Dark Force Rising (Star Wars)

CHAPTER

10

It was full dark by the time Khabarakh brought the ship to ground in his village, a tight-grouped cluster of huts with brightly lit windows. "Do ships land here often?" Leia asked as Khabarakh pointed the ship toward a shadowy structure standing apart near the center of the village. In the glare of the landing lights the shadow became a large cylindrical building with a flat cone-shaped roof, the circular wall composed of massive vertical wooden pillars alternating with a lighter, shimmery wood. Just beneath the eaves she caught a glint of a metal band encircling the entire building.

"It is not common," Khabarakh said, cutting the repulsorlifts and running the ship's systems down to standby. "Neither is it unheard of." In other words, it was probably going to attract a fair amount of attention. Chewbacca, who had recovered enough for Leia to help into one of the cockpit passenger seats, was obviously thinking along the same lines. "The villagers are all close family of the clan Kihm'bar," Khabarakh said in answer to the Wookiee's slightly slurred question. "They will accept my promise of protection as their own. Come."

Leia unstrapped and stood up, suppressing a grimace as she did so. But they were here now, and she could only hope that Khabarakh's confidence was more than just the unfounded idealism of youth.

She helped Chewbacca unstrap and together they followed the Noghri back toward the main hatchway, collecting Threepio from her cabin on the way.

"I must go first," Khabarakh said as they reached the exit. "By custom, I must approach alone to the dukha of the clan Kihm'bar upon arrival. By law, I am required to announce out-clan visitors to the head of my family."

"I understand," Leia said, fighting back a fresh surge of uneasiness. She didn't like this business of Khabarakh having conversations with his fellow Noghri that she wasn't in on. Once again, there wasn't a lot she could do about it. "We'll wait here until you come and get us."

"I will be quick," Khabarakh promised. He palmed the door release twice, slipping outside as the panel slid open and then shut again. Chewbacca growled something unintelligible under his breath. "He'll be back soon," Leia soothed him, making a guess as to what was bothering the Wookiee.

"I'm certain he is telling the truth," Threepio added helpfully.

"Customs and rituals of this sort are very common among the more socially primitive prespaceflight cultures."

"Except that this culture isn't prespaceflight," Leia pointed out, her hand playing restlessly with the grip of her lightsaber as she stared at the closed hatchway in front of her. Khabarath could at least have left the door open so that they would be able to see when he was coming back. Unless, of course, he didn't want them to see when he was coming back.

"That is evident, Your Highness," Threepio agreed, his voice taking on a professorial tone. "I feel certain, however, that their status in that regard has been changed only recent-Well!" he broke off as Chewbacca abruptly pushed past him and lumbered back toward the center of the ship.

"Where are you going?" Leia called after the Wookiee. His only reply was some comment about the Imperials that she wasn't quite able to catch.

"Chewie, get back here," she snapped. "Khabarakh will be back any minute." This time the Wookiee didn't bother to answer. "Great," Leia muttered, trying to decide what to do. If Khabarakh came back and found Chewbacca gone-but if he came and found both of them gone-"As I was saying," Threepio went on, apparently deciding that the actions of rude Wookiees were better left ignored, "all the evidence I have gathered so far about this culture indicates that they were until recently a nonspacefaring people. Khabarakh's reference to the dukha-obviously a clan center of some sort-the familial and clan structures themselves, plus this w,hole preoccupation with your perceived royal status-"

"The high court of Alderaan had a royal hierarchy, too," Leia reminded him tartly, still looking back along the empty corridor. No, she decided, she and Threepio had better stay here and wait for Khabarakh. "Most other people in the galaxy didn't consider us to be socially primitive."

"No, of course not," Threepio said, sounding a little embarrassed. "I didn't mean to imply any such thing."

"I know," Leia assured him, a little embarrassed herself at jumping on Threepio like that. She'd known what he meant. "Where is he, anyway?" The question had been rhetorical; but even as she voiced it the hatchway abruptly slid open again. "Come," Khabarakh said. His dark eyes flicked over Leia and Threepio-"Where is the Wookiee?"

"He went back into the ship," Leia told him. "I don't know why. Do you want me to go and find him?"

Khabarakh made a sound halfway between a hiss and a purr. "There is no time," he said. "The maitrakh is waiting. Come." Turning, he started back down the ramp. "Any idea how long it will take you to pick up the language?" Leia asked Threepio as they followed.

"I really cannot say, Your Highness," the droid answered as Khabarakh led them across a dirt courtyard past the large wooden building they'd seen on landing-the clan dukha, Leia decided. One of the smaller structures beyond it seemed to be their goal. "Learning an entirely new language would be difficult indeed," Threepio continued. "However, if it is similar to any of the six million forms of communication with which I am familiar-"

"I understand," Leia cut him off. They were almost to the lighted building now; and as they approached, a pair of short Noghri standing in the shadows pulled open the double doors for them. Taking a deep breath, Leia followed Khabarakh inside.

From the amount of light coming through the windows she would have expected the building's interior to be uncomfortably bright. To her surprise, the room they entered was actually darker than it had been immediately outside. A glance to the side showed why: the brightly lit "windows' were in fact standard self-powered lighting panels, with the operational sides facing outward. Except for a small amount of spillage from the panels, the interior of the building was lit only by a pair of floating-wick lamps. Threepio's assessment of the society echoed through her mind; apparently, he'd known what he was talking about.

In the center of the room, standing silently in a row facing her, were five Noghri.

Leia swallowed hard, sensing somehow that the first words should be theirs. Khabarakh stepped to the Noghri in the center and dropped to his knees, ducking his head to the floor and splaying out his hands to his sides. The same gesture of respect, she remembered, that he'd extended to her back in the Kashyyyk holding cell. "Ilyr'ush mir lakh svoril'lae," he said. "Mir'lae karah siv Mal'ary'ush vir'ae Vader'ush."

"Can you understand it?" Leia murmured to Threepio.

"To a degree," the droid replied. "It appears to be a dialect of the ancient trade language-"

"Sha'eah!" the Noghri in the center of the line spat. Threepio recoiled. "She said, 'Quiet,"" he translated unnecessarily.

"I understood the gist," Leia said, drawing herself up and bringing the full weight of her Royal Alderaanian Court upbringing to bear on the aliens facing her. Deference to local custom and authority was all well and good; but she was the daughter of their Lord Darth Vader, and there were certain discourtesies that such a person should not put up with. "Is this how you speak to the Mal'ary'ush?" she demanded.

Six Noghri heads snapped over to look at her. Reaching out with the Force, Leia tried to read the sense behind those gazes; but as always, this particular alien mind seemed totally closed to her. She was going to have to play it by ear. "I asked a question," she said into the silence. The Noghri in the center took a step forward, and with the motion Leia noticed for the first time the two small hard bumps on the alien's upper chest beneath the loose tunic. A female? "Maitrakh?" she murmured to Threepio, remembering the word Khabarakh had used earlier.

"A female who is leader of a local family or subclan structure," the droid translated, his voice nervous and almost too low to hear. Threepio hated being yelled at.

"Thank you," Leia said, eyeing the Noghri. "You are the maitrakh of this family?"

"I am she," the Noghri said in heavily accented but understandable Basic. "What proof do you offer to your claim of Mal'ary'ush?" Silently, Leia held out her hand. The maitrakh hesitated, then stepped up to her and gingerly sniffed it. "Is it not as I said?" Kabarakh asked.

"Be silent, thirdson," the maitrakh said, raising her head to stare into Leia's eyes. "I greet you, Lady Vader. But I do not welcome you." Leia held her gaze steadily. She could still not sense anything from any of the aliens, but with her thoughts extended she could tell that Chewbacca had left the ship and was approaching the house. approaching rather rapidly, and with a definite agitation about him. She hoped he wouldn't charge brashly in and ruin what little civility remained here. "May I ask why not?" she asked the maitrakh.

"Did you serve the Emperor?" the other countered. "Do you now serve our lord, the Grand Admiral?"

"No, to both questions," Leia told her.

"Then you bring discord and poison among us," the maitrakh concluded darkly. "Discord between what was and what now is." She shook her head. "We do not need more discord on Honoghr, Lady Vader."

The words were barely out of her mouth when the doors behind Leia swung open again and Chewbacca strode into the room. The maitrakh started at the sight of the Wookiee, and one of the other Noghri uttered something startled sounding. But any further reactions were cut off by Chewbacca's snarled warning. "Are you sure they're Imperials?" Leia asked, a cold fist clutching her heart. No, she pleaded silently. Not now. Not yet. The Wookiee growled the obvious: that a pair of Lambda-class shuttles coming from orbit and from the direction of the city of Nystao could hardly be anything else.

