Inferno (37 page)

“We believed it was an Alliance feint,” Babo explained, far too patiently to be sincere. “It never dawned on us that he would intend to carry through with such a foolhardy attack.”

“It couldn’t have been
that
foolhardy—it worked.” Like nearly everyone else who had watched Jacen’s miraculous escape a few hours earlier, Han was still trying to figure out how the Bothans had let it happen. “All you had to do was fall back! We would’ve had him trapped.”

“Which the enemy certainly realized,” Babo replied. “Your son is a master tactician, Captain Solo. We had to account for that in our thinking.”

Han winced inside at the word
son
and felt Leia tense beside him, but neither of them corrected the admiral. Both their sons were dead to them now—but that was a private pain, to be acknowledged only in their solitude aboard the
Falcon.

Leia laid a calming hand on Han’s arm, then said, “Jacen was lucky. He took a gamble, assuming you would over-think the situation, and you did exactly that.”

“There may also have been some Force pressure involved,” Luke added from the end of the table. With a bruised face, two black eyes, and half a dozen casts and bandages not quite hidden beneath his cloak, he looked like he had actually taken the beating that Leia and Jaina had threatened to give him if he ever faked his death again. “The colonel may be using ancient battle meditation techniques to confuse his opponents.”

Babo’s ears pricked up. “That would explain a lot,” he said. “And it would give the Confederation even more reason to invite Kashyyyk, the Hapan Consortium, and the Jedi Order into our coalition.”

Tenel Ka roused herself from her poised silence at the head of the table, then said, “I hope Bothawui hasn’t misinterpreted the actions of the Hapan Consortium here today.” She had used her Force talents to hide all indication of the tears she had shed after firing on Jacen, but the pain still showed in the restrained quality of her gestures. “In no way do we share or condone the Confederation’s recent aggression, and the Galactic Alliance retains our full support.”

Babo brought his bushy brows together. “But you
attacked
Colonel Solo.”

“Colonel Solo is
not
the Alliance,” Tenel Ka replied simply.

“Thank you for clarifying that, Your Majesty.” Babo flattened his ears in disappointment, but he wasted no time in turning to Tojjelnoot, who was sitting at Luke’s right. “What about Kashyyyk? The Wookiees have good reason to support the Confederation—as the Confederation supported them.”

Tojjelnoot nodded in agreement, then rose and launched into a ten-minute groan in which he thanked each of the Confederation members for coming to Kashyyyk’s defense, then promised to repay the debt fivefold. Next, he listed an inventory of reservations about the Confederation’s defiance of Alliance law, and suggested that Corellia and Bothawui were both partially responsible for the attack on Kashyyyk because they had caused the war in the first place. He spent another five minutes praising the wisdom of Tenel Ka’s decision, but noted that Kashyyyk interests were very different from those of the Consortium. He ended with a long ramble about the wisdom of Master Skywalker, then explained that the Wookiees would like to hear all sides of the argument before making a decision.

Of course, Babo understood none of what Tojjelnoot said and looked to C-3PO for a translation.

“Tojjelnoot thanks admirals Babo, Kre’fey, and For’o and their fleet and the entire Bothan navy for their help today,” the droid began, reciting the Wookiee’s long speech from memory. “He also thanks Queen Mother Tenel Ka and Prince Isolder—”

Han noticed Babo’s eyes glazing over and raised a hand to silence the droid. “Here’s the short version,” he said. “The Wookiees want to hear what Luke says.”

All eyes swung toward Tojjelnoot, who gave a single affirming growl.

“Very well,” Babo said. “What
is
the Jedi position?”

Luke thought for a moment, then shifted forward in his chair. “Our position is this: As long as Jacen controls the Alliance, there
is
no Alliance.”

Babo’s grin spread wide across his face. “So we are in agreement.”

“About that much, yes.” As Luke said this, he met the gazes of both Han and Leia, silently acknowledging the pain his words were causing them all. “But the Jedi can only support the Confederation if it suspends its aggression into the Core. We can bring Jacen down by more subtle means. Once he’s no longer in charge of the Alliance, I’m confident all parties will work out their differences in a more amicable manner.”

Babo’s grin vanished. “So you would allow the Alliance to regroup?” He shook his head vehemently. “That’s unacceptable.”

Luke nodded politely and rose. “I thought you might feel that way,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, I really should be in the infirmary with my son.”

Babo’s eyes widened. “You’re leaving? Without talking?”

“I’ve made the Jedi position quite clear,” Luke said. “What could there possibly be to talk about?”

Babo snapped his snout shut, and Han realized that the meeting was about to come to a pointless end that would add years to the war. He glanced over at Leia and tipped his head in Luke’s direction, scowling for her to do something.

She scowled back. “What do you expect
me
to say?” she whispered. “Luke’s the Grand Master. I’m just a Jedi Knight.”

Across the table, Babo rose, causing a general stir as the rest of the Confederation officers followed his lead.

“Perhaps you’re right, Master Skywalker,” the Bothan said. “It appears we truly don’t have any interests in common.”

“Does that have to make us enemies?” Han asked, pointedly not rising from his chair. “I mean, at least right now?”

Babo’s gaze slid over to Han. “Do you have a proposal, Captain Solo?”

“Sure,” Han said. “Why don’t we just, uh, sort of ignore each other for a while?”

“Ignore?” Babo asked. “That’s a vague term, Captain Solo. Vagueness leads to misunderstandings—and misunderstandings have a terrible way of fostering tragedy.”

“I think what Han is trying to suggest is that we consider each other neutral,” Leia said. “We won’t interfere with each other’s operations, and we won’t have to expend resources watching each other—resources that might be better deployed against Jacen.”

