Free Star Wars: The New Rebellion by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

the dead?” R’yet asked, his lower hands perched on his secondary hips.
    “Even the dead,” Leia said softly. “We can’t overlook anyone or anything here.”
    “So you’re being investigated as well,” Senator Meido asked.
    Leia started. Of course she wasn’t being investigated. She knew she wasn’t involved.
    “She said everyone.” ChoFï spoke without judgment as he reminded them to listen, and as he got Leia off the hook.
    Kerrithrarr, the senior Wookiee senator, growled from the back of the room.
    “My Wookiee colleague has a good point,” ChoFï said. “The best way to survive this crisis is to work together.”
    “We can’t work together when we’re being investigated,” said another junior senator.
    “We’re all being investigated,” said Nyxy, a senator from Rudrig.
    “We have to work together,” said Senator Gno. He had been a senator in the Old Republic, and then a member of the Rebel ring in the Imperial Senate. He was one of the few Old Republic members who hadn’t retired. “Have you ever thought that whoever set off that bomb did so for precisely this reason? If we fight among ourselves, we no longer focus on outside threats. We cannot tear this government apart from within.”
    That thought hadn’t occurred to Leia either. She had been concentrating on finding the perpetrators, and on discovering if they were the source of the Force-vision she had shared with Luke. She hadn’t forgotten that feeling of impending doom, not just for the Senate, but for the government itself.
    She couldn’t tell this body, though, about the newweapon. Not without a greater proof than her feeling, and Luke’s.
    “It seems to me that this government is already being torn apart,” R’yet said. “We need leadership. Good leadership would have prevented this attack.”
    “We don’t know that,” ChoFï said. “We won’t know anything like that until we discover what caused the destruction.”
    “The teams are working on that now,” Leia said. “We have some experts digging through material removed from the building, as well as searchers still in the Hall. We’ll know more by later today.”
    “Will we know then whether the attack was aimed at the Senate or aimed at you?” R’yet asked.
    He had the right to ask that. Leia knew he did. But that didn’t stop the flare of anger within her. She had had enough. He was acting as if he had attained a moral high road through M’yet Luure’s loss.
    “Senator Coome,” she said, rising to her full height. “If the attack was aimed at you, at me, or at any of our colleagues, then it was aimed at all of us. We are a body, a group, whether you like it or not. The attack occurred in the seat of government, and affected all of us equally—”
    “Not equally,” R’yet said. “Some of us are dead.”
    “Equally,” Leia said, “at least for the survivors. Now you can work with us and help the New Republic.”
    “Or?” He had stepped forward despite Meido’s restraining hand. “Are you threatening me, Leia Organa Solo?”
    “That wouldn’t be good for unity, now, would it?” Leia asked.
    “It certainly wouldn’t,” Meido said smoothly. “Perhaps it would ease my colleague’s mind if we had a separate investigation going, as well as the officialinvestigation. With two teams, we might get better results.”
    “Or we might confuse the issue,” Leia said.
    “So you’re opposed to a separate investigation?” Meido’s tone implied that she had something to hide.
    “Of course not,” Leia said. “I just don’t like expending unnecessary resources. The New Republic is not wealthy, either in credits or in available labor.”
    “I think that anything that enables us to trust one another again would not be a waste,” Meido said.
    Again?
Leia thought, but did not voice it.
    “She obviously doesn’t like the idea,” R’yet said.
    They had forced her into this. She should have expected it. She took a deep breath. “We’re a