“And I would never dismiss the perseverance of your people.”
“Dismiss it? No. You’d simply squander it. You don’t know what it takes. I and the other Orishen are masters of sacrifice. We know its value. We know how to wield it.”
“Is that what this is, then? Sacrifice?” Mon asks. “You will throw our war efforts away for your own conquest of the New Republic? The sacrifice of oneself can be noble, Senator. But the sacrifice of the safety of a whole galaxy? That is an attack on us all and I cannot abide it!”
He stands up, looming over her. She tries not to show that she feels the threat of his presence—he could crush her quite easily. She could be dead, jettisoned into space, and that would be that.
“You don’t get to tell me that. You don’t have the right. Perhaps the truth of the thing is that I feel a Republic with you at its helm is the greatest concern,” he seethes. “You are weak. Your leadership is spineless and indulgent. Liberation Day shows the truth of that.”
“You did do it. You sabotaged the vote.”
Wartol does not sit back down so much as he falls backward against the chair. He looks away from her as he says, almost dismissively: “I admit to nothing. I will not give life to your conspiratorial fancies.”
“Then let me try a new conspiracy.” She opens her hand and lets a small device clatter across it. The device has a pinhole mike at its top, and from its bottom, a squid-tangle of severed wires.
He barely glances at it. “What is that?”
“You know what it is. It is a listening device. A bug.”
“So you say.”
“You planted it.”
“That is a heady accusation. I assume it comes with proof?” He waves her off, his hand then closing into a fist. “Oh, no, it doesn’t. Just another baseless allegation from the besieged Mon Mothma.”
“You knew. You knew that the Empire was at Jakku. You knew that two of our own were going to take the Millennium Falcon to that world, and you stopped them. Oh, the guards wouldn’t admit it was you, and they tried to claim it was me who stopped the Falcon. But they listen to you. You have authority. You have your little feelers everywhere, don’t you?”
“You can prove none of that.”
“That is correct. I cannot. So I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way: by beating you to a bloody pulp.” Her eyes flash with mischief. “In the election, I mean.”
“Ho, ho, good luck with that, Chancellor. Your precious re-vote is in the morning. Less than twelve hours away. We land soon—I hope you scramble the votes you need. But time is ever-dwindling.”
She smiles. “If only there were some way to delay the vote.”
“Hnh. You should be so lucky.”
The ship jolts as it comes out of hyperspace. Outside the viewport, the blue lines shorten to pinpricks and once more they’re in the deep well of space—but from here she can see the crescent edge of the world upon which the new Senate is housed: Nakadia.
“Beautiful world, Nakadia,” she says.
Tolwar Wartol grunts in reply.
“Interesting fact about Nakadia,” she continues. “We liberated them from the Empire and now they provide a great deal of the food for our troops. Something about the soil composition—it’s just right to grow a variety of vital crops. It’s a pristine environment with a huge food yield for us. The vote to make it a Class A protected planet—well, that was an easy vote. You voted yes. We all did. We came together on that one.”
“History lessons are most effective when they are interesting,” he says. “And this does not pass that test, Chancellor.”
“I’m sorry to bore you. I thought it interesting.”
The door to the sitting room opens. A narrow-shouldered Orishen stands there—not a guard, but a pilot in gold and red with his helmet on, his visor up. “Senator, we have a problem.”
Wartol looks to the pilot, then to the chancellor, then back to the pilot. He is suspicious now. Good. He should be. “What is it?”
“Nakadia isn’t allowing us to land, Senator.”
“And why would that be?”
“They’re saying that preliminary scans indicate we are host to a restricted agricultural product. Potentially invasive.”
Wartol turns to her. He already suspects that she did something. And of course, he’s right. “Chancellor. What did you do.”
A statement, not a question.