Han blinked. Lost in his own mulling of the mess, he hadn’t really paid attention to where Leia was taking him. Now, with a start, he suddenly realized they were walking down the Grand Corridor that linked the Council chamber with the much larger Assemblage auditorium. “Wait a minute,” he protested. “Now?”
“I’m sorry, Han,” she sighed. “Mon Mothma insisted. You’re the first person back who was actually at the Sluis Van attack, and there are a million questions they want to ask you about it.”
Han looked around the corridor: at the high, convoluted vaulting of the ceiling; the ornate carvings and cut-glass windows alternating on the walls; the rows of short, greenish-purple saplings lining each side. The Emperor had supposedly designed the Grand Corridor personally, which probably explained why Han had always disliked the place. “I knew I should have sent Threepio out first,” he growled.
Leia took his arm. “Come on, soldier. Take a deep breath and let’s get it over with. Chewie, you’d better wait out here.”
The usual Council chamber arrangement was a scaled-up version of the smaller Inner Council room: an oval table in the center for the Councilors themselves, with rows of seats along the walls for their aides and assistants. Today, to Han’s surprise, the room had been reconfigured more along the lines of the huge Assemblage Commons. The seats were in neat, slightly tiered rows, with each Councilor surrounded by his or her assistants. In the front of the room, on the lowest level, Mon Mothma sat alone at a simple lectern, looking like a lecturer in a classroom. “Whose idea was this?” Han murmured as he and Leia started down the side aisle toward what was obviously a witness chair next to Mon Mothma’s desk.
“Mon Mothma set it up,” she murmured. “I’d be willing to bet it was Fey’lya’s idea, though.”
Han frowned. He’d have thought that underlining Mon Mothma’s preeminent role in the Council like this would be the last thing Fey’lya would want. “I don’t get it.”
She nodded toward the lectern. “Giving Mon Mothma the whole spotlight helps calm any fears that he plans to make a bid for her position. At the same time, putting the Councilors and their aides together in little groups tends to isolate the Councilors from each other.”
“I get it” Han nodded back. “Slippery little fuzzball, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is,” Leia said. “And he’s going to milk this Sluis Van thing for all it’s worth. Watch yourself.”
They reached the front and separated, Leia going to the first row and sitting down next to her aide, Winter, Han continuing on to Mon Mothma and the witness chair waiting for him. “You want me sworn in or anything?” he asked without preamble.
Mon Mothma shook her head. “That won’t be necessary, Captain Solo,” she said, her voice formal and a little strained. “Please sit down. There are some questions the Council would like to ask you about the recent events at the Sluis Van shipyards.”
Han took his seat. Fey’lya and his fellow Bothans, he saw, were in the group of front-row seats next to Leia’s group. There were no empty seats anywhere that might have signified Admiral Ackbar’s absence, at least not in the front where they should have been. The Councilors, seated according to rank, had apparently shuffled positions so as to each be closer to the front. Another reason for Fey’lya to have pushed this configuration, Han decided: at the usual oval table, Ackbar’s seat might have been left vacant.
“First of all, Captain Solo,” Mon Mothma began, “we would like you to describe your role in the Sluis Van attack. When you arrived, what happened subsequently—that sort of thing.”
“We got there pretty much as the battle was starting,” Han said. “Came in just ahead of the Star Destroyers. We picked up a call from Wedge—that’s Wing Commander Wedge Antilles of Rogue Squadron—saying that there were TIE fighters loose in the shipyards—”
“Excuse me?” Fey’lya interrupted smoothly. “Just who is the ‘we’ here?”
Han focused on the Bothan. On those violet eyes, that soft, cream-colored fur, that totally bland expression. “My crew consisted of Luke Skywalker and Lando Calrissian.” As Fey’lya no doubt knew perfectly well already. Just a cheap trick to throw Han off stride. “Oh, and two droids. You want their serial numbers?”
A slight rustle of not-quite humor ran through the room, and Han had the minor satisfaction of seeing that cream-colored fur flatten a little. “Thank you, no,” Fey’lya said.