Khabarakh moved up beside the maitrakh, said something urgently in his own language. "He says he has sworn protection to us," Threepio translated. "He asks that the pledge be honored." For a long moment Leia thought the maitrakh was going to refuse. Then, with a sigh, she bowed her head slightly. "Come with me," Khabarakh said to Leia, brushing past her and Chewbacca to the door. "The maitrakh has agreed to hide you from our lord the Grand Admiral, at least for now."

"Where are we going?" Leia asked as they followed him out into the night.

"Your droid and your analysis equipment I will hide among the decon droids that are stored for the night in an outer shed," the Noghri explained, pointing to a windowless building fifty meters away. You and the Wookiee will be more of a problem. If the Imperials have sensor equipment with them, your life-sign profiles will register as different from Noghri."

"I know," Leia said, searching the sky for the shuttles' running lights and trying to remember everything she could about life-form identification algorithms. Heart rate was one of the parameters, she knew, as were ambient atmosphere, respiratory byproducts, and molecule-chain EM

polarization effects. But the chief long-range parameter was-"We need a heat source," she told Khabarakh. "As big a one as possible."

"The bake house," the Noghri said, pointing to a windowless building three down from where they stood. At its back was a squat chimney from which wisps of smoke could be seen curling upward in the backwash of light from the surrounding structures.

"Sounds like our best chance," Leia agreed. "Khabarakh, you hide Threepio Chewie, come with me."

The Noghri were waiting for them as they stepped from the shuttle: three females standing side by side, with two children acting as honor wardens by the doors of the clan dukha building. Thrawn glanced at the group, threw an evaluating sweep around the area, and then turned to Pellaeon. "Wait here until the tech team arrives, Captain," he ordered Pellaeon quietly. "Get them started on a check of the communications and countermeasures equipment in the ship over there. Then join me inside."

"Yes, sir."

Thrawn turned to Ir'kbaim. "Dynast," he invited, gesturing at the waiting Noghri. The dynast bowed and strode toward them. Thrawn threw a glance at Rukh, who'd taken Ir'khaim's former position at the Grand Admiral's side, and together they followed. There was the usual welcoming ritual, and then the females led the way into the dukha.

The shuttle from the Chimaera was only a couple of minutes behind them. Pellaeon briefed the tech team and got them busy, then crossed to the dukha and went in.

He'd expected that the maitrakh would have managed to round up perhaps a handful of her people for this impromptu late-evening visit by their glorious lord and master. To his surprise, he found that the old girl had in fact turned out half the village. There was a double row of them, children as well as adults, lining the dukha walls from the huge genealogy wall chart back to the double doors and around again to the meditation booth opposite the chart. Thrawn was seated in the clan High Seat two thirds of the way to the back of the room with Ir'khaim standing again at his side. The three females who'd met the shuttle stood facing them with a second tier of elders another pace back. Standing with the females, his steelgray skin a marked contrast to their older, darker gray, was a young Noghri male.

Pellaeon had, apparently, missed nothing more important than a smattering of the nonsense ritual the Noghri never seemed to get enough of. As he moved past the silent lines of aliens to stand at Thrawn's other side, the young male stepped forward and knelt before the High Seat. "I greet you, my lord," he mewed gravely, spreading his arms out to his sides. "You honor my family and the clan Kihm'bar with your presence here."

"You may rise," Thrawn told him. "You are Khabarakh, clan Kihm'bar?"

"I am, my lord."

"You were once a member of the Imperial Noghri commando team twenty-two," Thrawn said. "A team that ceased to exist on the planet Kashyyyk. Tell me what happened."

Khabarakh might have twitched. Pellaeon couldn't tell for sure. "I filed a report, my lord, immediately upon leaving that world."

"Yes, I read the report," Thrawn told him coolly. "Read it very carefully, and noted the questions it left unanswered. Such as how and why you survived when all others in your team were killed. And how it was you were able to escape when the entire planet had been alerted to your presence. And why you did not return immediately to either Honoghr or one of our other bases after your failure."

This time there was definitely a twitch. Possibly a reaction to the word failure. "I was left unconscious by the Wookiees during the first attack," Khabarakh said. "I awakened alone and made my way back to the ship. Once there, I deduced what had happened to the rest of the team from official information sources. I suspect they simply were unprepared for the speed and stealth of my ship when I made my escape. As to my whereabouts afterward, my lord-" He hesitated. "I transmitted my report, and then left for a time to be alone."

"Why?"

"To think, my lord, and to meditate."

"Wouldn't Honoghr have been a more suitable place for such meditation?" Thrawn asked, waving a hand around the dukha.

"I had much to think about. My lord."

For a moment Thrawn eyed him thoughtfully. "You were slow to respond when the request for a recognition signal came from the surface," he said.

"You then refused to land at the Nystao port facilities."

"I did not refuse, my lord. I was never ordered to land there."

"The distinction is noted," Thrawn said dryly. "Tell me why you chose to come here instead."

"I wished to speak with my maitrakh To discuss my meditations with her, and to ask forgiveness for my ... failure."

"And have you done so?" Thrawn asked, turning to face the maitrakh.

"We have begun," she said in atrociously mangled Basic. "We have not finished."

At the back of the room, the dukha doors swung open and one of the tech team stepped inside. "You have a report, Ensign?" Thrawn called to him.

"Yes, Admiral," the other said, crossing the room and stepping somewhat gingerly around the assembled group of Noghri elders. "We've finished our preliminary set of comm and countermeasures tests, sir, as per orders." Thrawn shifted his gaze to Khabarakh. "And?"

"We think we've located the malfunction, sir. The main transmitter coil seems to have overloaded and backfired into a dump capacitor, damaging several nearby circuits. The compensator computer rebuilt the pathway, but the bypass was close enough to one of the static-damping command lines for the resulting inductance surge to trigger it."

"An interesting set of coincidences," Thrawn said, his glowing eyes still on Khabarakh. "A natural malfunction, do you think, or an artificial one?"

The maitrakh stirred, as if about to say something. Thrawn looked at her, and she subsided. "Impossible to say, sir," the tech said, choosing his words carefully. Obviously, he hadn't missed the fact that this was skating him close to the edge of insult in the middle of a group of Noghri who might decide to take offense at it. "Someone who knew what he was doing could probably have pulled it off. I have to say, though, sir, that compensator computers in general have a pretty low reputation among mechanics. They're okay on the really serious stuff that can get unskilled pilots into big trouble, but on noncritical reroutes like this they've always had a tendency to foul up something else along the way."

"Thank you." If Thrawn was annoyed that he hadn't caught Khabarakh red-handed in a lie, it didn't show in his face. "Your team will take the ship back to Nystao for repairs."

"Yes, sir." The tech saluted and left. Thrawn looked back at Khabarakh. "With your team destroyed, you will of course have to be reassigned," he said. "When your ship has been repaired you will fly it to the Valrar base in Glythe sector and report there for duty."

"Yes, my lord," Khabarakh said.

Thrawn stood up. "You have much to be proud of here," he said, inclining his head slightly to the maitrakh. "Your family's service to the clan Kihm'bar and to the Empire will be long remembered by all of Honoghr."

"As will your leadership and protection of the Noghri people," the maitrakh responded.

Flanked by Rukh and Ir'khaim, Thrawn stepped down from the chair and headed back toward the double doors. Pellaeon took up the rear, and a minute later they were once again out in the chilly night air. The shuttle was standing ready, and without further comment or ritual Thrawn led the way inside. As they lifted, Pellaeon caught just a glimpse out the viewport of the Noghri filing out of the dukha to watch their departing leaders. "Well, that was pleasant," he muttered under his breath.

Thrawn looked at him. "A waste of time, you think, Captain?" he asked mildly.

Pellaeon glanced at Ir'khaim, seated farther toward the front of the shuttle. The dynast didn't seem to be listening to them, but it would probably still pay to be tactful. "Diplomatically, sir, I'm sure it was wortwhile to demonstrate that you care about all of Honoghr, including the outer villages," he told Thrawn. "Given that the commando ship really had malfunctioned, I don't think anything else was gained."

Thrawn turned to stare out the side viewport. "I'm not so sure of that, Captain," he said. "There's something not quite right back there. Rukh, what's your reading of our young commando Khabarakh?"

"He was unsettled," the bodyguard told him quietly. "That much I saw in his hands and his face."

Ir'khaim swiveled around in his chair. "It is a naturally unsettling experience to face the lord of the Noghri," he said.

"Particularly when one's hands are wet with failure?" Rukh countered. Ir'khaim half rose from his seat, and for a pair of heartbeats the air between the two Noghri was thick with tension. Pellaeon felt himself pressing back in his seat cushions, the long and bloody history of Noghri clan rivalry flooding fresh into his consciousness ... "This mission has generated several failures," Thrawn said calmly into the taut silence. "In that, the clan Kihm'bar hardly stands alone."

