Admiral Niathal shared a number of military philosophies with Jacen Solo, and being seen on the front line was one of them. She also liked to see things for herself, especially if Galactic Alliance Intelligence was involved. The current overstretch gave her cause to wonder what Cal Omas was playing at-an anxiety that might have been visible to the bridge crew as she paced up and down, glancing over shoulders to check screens and readouts.

"We need every hull we can hang on to, Admiral." Bounty's commanding officer, Piris, had been on the bridge far too long. He was a Quarren, evolved for an amphibious existence, and the atmosphere on board was too dry to keep pulling double watches; his uniform was sealed tightly at the cuffs and neck, but he kept wiping his face with a moist cloth. He needed a rest in his humid cabin. "If the Bothan fleet is growing as fast now as Intelligence suggests, then I fail to see how we're going to contain it if we have to support Sika and every other local skirmish, too."

"Looks like the Kem Stor Ai dispute will be the next to boil over."

Niathal had a brief moment of wishing that she could target one world, reduce its surface to slag from orbit just to make her point, and then ask who else wanted some of the same. But it pa.s.sed. It always did.

"Every backworld with a grievance is resurrecting old fights in the guise of Alliance loyalty and asking us to help out. And Omas thinks he can hold the Alliance together by placating every call for a backup fleet across the galaxy."

"When is he going to admit he can't?"

"When I give him no other option, I think."

Maybe the Bothans were ahead of the curve. Instead of commissioning more capital ships-juicy, high-value targets in battle-they'd opted for a big fleet of smaller, more agile warships that could be stockpiled without anyone panicking about the escalation in arms.

"It's a different kind of war. Flexibility and rapid response, that's the name of the game now." Piris put his hand on the ship's comm control. "Let's see what they're made of. Mothma Squadron, launch when ready. Qaresi Squadron, remain on alert five. Confine them to their own s.p.a.ce, but attack if fired upon."

Niathal still wondered who'd a.s.sa.s.sinated the Bothans and kicked off this escalation. Could have been our a.s.sets, if we'd played the Bothans right. Some Intel moron, she decided. She'd get to the bottom of that sooner or later. If she was going to be Chief of State one day, she'd weed out the loose cannons first.

"If you can get our furry friends to give us a ship's tour, in one piece . . . ," she suggested. But intercepting and boarding the new frigate in these circ.u.mstances was next to impossible. The best break they'd get would be to retrieve debris for inspection. "I'd love to know their top speed."

Niathal quite liked Bothans, even if she didn't trust them as far as she could spit, which was a lot farther than anyone might have believed.

She didn't dislike Quarren, either, even if it was almost expected of Mon Calamari. Quarren were a rare sight on ships; she knew Mon Cal officers who made every effort to avoid being a.s.signed Quarren crew, and few Quarren wanted to serve alongside Mon Cals even now. But when they were good, they were very, very good. Piris was outstanding. If she caught any Mon Cal referring to him as Squid Head, they'd answer to her, and she didn't care how many whispered that she was an apologist.

Did we have the right to take their kids for some social engineering experiment--for our benefit?

She asked herself that question more often these days, and the answer always came up negative. Jacen Solo would think she was a hopeless wet liberal.

She wondered how she was going to wipe him off her boots when the time came. It wouldn't be easy.

"Bounty, Daring, stand by."

Twelve fighters shot out of the Bounty's hangar bay, spiraling away from the warship and streaking off in pursuit of the Bothan frigate. Then the three flights separated. Observation cams in each c.o.c.kpit gave Bounty's combined bridge and combat information center a composite view of the engagement. Daring sat off Bounty's starboard bow, ready to divert any Bothan retaliation from her larger charge.

"Did you ever train as a pilot, ma'am?" Piris asked.

"No. You?"

"Indeed I did. At times like this, I miss it."

"If we get any busier, Captain, there'll be a droid running this ship and you'll be flying sorties. Where that leaves me I have no idea."

"You'll be Chief of State, ma'am," said Piris.

The worst thing about Quarren was that their amus.e.m.e.nt wasn't as easy to spot as a human's. With a human, all those teeth on display made life easier. Quarren face-tentacles could hide a mult.i.tude of emotions.

"That'll be the day," she said, hoping to avoid more gossip about her ambitions. Right then being Chief of State didn't matter at all. She had a battle, and all her training and instinct kicked in to say this was where she wanted to be, not behind a desk.

The first flight to come within range of the Bothan frigate shadowed it, cutting back and forth across its path at a thousand meters.

The second flight trailed aft of it, scanning the hull and sending back data.

It took a few seconds for the Bothans to react; perhaps some of their systems were still offline. The ship picked up speed and began to move out of the Bothawui limits, its accompanying tenders trailing like escort fish.

So the Bothans thought they had a nice new a.s.set to surprise the Alliance, but the Alliance had spotted it. Niathal waited for the reaction while the third flight of Mothma Squadron monitored the situation, weapons trained but not locked. There was no point blowing it to pieces before they'd taken the measure of the new cla.s.s.