“Rogue Squadron was engaged with a group of approximately forty TIE fighters and fifty stolen mole miners that had somehow been smuggled into the shipyards,” Han continued. “We gave them some assistance with the fighters, figured out that the Imperials were using the mole miners to try and steal some of the capital ships that had been pressed into cargo duty, and were able to stop them. That’s about it.”
“You’re too modest, Captain Solo,” Fey’lya spoke up again. “According to the reports we’ve received here, it was you and Calrissian who managed single-handedly to thwart the Empire’s scheme.”
Han braced himself. Here it came. He and Lando had stopped the Imperials, all right … only they’d had to fry the nerve centers of over forty capital ships to do it. “I’m sorry about wrecking the ships,” he said, looking Fey’lya straight in the eye. “Would you rather the Imperials have taken them intact?”
A ripple ran through the Bothan’s fur. “Really, Captain Solo,” he said soothingly. “I have no particular quarrel with your method of stopping the Empire’s attempt at grand larceny, costly though it might have been. You had only what you could work with. Within your constraints, you and the others succeeded brilliantly.”
Han frowned, feeling suddenly a little off balance. He had expected Fey’lya to try to make him the man under the hammer on this one. For once, the Bothan seemed to have missed a bet. “Thank you, Councilor,” he said, for lack of anything better to say.
“Which is not to say that the Empire’s attempt and near-victory are not important,” Fey’lya said, his fur rippling the opposite direction this time as he looked around the room. “On the contrary. At the best, they speak of serious misjudgments on the part of our military commanders. At the worst … they may speak of treason.”
Han felt his lip twist. So that was it. Fey’lya hadn’t changed his stripes; he’d simply decided not to waste a golden opportunity like this on a nobody like Han. “With all due respect, Councilor,” he spoke up quickly, “what happened at Sluis Van wasn’t Admiral Ackbar’s fault. The whole operation—”
“Excuse me, Captain Solo,” Fey’lya cut him off. “And with all due respect to you, let me point out that the reason those capital ships were sitting at Sluis Van in the first place, undermanned and vulnerable, was that Admiral Ackbar had ordered them there.”
“There isn’t anything like treason involved,” Han insisted doggedly. “We already know that the Empire’s got a tap into our communications—”
“And who’s responsible for such failures of security?” Fey’lya shot back. “Once again, the blame falls squarely around Admiral Ackbar’s shoulders.”
“Well, then, you find the leak,” Han snapped. Peripherally, he could see Leia shaking her head urgently at him, but he was too mad now to care whether he was being properly respectful or not. “And while you’re at it, I’d like to see how well you would do up against an Imperial Grand Admiral.”
The low-level buzz of conversation that had begun in the room cut off abruptly. “What was that last?” Mon Mothma asked.
Silently, Han swore at himself. He hadn’t meant to spring this on anyone until he’d had a chance to check it out himself at the Palace archives. But it was too late now. “The Empire’s being led by a Grand Admiral,” he muttered. “I saw him myself.”
The silence hung thick in the air. Mon Mothma recovered first. “That’s impossible,” she said, sounding more like she wanted to believe it than that she really did. “We’ve accounted for all the Grand Admirals.”
“I saw him myself,” Han repeated.
“Describe him,” Fey’lya said. “What did he look like?”
“He wasn’t human,” Han said. “At least, not completely. He had a roughly human build, but he had light blue skin, a kind of bluish black hair, and eyes that glowed red. I don’t know what species he was.”
“Yet we know that the Emperor didn’t like non-humans,” Mon Mothma reminded him.
Han looked at Leia. The skin of her face was tight, her eyes staring at and through him with a land of numb horror. She understood what this meant, all right. “He was wearing a white uniform,” he told Mon Mothma. “No other Imperial officers wore anything like that. And the contact I was with specifically called him a Grand Admiral.”
“Obviously a self-granted promotion,” Fey’lya said briskly. “Some regular admiral or perhaps a leftover Moff trying to rally the remains of the Empire around him. Anyway, that’s beside the immediate point.”