Slowly, Ir'khaim resumed his seat. "Khabarakh is still young," he said.

"He is indeed," Thrawn agreed. "One reason, I presume, why he's such a bad liar. Rukh, perhaps the Dynast Ir'khaim would enjoy the view from the forward section. Please escort him there."

"Yes, my lord." Rukh stood up. "Dynast Ir'khaim?" he said, gesturing toward the forward blast door.

For a moment the other Noghri didn't move. Then, with obvious reluctance, he stood up. "My lord," he said stiffly, and headed down the aisle.

Thrawn waited until the door had closed on both aliens before turning back to Pellaeon. "Khalarakh is hiding something, Captain," he said, a cold fire in his eyes. "I'm certain of it."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, wondering how the Grand Admiral had come to that conclusion. Certainly the routine sensor scan they'd just run hadn't picked up anything. "Shall I order a sensor focus on the village?"

"That's not what I meant," Thrawn shook his head. "He wouldn't have brought anything incriminating back to Honoghr with him-you can't hide anything for long in one of these close-knit villages. No, it's something he's not telling us about that missing month. The one where he claims he was off meditating by himself."

"We might be able to learn something from his ship," Pellaeon suggested.

"Agreed," Thrawn nodded. "Have a scanning crew go over it before the techs get to work. Every cubic millimeter of it, interior and exterior both. And have Surveillance put someone on Khalarakh."

"Ah-yes, sir," Pellaeon said. "One of our people, or another Noghri?" Thrawn cocked an eyebrow at him. "The ridiculously obvious or the heavily political, in other words?" he asked dryly. "Yes, you're right, of course. Let's try a third option: does the Chimaera carry any espionage droids?"

"I don't believe so, sir," Pellaeon said, punching up the question on the shuttle's computer link. "No. We have some Arakyd Viper probe droids, but nothing of the more compact espionage class."

"Then we'll have to improvise," Thrawn said. "Have Engineering put a Viper motivator into a decon droid and rig it with full-range optical and auditory sensors and a recorder. We'll have it put in with the group working out of Khabarakh's village."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, keying in the order. "Do you want a transmitter installed, too?"

Thrawn shook his head. "No, a recorder should be sufficient. The antenna would be difficult to conceal from view. The last thing we want is for some curious Noghri to see it and wonder why this one was different." Pellaeon nodded his understanding. Especially since that might lead the aliens to start pulling decon droids apart for a look inside. "Yes, sir. I'll have the order placed right away."

Thrawn's glowing eyes shifted to look out the viewport. "There's no particular rush here," he said thoughtfully. "Not now. This is the calm before the storm, Captain; and until the storm is ready to unleash, we might as well spend our time and energy making sure our illustrious Jedi Master will be willing to assist us when we want him."

"Which means bringing Leia Organa Solo to him."

"Exactly." Thrawn looked at the forward blast door. And if my presence is what the Noghri need to inspire them, then my presence is what they'll have."

"For how long?" Pellaeon asked.

Thrawn smiled tightly. "For as long as it takes."

CHAPTER

11

"Han?" Lando's voice came from the cabin intercom beside the bunk.

"Wake up."

"Yeah, I'm awake" Han grunted, swiping at his eyes with one hand and swiveling the repeater displays toward him with the other. If there was one thing his years on the wrong side of the law had hammered into him, it was the knack of going from deep sleep to full alertness in the space between heartbeats. "What's up?"

"We're here," Lando announced. "Wherever here is."

"I'll be right up."

They were in sight of their target planet by the time he'd dressed and made his way to the Lady Luck's cockpit. "Where's Irenez?" he asked, peering out at the mottled blue-green crescent shape they were rapidly approaching. It looked pretty much like any of a thousand other planets he'd seen.

"She's gone back to the aft control station," Lando told her. "I got the impression she wanted to be able to send down some recognition codes without us looking over her shoulder."

"Any idea where we are?"

"Not really," Lando said. "Transit time was forty seven hours, but that doesn't tell us a whole lot."

Han nodded, searching his memory. "A Dreadnaught can pull, what, about Point Four?"

"About that," Lando agreed. "When it's really in a hurry, anyway.

"Means we aren't any more than a hundred fifty lightyears from New Cov, then."

"I'd guess we're closer than that, myself," Lando said. "It wouldn't make much sense to use New Cov as a contact point if they were that far away."

"Unless New Cov was Breil'lya's idea and not theirs," Han pointed out.

"Possible," Lando said. "I still think we're closer than a hundred fifty light-years, though. They could have taken their time getting here just to mislead us."

Han looked up at the Dreadnaught that had been hauling them through hyperspace for the past two days. "Or to have time to organize a reception committee."

"There's that," Lando nodded. "I don't know if I mentioned it, but after they apologized for getting the magnetic coupling off-center over our hatch I went back and took a look"

"You didn't mention it, but I did the same thing," Han said sourly.

"Looked kind of deliberate, didn't it?"

"That's what I thought, too," Lando said. "Like maybe they wanted an excuse to keep us cooped up down here and not wandering around their ship."

"Could be lots of good and innocent reasons for that," Han reminded him.

"And lots of not-so-innocent ones," Lando countered. "You sure you don't have any idea who this Commander of theirs might be?"

"Not even a guess. Probably be finding out real soon, though." The comm crackled on. "Lady Luck, this is Sena," a familiar voice said. "We've arrived."

"Yes, we noticed," Lando told her. "I expect you'll want us to follow you down."

"Right," she said. "The Peregrine will drop the magnetic coupling whenever you're ready to fly."

Han stared at the speaker, barely hearing Lando's response. A ship called the Peregrine ...?

"You still with me?"

Han focused on Lando, noticing with mild surprise that the other's conversation with Sena had ended. "Yeah," he said. "Sure. It's just-that name, Peregrine, rang an old bell."

"You've heard of it?"

"Not the ship, no," Han shook his head. "The Peregrine was an old Corellian scare legend they used to tell when I was a kid. He was some old ghostly guy who'd been cursed to wander around the world forever and never find his home again. Used to make me feel real creepy.

From above came a clang; and with a jolt they were free of the Dreadnaught. Lando eased them away from the huge warship, looking up as it passed by overhead. "Well, try to remember it was just a legend," he reminded Han.

Han looked at the Dreadnaught. "Sure," he said, a little too quickly.

"I know that."

They followed Sena's freighter down and were soon skimming over what appeared to be a large grassy plain dotted with patches of stubby coniferous trees. A wall of craggy cliffs loomed directly ahead-an ideal spot, Han's old smuggler instincts told him, to hide a spaceship support and servicing base. A few minutes later his bunch was borne out as, sweeping over a low ridge, they came to the encampment.

An encampment that was far too large to be merely a servicing base. Rows upon rows of camouflaged structures filled the plain just beneath the cliffs: everything from small living quarters to larger admin and supply sheds to still larger maintenance and tool buildings, up to a huge camoroofed refurbishing hangar. The perimeter was dotted with the squat, turret-topped cylinders of Golan Arms anti-infantry batteries and a few of the longer Speizoc anti-vehicle weapons, along with some KAAC Freerunner assault vehicles parked in defensive posture.

Lando whistled softly under his breath. "Would you look at that?" he said. "What is this, someone's private army?"

"Looks that way," Han agreed, feeling the skin on the back of his neck starting to crawl. He'd run into private armies before, and they'd never been anything but trouble.

"I think I'm starting not to like this," Lando decided, easing the Lady Luck gingerly over the outer sentry line. Ahead, Sena's freighter was approaching a landing pad barely visible against the rest of the ground. "You sure you want to go through with this?"

"What, with three Dreadnaughts standing on our heads out there?" Han snorted. "I don't think we've got a whole lot of choice. Not in this crate, anyway.

"Probably right," Lando conceded, apparently too preoccupied to notice the insult to his ship. "So what do we do?" Sena's freighter had dropped its landing skids and was settling onto the pad. "I guess we go down and behave like invited guests," Han said. Lando nodded at Han's blaster. "You don't think they'll object to their invited guests coming in armed?"

"Lot 'em object first," Han said grimly. "Then we'll discuss it." Lando put the Lady Luck down beside the freighter, and together he and Han made their way to the aft hatchway. Irenez, her transmission chores finished, was waiting there for them, her own blaster strapped prominently to her hip. A transport skiff was parked outside, and as the three of them headed down the ramp, Sena and a handful of her entourage came around the Lady Luck's bow. Most of the others were dressed in a casual tan uniform of an unfamiliar but vaguely Corellian cut; Sena, by contrast, was still in the nondescript civilian garb she'd been wearing on New Cov.