"Very heavy hull plating for a frigate," said Niathal, looking at the recce scans coming back from the starfighters. Piris pored over the images and penetrating scans, too. "At least a dozen turbolasers and twenty cannons."

"Not exceptional."

"Depends how many hulls they have."

They didn't have long to wait to find out how many vessels were out there. The weapons officer shouted at the same time as the sensor warning Klaxon sounded.

"Sir, enemy contact at-correction, multiple contacts in range.

We've got trade."

"Bounty, Daring, close up at battle stations, synchronize command information. Helm, all ahead. Qaresi Squadron, launch-Bronzium and remainder of air group, launch when ready."

n.o.body said ambush. The c.o.c.kpit chatter from the pilots broke in.

"Copy that. . . five, six . . . correction, ten-detecting cannons charging, will engage-"

"Targeting source."

"I make that nineteen-"

"He's got a lock on me."

"Got your six. Deploying chaff."

Piris's face-tentacles were completely still. It gave him a commendable look of calm. "Cannons, engage all Bothan vessels in range, in your own time, go on . . ."

One moment they'd been watching a single fresh-out-of-the-box frigate, and the next more were dropping out of hypers.p.a.ce at regular five-second intervals. Mothma Squadron picked up images on their c.o.c.kpit cams: all in the same Bothan livery, all brand spanking new and unmarked by debris pocks and sc.r.a.pes.

A flare of red laser blazed on the screens as one XJ cam view winked out and the fighter broke up into spinning, red-hot debris.

Pilots' voices were still audible in the background, but the focus on the bridge was on "fighting the ship"-attacking the enemy. Daring moved between Bounty and the Bothan flotilla. Her cannons and lasers showed up on the synchronized command information screen as blinking icons, fully charged and acquiring firing solutions.

"Eight contacts not firing, sir, and no sign of charging cannons."

Bounty shuddered from deflected pulsed laserfire. Niathal moved to supervise damage control, which was already under a competent commander, but there was nothing worse than an idle visiting admiral on a ship at battle stations. She needed to be occupied.

"Take them out anyway." Piris turned to Niathal. "If they cripple us, at least we transmitted the data we have. If they don't-that's a whole Bothan flotilla that never leaves home."

"I don't expect a tactical withdrawal, Captain." Three more XJs were hit: Niathal noted it as lost a.s.sets, not knowing the pilots personally, and disliked her detachment for a moment. She always did.

"We're here. Let's do as much damage as we can."

The Bothans, of course, had the same goal.

Two Bothan frigates were on a ramming course with Bounty. Of the remaining flotilla, five were firing on the XJs. Daring opened fire. The bridge crew watched as a frigate's aft section rippled with a sequence of explosions before debris blew away from it and smashed into an XJ. Five minutes into the engagement, Bounty's air group was taking a pounding, not all of it from direct hits. The second frigate veered away from the stream of fire from the XJ, a red-hot rip in its hull.

"Their targeting's not affected by chaff measures, sir." The pilot's voice was breathless with effort. "They're using narrow-range heat seekers. In future we'll need to-"

And he was gone, his c.o.c.kpit cam blank and flickering.

"Air group, pull out," Piris barked. "Cannons, solutions on all targets, now."

Species perceived time differently in battle. For humans, it slowed because their brains took in far more detailed information about the threat, but that also meant they didn't notice low-priority things. But Mon Cals-and Quarren-saw it all, and factored in every cough and spit.

That was what made them good commanders. Niathal's instinct was to fight back, and for a moment she couldn't imagine why she'd ever had designs on high office. She saw the tactical displays and heard the comm chatter, and the real-time three-dimensional image in her mind showed her the whole battlefield-and she wanted to hit hard.

Nine Bothan frigates were now disabled, either drifting with no sign of power, reduced to cold debris, or venting brief bursts of flame into the vacuum as they broke up. Some of the remaining ten returned fire for a further thirty seconds, then powered down their cannons.

"Surrendering?" asked the officer of the watch.

"They're preparing to jump," said Piris. "Take take take-"

Seven frigates jumped in a tight sequence: three weren't so quick off the mark, and took a furious barrage of laser and cannons.

Piris gave Niathal a nod of relief and leaned over the command console. "Air group, anyone too damaged to make an RV point?"

"Mothma Five-zero, sir. Slow hull breach."

"Qarisa Eight, sir."

The bridge crew waited for a few seconds, utterly silent, cannons still trained while XJs streaked back to the hangar and recovery units pa.s.sed them outbound to haul in damaged craft.

"Secure hatches when ready and prepare to jump," Piris said. "Any sign of the Bothan cavalry arriving on long-range scans? No? Good." He looked at the chrono hanging from a fob on his jacket. "Not quite twenty minutes, Admiral. Now, was that a planned ambush we walked into, or are the Bothans making the best of an unfortunately timed arrival? The score's twelve-nil to us, not counting star-fighters lost. But did we win or lose?"

