Sacrifice

"He's insane to meet Gejjen face-to-face without close protection anyway. He hasn't asked for it from us. He hasn't asked CSF, either—"

"GA Intel?"

"No. We tap their comms, too."

"You're a source of constant revelation, Jacen Solo . . ."

"Are you in?"

"Say it."

Jacen looked around the room, trying to look as if he was simply thinking, but suspicious that someone else might be doing to him what he did to them—eavesdrop electronically. Was Niathal setting him up? No, he was sure he could sense bugs in a room. There were none. "You know what I'm proposing."

"I don't, actually. Not in detail. Say it."

"Regime change." Too late. But he couldn't sense any risk. His logical brain was the paranoid, whispering voice, not his Force-senses.

He realized he'd become less instinct-driven and more rational, and that was the problem. Thinking too much, feeling too little, just like Lumiya says. "We remove him from office long enough to get this war won, and then hand it back to Senator G'Sil when the situation is stable so that new elections can take place."

His words emerged like uninvited strangers, and he didn't even believe himself. Niathal made a little splutter that could have been laughter.

"I get the removal. It's the gap in the middle between remove and elections that fascinates me."

"We run the GA during the interim as a duumvirate. No dictatorship.