"Welcome to our base of operations," Sena said, waving a hand to encompass the encampment around them. "If you'll come with us, the Commander is waiting to meet you.

"Busy looking place you've got here," Han commented as they all boarded the skiff. "You getting ready to start a war or something?"

"We're not in the business of starting wars," Sena said coolly.

"Ah," Han nodded, looking around as the driver swung the skiff around and headed off through the camp. There was something about the layout that seemed vaguely familiar.

Lando got it first. "You know, this place looks a lot like one of the old Alliance bases we used to work out of," he commented to Sena. "Only built on the surface instead of dug in underground."

"It does look that way, doesn't it?" Sena agreed, her voice not giving anything away.

"You've had dealings with the Alliance, then?" Lando probed gently. Sena didn't answer. Lando looked at han, eyebrows raised. Han shrugged slightly in return. Whatever was going on here, it was clear the hired hands weren't in the habit of talking about it.

The skiff came to a halt beside an administration building indistinguishable from the others nearby except for the two uniformed guards flanking the doorway. They saluted as Sena approached, one of them reaching over to pull the door open. "The Commander asked to see you for a moment alone, Captain Solo," Sena said, stopping by the open door. "We'll wait out here with General Calrissian."

"Right," Han said. Taking a deep breath, he stepped inside. From its outside appearance he'd expected it to be a standard administrative center, with an outer reception area and a honeycomb of comfy executive offices stacked behind it. To his mild surprise, he found himself instead in a fully equipped war room. Lining the walls were comm and tracking consoles, including at least one crystal gravfield trap receptor and what looked like the ranging control for a KDY v-150 Planet Defender ion cannon like the one the Alliance had had to abandon on Hath. In the center of the room a large holo display showed a sector's worth of stars, with a hundred multicolored markers and vector lines scattered among the glittering white dots.

And standing beside the holo was a man.

His face was distorted somewhat by the strangely colored lights playing on it from the display; and it was, at any rate, a face Han had never seen except in pictures. But even so, recognition came with the sudden jolt of an overhead thunderclap. "Senator Bel Iblis," he breathed.

"Welcome to Peregrine's Nest, Captain Solo," the other said gravely, coming away from the holo toward him.

"I'm flattered you still remember me.

"It'd be hard for any Corellian to forget you, sir," Han said, his numbed brain noting vaguely in passing that there were very few people in the galaxy who rated an automatic sir from him. "But you ..."

"Were dead?" Bel Iblis suggested, a half smile creasing his lined face.

"Well-yes," Han floundered. "I mean, everyone thought you died on Anchoron."

"In a very real sense, I did," the other said quietly, the smile fading from his face. Closer now, Han was struck with just how lined with age and, stress the Senator's face was. "The Emperor wasn't quite able to kill me at Anchoron, but he might just as well have done so. He took everything I had except my life: my family, my profession, even all future contacts with mainstream Corellian society. He forced me outside the law I'd worked so hard to create and maintain." The smile returned, like a hint of sunshine around the edge of a dark cloud. "Forced me to become a rebel. I imagine you understand the feeling."

"Pretty well, yeah," Han said, grinning lopsidedly in return. He'd read in school about the legendary presence of the equally legendary Senator Garm Bel Iblis; now, he was getting to see that charm up close. It made him feel like a schoolkid again. "I still can't believe this. I wish we'd known sooner-we could really have used this army of yours during the war." For just a second a shadow seemed to cross Bel Iblis's face. "We probably couldn't have done much to help," he said. "It's taken us a good deal of time to build up to what you see here." His smile returned. "But there'll be time to talk about that later. Right now, I see you standing there trying to figure out exactly when it was we met."

Actually, Han had forgotten about Sena's references to a previous meeting. "Tell you the truth, I haven't got a clue," he confessed. "Unless it was after Anchoron and you were in disguise or something." Bel Iblis shook his head. "No disguise; but it wasn't something I'd really expect you to remember. I'll give you a hint: you were all of eleven at the time."

Han blinked. "Eleven?" he echoed. "You mean in school?"

"Correct," Bel Iblis nodded. "Literally correct, in fact. It was at a convocation at your school, where you were being forced to listen to a group of us old fossils talk about politics."

Han felt his face warming. The specific memory was still a blank, but that was how he'd felt about politicians at that time in his life. Though come to think of it, the opinion hadn't changed all that much over the years. "I'm sorry, but I still don't remember."

"As I said, I didn't expect you to," Bel Iblis said. "I, on the other hand, remember the incident quite well. During the question period after the talk you asked two irreverently phrased yet highly pointed questions: the first regarding the ethics of the anti-alien bias starting to creep into the legal structure of the Republic, the second about some very specific instances of corruption involving my colleagues in the Senate." It was starting to come back, at least in a vague sort of way. "Yeah, I remember now," Han said slowly. "I think one of my friends dared me to throw those questions at you. He probably figured I'd get in trouble for not being, polite. I was in trouble enough that it didn't bother me."

"Setting your life pattern early, were you?" Bel Iblis suggested dryly. "At any rate, they weren t the sort of questions I would have expected from an eleven-year-old, and they intrigued me enough to ask about you. I've been keeping a somewhat loose eye on you ever since." Han grimaced. "You probably weren't very impressed by what you saw.

"There were times," Bel Iblis agreed. "I'll admit to having been extremely disappointed when you were dismissed from the Imperial Academy-you'd shown considerable promise there, and I felt at the time that a strongly loyal officer corps was one of the few defenses the Republic still had left against the collapse toward Empire." He shrugged. "Under the circumstances, it's just as well that you got out when you did. With your obvious disdain for authority, you'd have been quietly eliminated in the Emperor's purge of those officers he hadn't been able to seduce to his side. And then things would have gone quite differently, wouldn't they?"

"Maybe a little," Han conceded modestly. He glanced around the war room. "So how long have you been here at-you called it Peregrine's Nest?"

"Oh, we never stay anywhere for very long," Bel Iblis said, clapping a hand on han's shoulder and gently but firmly turning him toward the door.

"Sit still too long and the Imperials will eventually find you. But we can talk business later. Right now, your friend outside is probably getting nervous. Come introduce me to him."

Lando was indeed looking a little tense as Han and Bel Iblis stepped out into the sunlight again. "It's all right," Han assured him. "We're with friends. Senator, this is Lando Calrissian, one-time general of the Rebel Alliance. Lando; Senator Garm Bel Iblis."

He hadn't expected Lando to recognize the name of a long-past Corellian politician. He was right. "Senator Bel Iblis," Lando nodded, his voice neutral.

"Honored to meet you, General Calrissian," Bel Iblis said. "I've heard a great deal about you.

Lando glanced at Han. "Just Calrissian," he said. "The General is more a courtesy title now."

"Then we re even," Bel Iblis smiled. "I'm not a Senator anymore, either." He waved a hand at Sena. "You've met my chief adviser and unofficial ambassador-at-large, Sena Loikvold Midanyl. And-" He paused, looking around.

"I understood Irenez was with you."

"She was needed back at the ship, sir," Sena told him. "Our other guest required some soothing."

"Yes; Council-Aide Breil'lya," Bel Iblis said, glancing in the direction of the landing pad. "This could prove somewhat awkward."

"Yes, sir," Sena said. "Perhaps I shouldn't have brought him here, but at the time I didn't see any other reasonable course of action."

"Oh, I agree," Bel Iblis assured her. "Leaving him in the middle of an Imperial raid would have been more than simply awkward." Han felt a slight chill run through him. In the flush of excitement over meeting Bel Iblis, he'd completely forgotten what had taken them to New Cov in the first place. "You seem to be on good terms with Breil'lya, Senator," he said carefully.

Bel Iblis eyed him. "And you'd like to know just what those good terms entail?"

Han steeled himself. "As a matter of fact, sir ... yes, I would." The other smiled slightly. "You still have that underlying refusal to flinch before authority, don't you. Good. Come on over to the headquarters lounge and I'll tell you anything you want to know." His smile hardened, just a little. "And after that, I'll have some questions to ask you, as well." The door slid open, and Pellaeon stepped into the darkened antechamber of Thrawn's private command room. Darkened and apparently empty; but Pellaeon knew better than that. "I have important information for the Grand Admiral," he said loudly. "I don't have time for these little games of yours."

"They are not games," Ruk's gravelly voice mewed right in Pellaeon's ear, making him jump despite his best efforts not to. "Stalking skills must be practiced or lost."

"Practice on someone else," Pellaeon growled. "I have work to do." He stepped forward to the inner door, silently cursing Ruk and the whole Noghri race. Useful tools of the Empire they might well be; but he'd dealt with this kind of close-knit clan structure before, and he'd never found such primitives to be anything but trouble in the long run. The door to the command room slid open Revealing a darkness lit only by softly glowing candles. Pellaeon stopped abruptly, his mind flashing back to that eerie crypt on Wayland, where a thousand candles marked the graves of off worlders who had come there over the past few years, only to be slaughtered by Joruus C'baoth. For Thrawn to have turned his command room into a duplicate of that ...