"I'll let you know when our public information colleagues tell me,"

Niathal said. "But this confirms my position yet again. If we're stuck with the resources we've got, then we have to focus everything on Corellia, Commenor, and now Bothawui. If the Chief of State wants to extend to every bushfire that's starting, he has to give us at least another fleet, and even if the Alliance had the credits-where would we get the personnel?"

Piris shrugged. "All empires become too big and collapse under their own weight."

"Maybe that's what we're seeing."

Her body was telling her that it was all over now. She felt hot as her biochemical defenses rushed around looking for damage to repair, and found none. The aftermath of battle was always a restless hour or two for her, so she occupied herself wandering around the bridge, patting crew members on the back, and telling them what a fine job they'd done. One young human male was wiping tears away with the back of his hand, his attention fixed unnaturally on the sensor screen in front of him; he'd lost a friend today, maybe more than one. There was nothing to say. She simply put her hand on his shoulder and stood there in silence for a while until the helm crew began their checks before hyperjumping.

"I'll be in my day cabin," she said, pausing to shake Piris's hand.

"Well done, Captain."

She knew what they'd be saying as soon as the bridge hatches closed behind her. They'd be expressing surprise that old Iceberg Face could go around patting backs and showing sympathy. Combat did that to her: she had a brief period of dropping her guard, and then she was back to normal, a politician who used to be a competent naval officer and still missed fleet action.

The hypers.p.a.ce vista from her cabin viewport was soothing.

Sometimes she picked a streak of starlight that was stretched into a line, and tried to think of it as a star with orbiting planets full of life, and picture what was happening there. She did it now to clear her mind before deciding what to say to Cal Omas.

She knew she had to give him an ultimatum. And to make it stick, she needed Jacen Solo to stand by her.

GAG HEADQUARTERS, CORUSCANT.

Captain Heol Girdun smiled and beckoned Ben into a dark office.

Somehow the two elements combined into Ben's least favorite way to spend an afternoon.

"Behold," he said, and Ben's eyes adjusted to the low light. There were no windows. The only illumination was from banks of holo-screens and monitors. Ben realized there were GAG troopers sitting at consoles, with that glaze of defocused concentration that looked like blank boredom.

"The eyes and ears of the Guard. Welcome to the monitoring center. The ultimate in scrutiny."

"Sir," whispered one of the lieutenants, "keep the noise down, will you?"

Girdun's grin was picked out in blue by the light from a frequency a.n.a.lyzer. "They're all such artists." He steered Ben by his shoulder, taking him to an alcove away from the active consoles. Girdun probably didn't realize how well a Jedi could navigate in darkness, but Ben humored him. "This is where we keep an eye on Senators and other social misfits for their own good."

"Whose calls do you tap?" Ben felt uneasy about it. "I bet it's not even exciting."

"All government staff, our special list of probable and proven sc.u.mbags, and politicians," said Girdun. "And given the number of Senators and the volume of hot air they emit, we get automated voice recognition systems to do it, or we'd be here for the next thousand years. If the droid picks up any keywords of interest, it tags the conversation and alerts us. Then we have to sit and actually listen to it."

One of the troopers-Zavirk-was ladling sweetener into a cup of caf.

He sipped it gingerly, looking slightly comical with an audio buffer lead dangling from his ear. "I joined the army to see the galaxy," he whispered, "but all I got was eight-hour watches of listening to weird politicians making appointments to-"

"Ben's fourteen,'" Girdun said.

"Well, if you want him to do monitoring, he's going to hear stuff that'll make his hair curl, sir."

Ben had never considered what tapping comlinks of suspects and people in sensitive posts actually entailed. "I won't faint," he said.

"And if I'm old enough to get shot at, I'm old enough to hear . . .

stuff."

"Can't argue with that logic." Girdun sat him down at a console and gave him an earpiece. "Okay, the screen here shows you the sound files the droid's lined up as worth listening to, as well as holocam footage.

You just work through it and make notes if anything seems worth following up. You're looking for anyone who might be contacting Senators and seems a bit odd, any conversations about Senators or government staff. . .

look, you're a Jedi. You've probably got a sixth sense about this stuff just like you have about hidden explosives."

"So do nek battle dogs," said Zavirk, "but Lieutenant Skywalker smells better, and he can do tricks."

Ben decided he might like it here for a while. It didn't feel like spy HQ at all: just a bunch of troopers he knew well, doing a routine wartime surveillance job. Ben realized he'd part.i.tioned his feelings so that he didn't have to think about Dur Gejjen as a person. The man had a wife and child. Tenel Ka had a child, too, though, and Gejjen had been happy to hire someone to a.s.sa.s.sinate her. Ben had been weighing the morality of his mission and wasn't sure if he was only telling himself what he wanted to hear.

And there was n.o.body he could talk it over with.