a man obsessed with mak-ing vessels that could do everything. It was a very Man-dalorian att.i.tude, wanting to be self-contained and ready for anything the galaxy threw at you, a kind of frontier mentality. "What's the compromise?"

"Speed."

"Okay. Next chance we get-let's give her a workup."

Fett hauled himself out of the top hatch and found that he was already thinking of ways to exploit the zero-power capability. You didn't have to be dead in the water to make use of that.

Ambush.

Beauty wasn't everything.