Remnant: Force Heretic I Read Online Free PDF Page A

andthoughtfully. “In principle, I think it’s a good idea,” she said. “And I’m sure Han will agree, too.”
    Omas offered a faint smile in appreciation. “I was hoping this would be the case,” he said. “The
Falcon
would make a great support vessel.”
    “And you don’t really have many to spare,” Leia said. “I understand.”
    Omas glanced at Luke and was surprised to see the Jedi Master frowning. That threw the Chief of State for a moment. What wasn’t there to like about his plan? It gave the Jedi a chance to reestablish their peacekeeping role in the galaxy while at the same time tying them ever closer to the Galactic Alliance. If the mission was a success—and there was no reason Omas could see why it wouldn’t be—then no one in the Senate would be able to argue about the worth of the Jedi again.
    “Luke?” Mara prompted, also catching her husband’s frown.
    The Jedi Master remained silent for a while longer, as though mulling over everything Omas had just said. When he did speak, it was slowly, choosing each word with care.
    “This would solve only half the problem,” he said. “No matter how well we did our job, it would still leave the Yuuzhan Vong. That’s a problem that isn’t going to go away, no matter how much you stifle the agitators. But what if I told you I could solve your military problem
and
the moral problem in one operation?”
    “I’d be interested, naturally,” Omas said, then lifted his thin shoulders and spread his arms in a supplicating gesture. “But
how?”
    “The Imperial Remnant,” Sovv said, answering for the Jedi Master.
    Luke looked at the Supreme Commander, nodding. “The Empire.”
    “They turned us down,” Leia said. “Pellaeon said that he had no interest in joining forces. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve been holding their own perfectly well against the Yuuzhan Vong.”
    “And at that point,
we
weren’t,” Luke said. “But now that we’re starting to hit back, they might change their mind.”
    “Well, it would certainly solve the military problem,” Omas said. “It would also legitimize the name of our new government.”
    “The
Galactic
Federation of Free Alliances,” A’Kla said.
    “Exactly. There’s not much meaning to it if entire chunks of the galaxy won’t join.”
    Omas folded his hands before him, returning his attention to Luke. “You’re proposing a diplomatic mission, Master Skywalker?”
    “To the Imperial Remnant—and to the Chiss, too,” he replied. “They’re the ones who refined the toxin developed by Scaur’s scientists—the Alpha Red bioweapons. That project is still hanging over us. We mustn’t forget that.”
    “No. Admiral Kre’fey isn’t letting me.”
    “I thought the project was on hold,” A’Kla said, the purple fur above her eyes ruffling slightly beneath a frown.
    “ ‘On hold’ in military terms simply means that you’re set on stun,” the Supreme Commander said. “The blaster, however, is still powered and aimed.”
    “Or it would be, given just a few weeks’ development time.” Omas himself was deeply conflicted over the Chiss plan to use biological warfare to defeat the Yuuzhan Vong. On the one hand, he could see the military sense in wiping out the enemy with one strike—a strike that would cost nothing in terms of troops or fleet resources. But it smacked of using the enemy’s own tactics against them. The Yuuzhan Vong had employed biological warfare onIthor—whose native bafforr trees, ironicallly, were the very source of the Alpha Red toxin—and many other worlds, destroying whole biospheres in the process. It was a dirty, demeaning tactic, and it could so easily be used against the wielder. In his nightmares he saw system after system falling to a gray plague while, at the same time, the Yuuzhan Vong were wiped out by the Chiss bioweapon. The end result would be a lifeless, sterile galaxy.
    He didn’t want
that
to be what his administration was remembered