"No, I haven't come under the influence of our unstable Jedi Master," Thrawn's voice came dryly across the room. Over the candles, Pellaeon could just see the Grand Admiral's glowing red eyes. "Look closer." Pellaeon did as instructed, to discover that the "candles" were in fact holographic images of exquisitely delicate lighted sculptures.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" Thrawn said, his voice meditative. "They're Corellian flame miniatures, one of that very short list of art forms which others have tried to copy but never truly been able to duplicate. Nothing more than shaped transoptical fibers, pseudoluminescent plant material, and a pair of Goolish light sources, really; and yet, somehow, there's something about them that's never been captured by anyone else." The holographic flames faded away, and in the center of the room a frozen image of three Dreadnaught cruisers apeared. "This was taken by the Relentless two days ago off the planet New Cov, Captain," Thrawn continued in the same thoughtful tone. "Watch closely."

He started the recording. Pellaeon watched in silence as the Dreadnaughts, in triangular formation, opened fire with ion cannons toward the camera's point of view. Almost hidden in the fury of the assault, a freighter and what looked like a small pleasure yacht could be seen skittering to safety down the middle of the formation. Still firing, the Dreadnaughts began drawing back, and a minute later the whole group had jumped to lightspeed. The holo faded away, and the room lights came up to a gentle glow. "Comments?" Thrawn invited.

"Looks like our old friends are back," Pellaeon said. "They seem to have recovered from that scare we gave them at Linuri. A nuisance, especially right now.

"Unfortunately, indications are that they're about to become more than just a nuisance," Thrawn told him. "One of the two ships they were rescuing was identified by the Relentless as the Lady Luck. With Han Solo and Lando Calrissian aboard."

Pellaeon frowned. "Solo and Calrissian? But-" He broke off sharply.

"But they were supposed to go to the Palanhi system," Thrawn finished for him. "Yes. An error on my part. Obviously, something more important came than their concerns for Ackbar's reputation.

Pellaeon looked back at where the holo had been. "Such as adding new strength to the Rebellion military."

"I don't believe they've merged quite yet," Thrawn said, his forehead furrowed with thought. "Nor do I believe such an alliance is inevitable. That was a Corellian leading that task force, Captain-I'm sure of that now. And there are only a few possibilities as to just who that Corellian might be." A stray memory clicked. "Solo is Corellian, isn't he?"

"Yes," Thrawn confirmed. "One reason I think they're still in the negotiation stage. If their leader is who I suspect, he might well prefer sounding out a fellow Corellian before making any commitment to the Rebellion's leaders."

To Thrawn's left, the comm pinged. Àdmiral Thrawn? We have the contact you requested with the Relentless."

"Thank you," Thrawn said, tapping a switch. In front of the double circle of repeater displays a three-quartersized hologram of an elderly Imperial officer appeared, standing next to what appeared to be a detention block control board. "Grand Admiral," the image said, nodding gravely.

"Good day, Captain Dorja," Thrawn nodded back.

"You have the prisoner I asked for?"

"Right here, sir," Dorja said. He glanced to the side and gestured; and from off-camera a rather bulky human appeared, his hands shackled in front of him, his expression studiously neutral behind his neatly trimmed board.

"His name's Niles Ferrier," Dorja said. "We picked him and his crew up during the raid on New Cov."

"The raid from which Skywalker, Solo, and Calrissian escaped," Thrawn said.

Dorja winced. "Yes, sir."

Thrawn shifted his attention to Ferrier. "Captain Ferrier," he nodded. "Our records indicate that you specialize in space ship theft. Yet you were picked up on New Cov with a cargo of biomolecules aboard your ship. Would you care to explain?"

Ferrier shrugged fractionally. "Palming ships isn't something you can do every day," he said. "It takes opportunities and planning. Taking the occasional shipping job helps make ends meet.

"You're aware, of course, that the biomolecules were undeclared."

"Yes, Captain Dorja told me that," Ferrier said with just the right mixture of astonishment and indignation. "Believe me, if I'd known I was being made a party to such cheating against the Empire-"

"I presume you're also aware," Thrawn cut him off, "that for such actions I can not only confiscate your cargo, but also your ship." Ferrier was aware of that, all right. Pellaeon could see it in the pinched look around his eyes. "I've been very helpful to the Empire in the past, Admiral," he said evenly. "I've smuggled in loads of contraband from the New Republic, and only recently delivered three Sienar patrol ships to your people."

"And were paid outrageous sums of money in all cases," Thrawn reminded him. "If you're trying to suggest we owe you for past kindnesses, don't bother. However ... there may be a way for you to pay back this new debt. Did you happen to notice the ships attacking the Relentless as you were trying to sneak away from the planet?"

"Of course I did," Ferrier said, a touch of wounded professional pride creeping into his voice. "They were Rendili StarDrive Dreadnaughts. Old ones, by the look of them, but spry enough. Probably undergone a lo of refitting."

"They have indeed." Thrawn smiled slightly. "I want them." It took Ferrier a handful of seconds for the offhanded sounding comment to register. When it did, his mouth dropped open. "You mean ... me?"

"Do you have a problem with that?" Thrawn asked coldly.

"Uh ..." Ferrier swallowed. "Admiral, with all due respect-"

"You have three standard months to get me either those ships or else their precise location," Thrawn cut him off. "Captain Dorja?" Dorja stepped forward again. "Sir."

"You will release Captain Ferrier and his crew and supply them with an unmarked Intelligence freighter to use. Their own ship will remain aboard the Relentless until they've completed their mission."

"Understood," Dorja nodded.

Thrawn cocked an eyebrow. "One other thing, Captain Ferrier. On the off chance that you might feel yourself tempted to abandon the assignment and make a run for it, the freighter you'll be given will be equipped with an impressive and totally unbreakable doomsday mechanism. With exactly three standard months set on its clock. I trust you understand." Above his beard, Ferrier's face had gone a rather sickly white.

"Yes," he managed.

"Good." Thrawn shifted his attention back to Dorja. "I leave the details in your hands, Captain. Keep me informed of developments." He tapped a switch, and the hologram faded away. "As I said, Captain," Thrawn said, turning to Pellaon. "I don't think an alliance with the Rebellion is necessarily inevitable."

"If Ferrier can pull it off"' Pellaeon said doubtfully.

"He has a reasonable chance," Thrawn assured him. "After all, we have a general idea ourselves of where they might be hidden. We just don't have the time and manpower at the moment to properly root them out. Even if we did, a large-scale attack would probably end up destroying the Dreadnaughts, and I'd rather capture them intact."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said grimly. The word capture had reminded him of why he'd come here in the first place. "Admiral, the report on Khabarakh's ship has come in from the scanning team." He held the data card over the double display circle.

For a moment Thrawn's glowing red eyes burned into Pellaeon's face, as if trying to read the reason for his subordinate's obvious tension. Then, wordlessly, he took the data card from the captain's hand and slid it into his reader. Pellaeon waited, tight-lipped, as the Grand Admiral skimmed the report.

Thrawn reached the end and leaned back in his seat, his face unreadable. "Wookiee hairs," he said.

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon nodded. "All over the ship." Thrawn was silent another few heartbeats. "Your interpretation?" Pellaeon braced himself "I can only see one, sir. Khabarakh didn't escape from the Wookiees on Kashyyyk at all. They caught him ... and then let him go."

"After a month of imprisonment." Thrawn looked up at Pellaeon. "And interrogation."

"Almost certainly," Pellaeon agreed. "The question is, what did he tell them?"

"There's one way to find out." Thrawn tapped on the comm. "Hangar bay, this is the Grand Admiral. Prepare my shuttle; I'm going to the surface. I'll want a troop shuttle and double squad of stormtroopers ready to accompany me, plus two flights of Scimitar assault bombers to provide air cover." He got an acknowledgment and keyed off. "It may be, Captain, that the Noghri have forgotten where their loyalties lie," he told Pellaeon, standing up and stepping out around the displays. "I think it's time they were reminded that the Empire commands here. You'll return to the bridge and prepare a suitable demonstration."

"Yes, sir." Pellaeon hesitated. "Do you want merely a reminder and not actual destruction?"

Thrawn's eyes blazed. "For the moment, yes," he said, his voice icy.

"Let them all pray that I don't change my mind."

CHAPTER

12

It was the smell Leia noticed first as she drifted slowly awake: a smoky smell, reminiscent of the wood fires of the Ewoks of Endor but with a tangy sharpness all its own. A warm, homey sort of aroma, reminding her of the campouts she'd had as a child on Alderaan.

