Niathal inclined her head politely, but Jacen could feel her resolution forming a box around her almost like durasteel. It was tangible. "I'll keep it brief," she said. "We can't get involved in every little skirmish to keep obscure Senators and tin-pot heads of state in the Alliance.

We're at overstretch. We couldn't maintain the Corellian blockade, and now we have the Bothans ramping up. Pick your battles, Chief of State. I can't fight them all."

Omas did his displacement act and poured himself a cup of caf from the jug on his desk. There was just one cup, and he didn't offer more.

"If we fail to show support to Alliance member worlds, then we lose them," he said. "This is basic numbers. We've been through all this. If more secede, then we've lost. The issue of how we maintain a joint defense force for the Alliance-which is what started this, in case we forget-then becomes academic."

"If we don't concentrate our forces on the worlds that present the most immediate and serious threat, then we'll be ground down a ship at a time, and we might not even be able to defend Coruscant if it comes to the worst."

"You think it might come to that?" Omas didn't appear convinced. He glanced at Jacen, but Jacen kept his counsel. "Is this about Coruscant in the end?"

"Of course it is," Niathal said. "It always is. The Alliance and Coruscant are indivisible, and that's half the problem for all the other worlds."

Omas turned to Jacen. "Your turn, Colonel."

"I share the admiral's fears about overstretch." Now Jacen slipped in his challenge, subtle and multilayered, to give Omas a chance to come clean. He found himself hoping Omas didn't take it. "Corellia is still the heart of this. I say we devote all our resources in the immediate term to an all-out a.s.sault on Corellia-invasion, in fact. Destroy their industrial base, and remove Gejjen and his cronies. The man's already had his predecessor killed and made an attempt on the Hapan Queen Mother."

Jacen paused a beat, because timing was everything. "I've no doubt you'll be next."

Jacen felt Niathal's reaction although her expression was set in neutral: amus.e.m.e.nt, plus a little anxious excitement like preparing for battle. Omas felt suddenly more wary-but Jacen couldn't tell if that was aimed at him, or at the idea that Gejjen might be setting Omas up.

"You have intelligence to suggest that?" Omas asked.

Jacen shook his head. "No, and I don't need it or help from the Force to work it out. It's how Gejjen does business."

"If we launch that kind of a.s.sault on Corellia, it's something I should take to the Security Council. And even if they agree to it-"

"We're at war. You have all the legal powers to determine the conduct of the war with Admiral Niathal, as you see fit."

"Until it costs more credits," said Omas. "And once we're conspicuously focused on Corellia, what are Bothawui and Commenor going to do? Answers on a small piece of flimsi, please . . ."

Omas had the perfect excuse now to admit to the meeting with Gejjen. He could have said that he was going to give peace talks one last try. He could have said anything to indicate that he was going to talk terms with a state that showed no signs of understanding the words common good, and whose quietly lethal leader could have scared a Hutt gang lord.

And, Jacen thought, any smart politician might have suspected that his Intelligence Service spied on him, just as they spied on all the other Senators. A little game of words: Omas could have made the suggestion and watched Jacen's reaction, brazening it out to test if his clandestine call had been picked up.

But he didn't. And his future--and his fate-were sealed.

"So where are we going with this?" Niathal asked. "Same strategy?

Keep dividing up the fleet until we have one ship per theater?"

"I think a full a.s.sault on Corellia is madness," said Omas. "We might well have to consider it-but much later. In the meantime, my priority is to stop secessions from the Alliance from reaching the tipping point."

Jacen sat feigning suppressed anger and disappointment. It had to be subtle, because Omas knew Jacen's capacity for smiling self-control.

But Omas needed to pick up the faintest whiff of dissent and savor it for a few moments; his suspicions would be aroused if Jacen caved in too readily.

Jacen placed his hands squarely on the arms of the apocia wood chair and eased himself to his feet.

"For the record, I think this is a big mistake, sir," he said. "And I would be happier if GAG could support our intelligence community in their efforts beyond Coruscant."

"I note your views, Colonel Solo, and I'm grateful for your strategic input so far." Omas meshed his fingers and leaned on the desk, a gesture that said defensive more than it said resolute. "The GAG's remit is domestic, though. I appreciate your concern for the quality of our intelligence."

Jacen didn't catch Niathal's eye. He walked out, followed closely by her, and said nothing until they were back in her office.

"Well?"

"Not good," she said. She wandered up to the window to watch the traffic streaming in orderly lines in the skylanes around the Senate District. "Not exactly open with us, is he?"

"I never told him we have GAG personnel operating on Corellia, so we're even."

"We can't sustain the current strategy. Perhaps I should talk to Senator G'Sil and get it referred to the Security Council."

"And then we divert our energies into an internal power struggle with Omas while we have a war to fight. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that if you take a shot at someone, you keep firing until they can no longer return fire. Wound them, and you have an angry enemy who knows your position."

"I know where you're heading with this, Jacen."

"You know I'm right."

"That doesn't make it any easier."

"If he does a deal with Gejjen, we're not just back to square one: the Alliance is in a worse position than when it started."

"And we'll be out of the game."

"That's academic." Jacen almost asked Niathal if she had children, and then realized he had almost done the most stupid thing imaginable: reveal his constant fears for the future of his own daughter, a child whose paternity had to stay hidden. He recovered fast, astonished at his weakness. "Because the game will be recurring wars."

"Or Omas might end up with a vibroblade in his throat."

"He's insane to meet Gejjen face-to-face without close protection anyway. He hasn't asked for it from us. He hasn't asked CSF, either-"

"GA Intel?"

"No. We tap their comms, too."

