Nothing had turned up on the scan. Of course. If Vana Dorja was carrying any vital secrets to her masters in the Empire, she was carrying them locked in her all-too-inquisitive brain.
“Please sit down,” Leia said.
“Your Highness is kind,” Dorja said, and lowered her stocky body into a chair. Leia sat across the table from her, and observed the half-empty glass of juri juice set before the commander.
“Threepio is providing sufficient refreshment?” Leia asked.
“Yes. He is very efficient, though a trifle talkative.”
Talkative? Leia thought. What’s Threepio been telling the woman?
Blast it anyway. Dorja was all too skilled at creating these unsettling moments.
“Shall we dine?” Leia asked.
Dorja nodded, bland as always. “As Your Highness wishes.” But then she proved useful in the galley, assisting Han and Leia as they transferred to plates the meal that had been cooking in the Falcon’s automatic ovens. As Han sat down with his plates, C-3PO contemplated the table.
“Sir,” he said. “A Princess and former Chief of State takes precedence, of course, over both a captain and an Imperial commander. But a commander—forgive me—does not take precedence over a New Republic general, even one on the inactive list. General Solo, if you would be so kind as to sit above Commander Dorja?”
Han gave C-3PO a baleful look. “I like it fine where I am,” he said. Which was, of course, as far away from the Imperial commander as the small table permitted.
C-3PO looked as distressed as it was possible for a droid with an immobile face to look. “But sir—the rules of precedence—”
“I like it where I am,” Han said, more firmly.
“But sir—”
Leia slid into her accustomed role as Han’s interpreter to the world. “We’ll dine informally, Threepio,” she told the droid.
C-3PO’s tone allowed his disappointment to show. “Very well, Your Highness,” he said.
Poor 3PO, Leia thought. Here he was designed for working out rules of protocol for state banquets involving dozens of species and hundreds of governments, interpreting and smoothing disputes, and instead she persisted in getting him into situations where he kept getting shot at. And now the galaxy was being invaded by beings who had marked for extermination every droid in existence—and they were winning. Whatever C-3PO had for nerves must be shot.
Lots of formal dinner parties when this is over, Leia decided. Nice, soothing dinner parties, without assassins, quarrels, or lightsaber fights.
“I thank you again for your offer of transit to the Empire,” Dorja said later, after the soup course. “It was fortunate that you have business there.”
“Very fortunate,” Leia agreed.
“Your mission to the Empire must be critical,” Dorja probed, “to take you from the government at such a crucial time.”
“I’m doing what I do best.”
“But you were Chief of State—surely you must be considering a return to power.”
Leia shook her head. “I served my term.”
“To voluntarily relinquish power—I confess I don’t understand it.” Dorja shook her head. “In the Empire, we are taught not to decline responsibility once it is given to us.”
Leia sensed Han’s head lifting as he prepared to speak. She knew him well enough to anticipate the sense of any remarks. No, he would say, Imperial leaders generally stay in their seats of power until they’re blasted out by laser cannons. Before Han could speak, she phrased a more diplomatic answer.
“Wisdom is knowing when you’ve given all you can,” she said, and turned her attention to her dinner, a fragrant breast of hibbas with a sauce of bofa fruit.
Dorja picked up her fork, held it over her plate. “But surely—with the government in chaos, and driven into exile—a strong hand is needed.”
“We have constitutional means for choosing a new leader,” Leia reassured. And thought, Not that they’re working so far, with Pwoe proclaiming himself Chief of State with the Senate deadlocked on Mon Calamari.
“I wish you a smooth transition,” Commander Dorja said. “Let’s hope the hesitation and chaos with which the New Republic has met its current crisis was the fault of Borsk Fey’lya’s government, and not symptomatic of the New Republic as a whole.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Han proclaimed, and drained his glass.
“I can’t help but wonder how the old Empire would have handled the crisis,” Dorja continued. “I hope you will forgive my partisan attitude, but it seems to me that the Emperor would have mobilized his entire armament at the first threat, and dealt with the Yuuzhan Vong in an efficient and expeditious manner, through the use of overwhelming force. Certainly better than Borsk Fey’lya’s policy—if I understood it correctly as a policy—of negotiating with the invaders at the same time as he was fighting them, sending signals of weakness to a ruthless enemy who used negotiation only as a cover for further conquests.”
It was growing very hard, Leia thought, to maintain the diplomatic smile on her face. “The Emperor,” she said, “was always alert to any threat to his power.”
Leia sensed Han about to speak, and this time was too late to stop his words.
“That’s not what the Empire would have done, Commander,” Han said. “What the Empire would have done was build a supercolossal Yuuzhan Vong–killing battle machine. They would have called it the Nova Colossus or the Galaxy Destructor or the Nostril of Palpatine or something equally grandiose. They would have spent billions of credits, employed thousands of contractors and subcontractors, and equipped it with the latest in death-dealing technology. And you know what would have happened? It wouldn’t have worked. They’d forget to bolt down a metal plate over an access hatch leading to the main reactors, or some other mistake, and a hotshot enemy pilot would drop a bomb down there and blow the whole thing up. Now that’s what the Empire would have done.”
Leia, striving to contain her laughter, detected what might have been amusement in Vana Dorja’s brown eyes.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Dorja conceded.
“You’re right I’m right, Commander,” Han said, and poured himself