Babo nodded. “I’m sure the Confederation would approve of that arrangement. But the Alliance would have to agree not to interfere in
any
of our operations, even those that might be considered…
extralegal
by the normal standards of warfare.”

“
Extra
legal?” Han asked. “What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“It means the Bothans are sending assassins after Jacen,” Leia said, keeping her gaze on Babo. “And they want us to sanction it.”

“Your son
did
order the murder of thousands of Coruscanti Bothans,” Babo reminded them. “If you’re sincere about stopping him, you shouldn’t have a problem with that.”

Luke glanced at Han and Leia again, his eyes filled with apology and despair. “The Jedi will be pursuing our own plans for Jacen, but if you actually think your assassins can eliminate him, we won’t interfere.”

Leia nodded. “We won’t stop you from trying.”

Babo turned to Han. “Captain Solo?”

“Yeah, fine. Just make sure nobody gets caught in the crossfire.” Han took Leia’s hand and rose. It was one thing to consider Jacen already dead, another to give permission to target him. “Knock yourselves out.”

It wasn’t until later, after they had left the meeting and rushed back to the
Falcon
to shed their tears in private, that Leia stretched her arms across the galley table and took Han’s hands, then asked the question that had been on both their minds since the day they had decided to speak against Jacen at the Rock Council, the question that had been growing more troublesome each time a new outrage compelled them to take a stand against what their son had become.

“Han, what have we done?”

Han slid around and took her in his arms. “The same thing we always have, Princess,” he said. “What we had to.”

ROUND-ROBIN INTERVIEW

Featuring
Star Wars
Legacy of the Force authors: Aaron Allston (
Betrayal, Exile, Fury
); Karen Traviss (
Bloodlines, Sacrifice, Revelation
); and Troy Denning (
Tempest, Inferno, Invincible
).

Random House:
Okay, let’s cut to the chase: the death of Mara Jade at the hands of Jacen Solo. Who came up with this idea, and how was it received by everyone in the initial story conferences?

Troy Denning:
That’s
your first question? You make us sound like a hit squad.

Aaron Allston:
The idea came up at our late 2004 meeting at Big Rock Ranch, but I resist saying who brought up the idea first. I’m not going there.

Karen Traviss:
I’m afraid it was me who suggested that Jacen had to kill someone he loved. But I’m the Brit, remember. We’re always the bad guys.

AA:
The idea was, if I recall correctly, met with mixed feelings. Everybody recognized the dramatic possibilities surrounding Mara’s death. But not everybody was happy with the thought of seeing her go.

TD:
But there were no fistfights, nothing like a deadlocked jury. We knew the storyline demanded a crisis that would shock Ben to the core and really make him think about what he was becoming. Nobody killed Mara just for the heck of it.

KT:
I mentioned a test that the German SS (or it might have been the Gestapo) used: trainees were each given a puppy—a German Shepherd, I think—and were encouraged to bond with the dog, compete it against other cadets’ dogs, and generally love it. Then, once they were totally devoted to the dog, they were told to strangle it. If they couldn’t obey that order, they were out. I said that would be a typical Sith test—to be so loyal to the Sith ideal that you’d obey orders and kill someone you loved to prove you could put the job first. There’s even an allusion to that in
Sacrifice,
where Jacen thinks about the nosito pups.

RH:
Given fan response to the deaths of Chewbacca and Anakin, did you feel any hesitation about killing off another popular character?

AA:
Definitely. For that reason and others, it’s the event ’ve looked forward to least out of the entire series.

KT:
Well, nobody lives forever. In fiction, it’s often better that they go out in a blaze of glory than incontinent and senile in the Coruscant Old Folks’ Home. Readers are sad to see much-loved characters die—we wouldn’t be doing our jobs right if those deaths left them unmoved—but very few fans resort to threats and abuse.

TD:
Good stories have tragedy as well as triumph. My first concern when writing is always to build a story that’s both suspenseful and logical (so I’d never terminate a character arbitrarily). Overall, the reaction I received after I wrote Anakin’s death was fine. People were sad (so was I)—and a few
were
angry—but most readers agreed that Anakin’s death was the kind of thing that has made the NJO a powerful and engaging story.

KT:
Fiction should make us feel strong emotions. It enables us as readers to “rehearse” difficult emotional events in a safe environment, so deaths in fiction have a real function in human psychology. And, frankly, the idea that heroes can never die isn’t good storytelling as far as I’m concerned. If the reader knows nothing can ever happen to them, where’s the drama, the risk?

RH:
One objection I’ve heard to the deaths of popular characters is that if readers want realism, they’ll pick up a book by Updike. How do you respond to this?

AA:
A lot of fans have that reaction, and a lot don’t. It’s not a universal thing. Those who object to the deaths do tend to be more vocal about it.

TD:
You wouldn’t be trying to stir up some controversy, would you?

AA:
I keenly remember, as a kid, reading a novel about Robin Hood in which he dies. I was shocked. “Robin Hood can’t
die.
The story can’t
end.
” But the truth is, putting characters in danger and then never killing any of them, or at least any of the important ones, robs a series of any tension. Oh, dear, Luke is in danger again, hohum.
And sure, we could have tension by threatening to make characters unhappy without actually killing them. But note that I said “putting them in danger.” Physical danger, danger of imminent death, has been a part of the
Star Wars
series since
A New Hope.
So either we have characters in danger, and make that danger meaningful, or we don’t have danger at all, which constitutes a major change to the way the universe is portrayed.

KT:
Star Wars
is a broad church, and there’s plenty of escapist material already out there that folks can read if they want that, but there are also many, many readers who want something that resonates with the issues they face in real life. Like Aaron says, there comes a point where the story gets stale if the protagonists face no real threats and risks.