"You're a source of constant revelation, Jacen Solo . . ."

"Are you in?"

"Say it."

Jacen looked around the room, trying to look as if he was simply thinking, but suspicious that someone else might be doing to him what he did to them-eavesdrop electronically. Was Niathal setting him up? No, he was sure he could sense bugs in a room. There were none. "You know what I'm proposing."

"I don't, actually. Not in detail. Say it."

"Regime change." Too late. But he couldn't sense any risk. His logical brain was the paranoid, whispering voice, not his Force-senses.

He realized he'd become less instinct-driven and more rational, and that was the problem. Thinking too much, feeling too little, just like Lumiya says. "We remove him from office long enough to get this war won, and then hand it back to Senator G'Sil when the situation is stable so that new elections can take place."

His words emerged like uninvited strangers, and he didn't even believe himself. Niathal made a little splutter that could have been laughter.

"I get the removal. It's the gap in the middle between remove and elections that fascinates me."

"We run the GA during the interim as a duumvirate. No dictatorship.

Joint control."

Niathal indicated her uniform and then reached out to jab a bony finger into the rank tab on his shoulder. "Military coup. That's what it's called. Let's not prevaricate."

"Okay, I remove him and you take over, alone."

"I don't think so. Duumvirate sounds best to me."

Jacen liked two; two was the Sith way. Knowing Niathal's ambition for the Chief's office, he'd have the same circling, edgy power struggle with her as a Sith Master with an apprentice who was expected and encouraged to plot to overthrow him.

But he would rule as Sith Lord in due course, when the GA and elections were academic, and she would administer the state. That would satisfy her.

"I'll take care of Gejjen, by the way," he said. "He's a ma.s.sively destabilizing influence, and removing him will throw Corellia into disarray."

"How will you take care of Omas?"

"I'll remove him by house arrest."

"Deposed heads of state tend to become martyrs and hostages."

"We can't be seen to kill our own, and framing Gejjen for it did occur to me, but it's not necessary. We need to show ourselves as civilized people working within the law."

"With a coup."

"Under the law, as the law will stand, it won't be."

"Ahhhh. I forgot." No, she hadn't, he knew that. "Your amendment to the law."

"I'm tabling it for next week, through Aitch-Em-Three."

"And in the meantime?"

"Leave that to me. I'll have someone there when Omas meets Gejjen."

Jacen checked his datapad. "He needs only a day to do his business with Gejjen, no more, so-my people have him under surveillance, ready to move.

Then we have evidence to present to G'Sil."

"And then you arrest him."

"I was thinking I might arrest him at the same time you present the evidence to G'Sil. When we move, we have to move fast. No room to be outmaneuvered."

Niathal let out a long breath. Jacen waited.

"I'll be ready to move on your signal. Make sure you keep me up to speed with all this, won't you?"

It was done. Jacen's takeover was in place. He had the GAG at his back, and Niathal would deliver the fleet as well as the army. With the right presentation of Omas selling out to the Corellians, it would be a very orderly coup.

There was no need for unnecessary bloodshed. That was what this was all about: an end to violence, chaos, and instability.

That was worth everything he was risking.

Jacen took an air taxi back to a plaza a few minutes' walk from the GAG HQ: just another citizen, no sleek black GA transport, no privilege.

Either the driver didn't recognize the uniform, or he hesitated to say, Here, you're the chief of the secret police, aren't you? It was a silent, contemplative journey.

It was time to make sure nothing went wrong, if manifest destiny could go wrong. He opened his comlink and called Lumiya.

"Shira," he said, aware of the pilot up front. "I need you to do a job for me."

chapter seven.

Goran, in Fett's absence, I think you really ought to see this. I don't think it can wait. Sometimes the vongese do you a favor.

-Site foreman Herik Vorad, on examination of excavated rock from land north of Enceri, Mandalore SAFE HOUSE, CORUSCANT.

So you're going to do it before you achieve your full Sith powers,"

said Lumiya. She lit the candles and closed the blinds. Jacen needed to shut out the world and feel what was happening; he was running increasingly on a mundane agenda, the agenda of the lesser beings he worked with. "Why?"

"If I do it afterward, when might afterward be?" Jacen watched the flames shimmering and settled down cross-legged on a floor cushion, but his eyes kept wandering away from the focus of concentration, and Lumiya felt obliged to rap him sharply on the top of his head and point at the candle. "Omas is doing a deal with Gejjen. The deal excludes me, and Niathal, possibly in a rather terminal way."

Working in the world of those who couldn't use the Force, Jacen was falling into conniving and manipulating just like them, and while Lumiya didn't think that was a bad thing-all tools were valid to achieve the outcome-he was letting himself be bound by their rules. He was talking about timing. He had full mastery of the Force, but he seemed to enjoy using the limited tricks of ordinary people.

The admiral was irrelevant in the long term. He had to be aware of that. "Niathal is afraid of you, Jacen. Or at least wary."

"Don't you think I know that? She'd be an idiot if she trusted anyone at this level of government."

"You waste too much energy playing mundanes' games instead of using the Force."

"I'll use it when I need to. Most of the time now, it's overkill."

Jacen always seemed to want to prove how much smarter, how much more skilled he was than his adversaries, how he could beat them on their own terms. Vanity wasn't always a bad thing in a Sith-as long as it didn't control him. It was just a matter of getting him to pause and refocus.

"Meditate," said Lumiya.

Jacen stared through her for a moment, and then stared unblinking at the candle until he eventually closed his eyes. He opened one eye slowly, looking as if he might be about to make a joke. Lumiya didn't feel in a humorous mood.