And then she woke up enough to remember where she was. Full consciousness flooded in, and she snapped open her eyes To find herself lying on a rough pallet in a corner of the Noghri communal bake house. Exactly where she'd been when she'd fallen asleep the night before.

She sat up, feeling relieved and a little ashamed. What with that unexpected visit last night by the Grand Admiral, she realized she'd half expected to wake up in a Star Destroyer detention cell. Clearly, she'd underestimated the Noghri's ability to stick by their promises. Her stomach growled, reminding her it had been a long time since she'd eaten; a little lower down, one of the twins kicked a reminder of his own. "Okay," she soothed. "I get the hint. Breakfast time." She tore the top off a ration bar from one of her cases and took a bite, looking around the bake house as she chewed. Against the wall by the door, the double pallet that had been laid out for Chewbacca to sleep on was empty. For a moment the fear of betrayal again whispered to her; but a little concentration through the Force silenced any concerns. Chewbacca was somewhere nearby, with a sense that gave no indication of danger. Relax, she ordered herself sternly, pulling a fresh jumpsuit out of her case and starting to get dressed. Whatever these Noghri were, it was clear they weren't savages. They were honorable people, in their own way, and they wouldn't turn her over to the Empire. At least, not until they'd heard her out.

She downed the last bite of ration bar and finished dressing, making sure as always that her belt didn't hang too heavily across her increasingly swollen belly. Retrieving her lightsaber from its hiding place under the edge of the pallet, she fastened it prominently to her side. Khabarakh, she remembered, had seemed to find reassurance of her identity in the presence of the Jedi weapon; hopefully, the rest of the Noghri would also respond that way. Stepping to the bake house door, she ran through her Jedi calming exercises and went outside.

Three small Noghri children were playing with an inflatable ball in the grassy area outside the door, their grayish-white skin glistening with perspiration in the bright morning sunlight. A sunlight that wasn't going to last, Leia saw: a uniform layer of dark clouds extending all the way to the west was even now creeping its way east toward the rising sun. All for the best; a thick layer of clouds would block any direct telescopic observations the Star Destroyer up there might make of the village, as well as diffusing the non-Noghri infrared signatures she and Chewbacca were giving off. She looked back down, to find that the three children had halted their game and formed a straight line in front of her. "Hello," she said, trying a smile on them.

The child in the middle stepped forward and dropped to his knees in an awkward but passable imitation of his elders' gesture of respect.

"Male'ary'ush," he mewed. "Miskh 'hara isf chrak 'mi 'sokh. Mires kha."

"I see," Leia said, wishing fervently that she had Threepio with her. She was just wondering if she should risk calling him on the comlink when the child spoke again. "Hai ghreet yhou, Mal'ary'ush," he said, the Basic words coming out mangled but understandable. "The maitrakh whaits for you bin the dukha."

"Thank you," Leia nodded gravely to him. Door wardens last night; official greeters this morning. Noghri children seemed to be introduced early into the rituals and responsibilities of their culture. "Please escort me to her."

The child made the respect gesture again and got back to his feet, heading off toward the large circular structure that Khabarakh had landed next to the night before. Leia followed, the other two children taking up positions to either side of her. She found herself throwing short glances at them as they walked, wondering at the light color of their skin. Khabarakh's skin was a steel gray; the maitrakh's had been much darker. Did the Noghri consist of several distinct racial types? Or was the darkening a natural part of their aging process? She made a mental note to ask Khabarakh about it when she had a chance.

The dukha, seen now in full daylight, was far more elaborate than she'd realized. The pillars spaced every few meters around the wall seemed to be composed of whole sections of tree trunk, stripped of bark and smoothed to a black marble finish. The shimmery wood that made up the rest of the wall was covered to perhaps half its height with intricate carvings. As they got closer, she could see that the reinforcing metal band that encircled the building just beneath the eaves was also decorated leafily, the Noghri believed in combining function and art. The whole structure was perhaps twenty meters across and four meters high, with another three or four meters for the conical roof and she found herself wondering how many more pillars they'd had to put inside to support the thing.

Tall double doors had been built into the wall between two of the pillars, flanked at the moment by two straight-backed Noghri children. They pulled open the doors as Leia approached; nodding her thanks, she stepped inside.

The interior of the dukha was no less impressive than its exterior. It was a single open room, with a thronelike chair two-thirds of the way to the back, a small booth with an angled roof and a dark-meshed window built against the wall between two of the pillars to the right, and a wall chart of some sort directly across from it on the left. There were no internal support pillars; instead, a series of heavy chains had been strung from the top of each of the wall pillars to the edge of a large concave dish hanging over the center of the room. From inside the dish-just inside its rim, Leia decided-hidden lights played upward against the ceiling, providing a softly diffuse illumination.

A few meters in front of the chart a group of perhaps twenty small children were sitting in a semicircle around Threepio, who was holding forth in their language with what was obviously some kind of story, complete with occasional sound effects. It brought to mind the condensed version of their struggle against the Empire that he'd given the Ewoks, and Leia hoped the droid would remember not to vilify Darth Vader here. Presumably he would; she'd drummed the point into him often enough during the voyage. A small movement off to the left caught her eye: Chewbacca and Khabarakh were sitting facing each other on the other side of the door, engaged in some kind of quiet activity that seemed to involve hands and wrists. The Wookiee had paused and was looking questioningly in her direction. Leia nodded her assurance that she was all right, trying to read from his sense just what he and Khabarakh were doing. At least it didn't seem to involve ripping the Noghri's arms out of their sockets; that was something, anyway.

"Lady Vader," a gravelly Noghri voice said. Leia turned back to see the maitrakh walking up to her. "I greet you. You slept well?"

"Quite well," Leia told her. "Your hospitality has been most honorable." She looked over at Threepio, wondering if she should call him back to his duties as translator.

The maitraich misunderstood. "It is the history time for the children," she said. "Your machine graciously volunteered to tell to them the last story of our lord Darth Vader."

Vader's final, self-sacrificial defiance against the Emperor, with Luke's life hanging in the balance. "Yes," Leia murmured. "It took until the end, but he was finally able to rid himself of the Emperor's web of deception."

For a moment the maitrakh was silent. Then, she stirred. "Walk with me, Lady Vader."

She turned and began walking along the wall. Leia joined her, noticing for the first time that the dukha's inner walls were decorated with carvings, too. A historical record of their family? "My thirdson has gained a new respect for your Wookiee," she said, gesturing toward Chewbacca and Khabarakh. "Our lord the Grand Admiral came last eve seeking proof that my thirdson had deceived him about his flying craft being broken. Because of your Wookiee, he found no such proof."

Leia nodded. "Yes, Chewie told me last night about gimmicking the ship. I don't have his knowledge of spaceship mechanics, but I know it can't be easy to fake a pair of linked malfunctions the way he did. It's fortunate for all of us he had the foresight and skill to do so."

"The Wookiee is not of your family or clan," the maitrakh said. "Yet you trust him, as if he were a friend?"

Leia took a deep breath. "I never knew my true father, the Lord Vader, as I was growing up. I was instead taken to Alderaan and raised by the Viceroy as if I were his own child. On Alderaan, as seems to also be the case here, family relationships were the basis of our culture and society. I grew up memorizing lists of aunts and uncles and cousins, learning how to place them in order of closeness to my adoptive line." She gestured to Chewbacca.

"Chewie was once merely a good friend. Now, he is part of my family. As much a part as my husband and brother are.

They were perhaps a quarter of the way around the dukha before the maitrakh spoke again. "Why have you come here?"

"Khabarakh told me his people needed help," Leia said simply. "I thought there might be something I could do."

"Some will say you have come to sow discord among us."

"You said that yourself last night," Leia reminded her. "I can only give you my word that discord is not my intention."

The maitrakh made a long hissing sound that ended with a sharp double click of needle teeth. "The goal and the end are not always the same, Lady Vader. Now we serve one overclan only. You would require service to another. This is the seed of discord and death."

Leia pursed her lips. "Does service to the Empire satisfy you, then?" she asked. "Does it gain your people better life or higher honor?"

"We serve the Empire as one clan," the maitrakh said. "For you to demand our service would be to bring back the conflicts of old." They had reached the wall chart now, and she gestured a thin hand up toward it. "Do you see our history, Lady Vader?"

Leia craned her neck to look. Neatly carved lines of alien script covered the bottom two-thirds of the wall, with each word connected to a dozen others in a bewildering crisscross of vertical, horizontal, and angled lines, each cut seemingly of a different width and depth. Then she got it: the chart was a genealogical tree, either of the entire clan Kihm'bar or else just this particular family. "I see it," she said.

