Star Wars:Legacy of the Force Fury

chapter two Chief of State's Briefing Office, Coruscant The adviser's voice was like the droning of insects, and Darth Caedus knew what to do about insectsignore them or step on them. But in this case, he couldn't afford to ignore the drone. The adviser, whatever her failings as a speaker, was providing him with critical data. Nor could he raise a boot to crush the source of the drone, not with Admiral Cha Niathal, his partner in the coalition government running Coruscant and the Galactic Alliance, sitting on the other side of the table, not with aides hovering and holocam recorders running. To make matters worse, the adviser would soon wrap up, and inevitably she would address him by the name he so disliked, the name he had been born with, the name he would soon abandon. And then he would once again feel, and have to resist, the urge to crush her. She did it. The blue-skinned Omwati female, her feathery hair dyed a somber black and her naval uniform freshly pressed, looked up from her datapad. "In conclusion, Colonel Solo" Caedus gestured to interrupt her. "In conclusion, the withdrawal of the entire Hapan eet from Alliance forces removes at least twenty percent of our naval strength and puts us into a game of withdrawal and entrenchment if we are to keep the Confederation from overrunning us. And the treachery of the Jedi in abandoning us at Kuat is further causing a loss of hope among the segments of the population who believe that their involvement means something." "Yes, sir." "Thank you. That will be all." She rose, saluted, and left silently, her posture stiff. Caedus knew she feared him, that she had been struggling to maintain her composure all through the brieFing, and he approved. Fear in subordinates meant instant compliance and extra effort on their part. Usually. Sometimes it meant treachery. Niathal addressed the other aides present. "We are done here. Thank you." When the ofFice door whooshed closed behind the last of them, Caedus turned to Niathal. The Mon Calamari, her white admiral's uniform almost gleaming, sat silently, regarding him. The stare from her bulbous eyes was no more forbidding than usual, but Caedus knew the message that they held: You could Fix this mess by resigning. Those were not her words, however. "You do not look well." Hers was the gravelly voice so common to her species, and in it there was none of the sympathy that Admiral Ackbar had been able to project. Niathal was not expressing concern for his health. She was suggesting he was not Fit for duty. And she was almost right. Caedus hurt everywhere. Mere days before, he had waged the most ferocious, most terrible lightsaber duel of his life. In a secret chamber aboard his Star Destroyer, the Anakin Solo, he had been torturing Ben Skywalker to harden the young man's spirit, to better prepare Ben for life as a Sith. But he had been caught by Ben's father, Luke Skywalker. That Fight . . . Caedus wished he had a holorecording of it. It had gone on for what had felt like forever. It had been brutal, with the advantage being held First by Luke, then by Caedus, in what he knew had been brilliant demonstrations of lightsaber technique, of raw power within the Force, of subtle Jedi and Sith skills. For all his pain, Caedus felt a swelling of pridenot just that he had survived that duel, but that he had waged it so well. At the end, Caedus had lost a position of advantage Luke had slipped free of the poison-injecting torture vines with which Caedus had been strangling himwhen Ben had driven a viAllston, Aaron is the author of 'Star Wars:Legacy of the Force Fury', published 2007 under ISBN 9780345477569 and ISBN 0345477561.