"Then you see the terrible destruction of life created by the conflicts of old," the maitrakh said. She gestured to three or four places on the chart which were, to Leia, indistinguishable from the rest of the design. Reading Noghri genealogies was apparently an acquired skill. "I do not wish to return to those days," the maitrakh continued. "Not even for the daughter of the Lord Darth Vader."

"I understand," Leia said quietly, shivering as the ghosts of Yavin, Hath, Endor, and a hundred more rose up before her. "I've seen more conflict and death in my lifetime than I ever thought possible. I have no wish to add to the list."

"Then you must leave," the maitrakh said firmly. "You must leave and not come back while the Empire lives."

They began to walk again. "Is there no alternative?" Leia asked.

"What if I could persuade all of your people to leave their service to the Empire? There would be no conflict then among you."

"The Emperor aided us when no one else would," the maitrakh reminded her.

"That was only because we didn't know about your need," Leia said, feeling a twinge of conscience at the half truth. Yes, the Alliance had truly not known about the desperate situation here; and yes, Mon Mothma and the other leaders would certainly have wanted to help if they had. But whether they would have had the resources to actually do anything was another question entirely. "We know now, and we offer you our help."

"Do you offer us aid for our own sakes?" the maitrakh asked pointedly. "Or merely to wrest our service from the Empire to your overclan?

We will not be fought over like a bone among hungry stava."

"The Emperor used you," Leia said flatly. "As the Grand Admiral uses you now. Has the aid they've given been worth the sons they've taken from you and sent off to die?"

They had gone another twenty steps or so before the maitrakh answered. "Our sons have gone," she said softly. "But with their service they have bought us life. You came in a flying craft, Lady Vader. You saw what was done to our land."

"Yes," Leia said with a shiver. "It-I hadn't realized how widespread the destruction had been."

"Life on Honoghr has always been a struggle," the maitraldi said.

"The land has required much labor to tame. You saw on the history the times when the struggle was lost. But after the battle in the sky..." She shuddered, a peculiar kind of shaking that seemed to move from her hips upward to her shoulders. "It was like a war between gods. We know now that it was only large flying craft high above the land. But then we knew nothing of such things. Their lightning flashed across the sky, through the night and into the next day, brightening the distant mountains with their fury. And yet, there was no thunder, as if those same gods were too angry even to shout at each other as they fought. I remember being more frightened of the silence than of any other part of it. Only once was there a distant crash like thunder. It was much later before we learned that one of our higher mountains had lost its uppermost peak. Then the lightning stopped, and we dared to hope that the gods had taken their war away from us.

"Until the ground shake came."

She paused, another shudder running through her. "The lightning had been the anger of the gods. The groundshake was their war hammer. Whole cities vanished as the ground opened up beneath them. Fire-mountains that had been long quiet sent out flame and smoke that darkened the sky over all the land. Forests and fields burned, as did cities and villages that had survived the ground shake itself. From those who had died came sickness, and still more died after them. It was as if the fury of the sky gods had come among the gods of the land, and they too were fighting among themselves.

"And then, when finally we dared to hope it was over, the strange-smelling rain began to fall."

Leia nodded, the whole sequence of events painfully clear. One of the warring ships had crashed, setting off massive earthquakes and releasing toxic chemicals which had been carried by wind and rain to every part of the planet. There were any number of such chemicals in use aboard a modern warship, but it was only the older ships that carried anything as virulent as this chemical must have been.

Older ships ... which had been virtually all the Rebel Alliance had had to fight with in the beginning.

A fresh surge of guilt twisted like a blade in her stomach. We did this, she thought miserably. Our ship. Our fault. "Was it the rain that killed the plants?"

"The Empire's people had a name for what was in the rain," the maitrakh said. "I do not know what it was."

"They came soon after the disaster, then. The Lord Vader and the others."

"Yes." The maitrakh waved her hands to encompass the area around them. "We had gathered together here, all who were left alive and could make the journey. This place had always been a truce ground between clans. We had come here to try to find a way for survival. It was here that the Lord Vader found us."

They walked in silence for another minute. "Some believed then that he was a god," the maitrakh said. "All feared him and the mighty silver flying craft that had bwught him and his attendants from the sky. But even amid the fear there was anger at what the gods had done to us, and nearly two tens of warriors chose to attack."

"And were duly slaughtered," Leia said grimly. The thought of effectively unarmed primitives taking on Imperial troops made her wince.

"They were not slaughtered," the maitrakh retorted, and there was no mistaking the pride in her voice. "Only three of the two tens died in the battle. In turn, they killed many of the Lord Vader's attendants, despite their lightning-weapons and rock-garments. It was only when the Lord Vader himself intervened that the warriors were defeated. But instead of destroying us, as some of the attendants counseled, he instead offered us peace. Peace, and the blessing and aid of the Emperor."

Leia nodded, one more piece of the puzzle falling into place. She had wondered why the Emperor would have bothered with what to him would have been nothing more than a tiny group of primitive nonhumans. But primitive nonhumans with that kind of natural fighting skill were something else entirely. "What sort of aid did he bring?"

"All that we needed," the maitrakh said. "Food and medicine and tools came at once. Later, when the strange rain began to kill our crops, he sent the metal droids to begin cleaning the poison from our land." Leia winced, freshly aware of her twins' vulnerability. But the analysis kit had found no trace of anything toxic in the air as they approached the village, and Chewbacca and Khabarakh had done similar tests on the soil. Whatever it was that had been in the rain, the decon droids had done a good job of getting rid of it. "And still nothing will grow outside the cleaned land?"

"Only the kholm-grass," the maitrakh said. "It is a poor plant, of no use as food. But it alone can grow now, and even it no longer smells as it once did."

Which explained the uniform brown color that she and Chewbaca had seen from space. Somehow, that particular plant had adapted to the toxic soil.

"Did any of the animals survive?" she asked.

"Some did. Those who could eat the kholm-grass, and those which in turn ate them. But they are few."

The maitrakh lifted her head, as if looking in her mind's eye toward the distant hills. "This place was never rich with life, Lady Vader. Perhaps that was why the clans had chosen it as a truce ground. But even in so desolate a place' there were still animals and plants without count. They are gone now."

She straightened up, visibly putting the memory behind her. "The Lord Vader helped us in other ways, as well. He sent attendants to teach our sons and daughters the ways and customs of the Empire. He issued new orders to allow all clans to share the Clean Land, though for all clans to live beside one another this way had never happened since the beginning." She gestured around her. "And he sent mighty flying craft into the desolation, to find and bring to us our clan dukhas."

She turned her dark eyes to gaze at Leia. "We have an honorable peace, Lady Vader. Whatever the cost, we pay it gladly." Across the room, the children had apparently finished their lesson and were getting to their feet. One of them spoke to Threepio, making a sort of truncated version of their facedown bow. The droid replied, and the whole group turned and headed for the door, where two adults awaited them. "Break time?" Leia asked.

"The clan lessons are over for today," the maitrakh said. "The children must now begin their share of the work of the village. Later, in the evening, they will have the lessons which will equip them to someday serve the Empire."

Leia shook her head. "It's not right," she told the maitrakh as the children filed out of the dukha. "No people should have to sell their children in return for life."

The maitraich gave a long hiss. "It is the debt we owe," she said.

"How else shall we pay it?"

Leia squeezed her thumb and forefinger together. How else, indeed?

Clearly, the Empire was quite happy with the bargain it had made; and having seen the Noghri commandos in action, she could well understand its satisfaction. They wouldn't be interested in letting the Noghri buy out of their debt in any other way. And if the Noghri themselves considered their service to be a debt of honor to their saviors..."I don't know," she had to concede.

A movement to the side caught her attention: Khabarakh, still sitting on the floor across the room, had fallen over onto his side, with Chewbacca's hand engulfing his wrist. It looked like fighting, except that Chewbacca's sense didn't indicate anger. "What are they doing over there?" she asked.

"Your Wookiee has asked my thirdson to instruct him in our fighting methods," the maitrakh answered, pride again touching her voice. "Wookiees have great strength, but no knowledge of the subtlety of combat." It was probably not an assessment the Wookiees themselves would have agreed with. But Leia had to admit that Chewbacca, at least, had always seemed to rely mainly on brute force and bowcaster accuracy. "I'm surprised he was willing to have Khabarakh teach him," she said. "He's never really trusted him."

"Perhaps it is that same distrust that whets his interest," the maitrakh said dryly.

Leia had to smile. "Perhaps."

For a minute they watched in silence as Khabarakh showed Chewbacca two more wrist and arm locks. They seemed to be variants of techniques Leia had learned in her youth on Alderaan, and she shivered once at the thought of those moves with Wookee muscle behind them. "You understand the cycle of our life now, Lady Vader," the maitrakh said quietly. "You must realize that we still hang by spider silk. Even now we do not have enough clean land to grow sufficient food. We must continue to buy from the Empire."

"Payment for which requires that much more service from your sons." Leia nodded, grimacing. Permanent debt-the oldest form of covert slavery in the galaxy.

"It also encourages the sending away of our sons," the maitrakh added bitterly. "Even if the Empire allowed it, we could not now bring all our sons home. We would not have food for them."

Leia nodded again. It was as neat and tidy a box as she'd ever seen anyone trapped in. She should have expected no less from Vader and the Emperor. "You'll never be entirely out of their debt," she told the maitrakh bluntly. "You know that, don't you? As long as you re useful to them, the Grand Admiral will make sure of that."

"Yes," the maitrakh said softly. "It has taken a long time, but I now believe that. If all Noghri believed so, changes could perhaps be made."

"But the rest of the Noghri still believe the Empire is their friend?"

"Not all believe so. But enough." She stopped and gestured upward.

"Do you see the starlight, Lady Vader?"

Leia looked up at the concave dish that hung four meters off the ground at the intersection of the wall support chains. About a meter and a half across, it was composed of some kind of black or blackened metal and perforated with hundreds of tiny pinholes. With the light from the inside rim of the dish winking through like stars, the whole effect was remarkably like a stylized version of the night sky. "I see it."

"The Noghri have always loved the stars," the maitrakh said, her voice distant and reflective. "Once, long ago, we worshiped them. Even after we knew what they were they remained our friends. There were many among us who would have gladly gone with the Lord Vader, even without our debt, for the joy of traveling among them."

"I understand," Leia murmured. "Many in the galaxy feel the same way. It's the common birthright of us all."

"A birthright which we have now lost."

"Not lost," Leia said, dropping her gaze from the star dish.

"Only misplaced." She looked over at Khabarakh and Chewbacca.

"Perhaps if I talked to all the Noghri leaders at once."

"What would you say to them?" the maitrakh countered. Leia bit at her lip. What would she say? That the Empire was using them? But the Noghri perceived it as a debt of honor. That the Empire was pacing the cleanup job so as to keep them on the edge of self-sufficiency without ever reaching it? But at the rate the decontamination was going she would be hard-pressed to prove any such lagging, even to herself. That she and the New Republic could give the Noghri back their birthright? But why should they believe her?

"As you see, Lady Vader," the maitraldi said into the silence.

"Perhaps matters will someday change. But until then, your presence here is a danger to us as much as to you. I will honor the pledge of protection made by my thirdson, and not reveal your presence to our lord the Grand Admiral. But you must leave."

Leia took a deep breath. "Yes," she said, the word hurting her throat. She'd had such hopes for her diplomatic and Jedi skills here. Hopes that those skills, plus the accident of her lineage, would enable her to sweep the Noghri out from under the Empire's fist and bring them over to the New Republic.

And now the contest was over, almost before it had even begun. What in space was I thinking about when I came here? she wondered bleakly. "I will leave," she said aloud, "because I don't wish to bring trouble to you or your family. But the day will come, maitrakh, when your people will see for themselves what the Empire is doing to them. When that happens, remember that I'll always be ready to assist you."

The maitrakh bowed low. "Perhaps that day will come soon, Lady Vader. I await it, as do others."

Leia nodded, forcing a smile. Over before it had begun ... "Then we must make arrangements to-"

She broke off as, across the room, the double doors flew open and one of the child door wardens stumbled inside. "Maitrakh!" he, all but squealed.

"Mira'kh soar khee brach'inani vher ahk!"

Khabarakh was on his feet in an instant; out of the corner of her eye, Leia saw Threepio stiffen. "What is it?" she demanded.

"It is the flying craft of our lord the Grand Admiral" the maitrakh said, her face and voice suddenly very tired and very alien.

"And it is coming here."

CHAPTER

13

For a single heartbeat Leia stared at the maitrakh, her muscles frozen with shock, her mind skidding against the idea as if walking on ice. No-it couldn't be. It couldn't. The Grand Admiral had been here just last night-surely he wouldn't be coming back again. Not so soon. And then, in the distance, she heard the faint sound of approaching repulsorlifts, and the paralysis vanished. "We've got to get out of here," she said. "Chewie-?"

"There is no time," Khabarakh called, sprinting to them with Chewbacca right on his heels. "The shuttle must already be in sight beneath the clouds."

Leia looked quickly around the room, silently cursing her moment of indecision. No windows; no other doors; no cover except the small booth that faced the wall genealogy chart from across the dukha.

No way out.

"Are you certain he's coming here?" Leia asked Khabarakh, realizing as she spoke that the question was a waste of breath. "Here to the dukha, I mean?"

"Where else would he come?" Khabarakh countered darkly, his eyes on the maitrakh. "Perhaps he was not fooled, as we thought." Leia looked around the dukha again. If the shuttle landed by the double doors, there would be a few seconds before the Imperials entered when the rear of the building would be out of their view. If she used those seconds to cut them an escape hole with her lightsaber...

Chewbacca's growled suggestion echoed her own train of thought. "Yes, but cutting a hole isn't the problem," she pointed out. "It's how to seal it up afterward."

The Wookiee growled again, jabbing a massive hand toward the booth.

"Well, it'll hide the hole from the inside, anyway, Leia agreed doubtfully. "I suppose that's better than nothing." She looked at the maitrakh, suddenly aware that slicing away part of their ancient clan dukha might well qualify as sacrilege. "Maitrakh-"

"If it must be done, then be it so," the Noghri cut her off harshly. She was still in shock her self but even as Leia watched she visibly drew herself together again. "You must not be found here." Leia bit at the inside of her lip. She'd seen that same expression several times on Khabarakh's face during the trip from Endor. It was a look she'd come to interpret as regret for his decision to bring her to his home.

"We'll be as neat as possible," she assured the maitrakh, pulling her lightsaber from her bolt. "And as soon as the Grand Admiral is gone, Khabarakh can get his ship back and take us away-"

She broke off as Chewbacca snarled for silence. Faintly, in the distance, they could hear the sound of the approaching shuttle; and then, suddenly, another all-too familiar whine shot past the dukha.

"Scimitar assault bombers," Leia breathed, hearing in the whine the crumbling of her impromptu plan. With Imperial bombers flying cover overhead, it would be impossible for them to sneak out of the dukha without being spotted.

Which left them only one option. "We'll have to hide in the booth," she told Chewbacca, doing a quick estimation of its size as she hurried toward it. If the slanting roof that sloped upward from the front edge back to the dukha wall wasn't just for show, there should be barely enough room for both her and Chewbacca inside "Will you want me in there as well, Your Highness?" Leia skidded to a halt, spinning around in shock and chagrin. Threepio-she'd forgotten all about him.

"There will not be room enough," the maitraich hissed. "Your presence here has betrayed us, Lady Vader-"

"Quiet!" Leia snapped, throwing another desperate look around the dukha. But there was still no other place to hide.

Unless...

She looked at the star dish hanging over the middle of the room.

"We'll have to put him up there," she told Chewbacca, pointing to it. "Do you think you can-?"

There was no need to finish the question. Chewbacca had already grabbed Threepio and was heading at top speed toward the nearest of the tree-trunk pillars, throwing the frantically protesting droid over his shoulder as he ran. The Wookiee leaped upward at the pillar from two meters out, his hidden climbing claws anchoring him solidly to the wood. Three quick pulls got him to the top of the wall; and, with the half hysterical droid balanced precariously, he began to race hand over hand along the chain.

"Quiet, Threepio," Leia called to him from the booth door, giving the interior a quick look. The ceiling did indeed follow the slanting roof, giving the back of the booth considerably more height than the front, and there was a low bench like seat across the back wall. A tight fit, but they should make it.

"Better yet, shut down-they may have sensors going," she added. Though if they did, the whole game was over already. Listening to the approaching whine of repulsorlifts, she could only hope that after the negative sensor scan from the previous night, they wouldn't bother doing another one.

Chewbaca had reached the center now. Pulling himself partway up on the chain with one hand, he unceremoniously dumped Threepio into the star dish. The droid gave one last screech of protest, a screech that broke off halfway through as the Wookiee reached into the dish and shut him off. Dropping back to the floor with a thud, he hit the ground running as the repulsorlifts outside went silent.

"Hurry!" Leia hissed, holding the door open for him. Chewbacca made it across the dukha and dived through the narrow opening, jumping up on the bench and turning around to face forward, his head jammed up against the sloping ceiling and his legs spread to both sides of the bench. Leia slid in behind him, sitting down in the narrow gap between the Wookiee's legs. There was just enough time to ease the door closed before the double doors a quarter of the way around the dukha slammed open. Leia pressed against the back wall of the booth and Chewbacca's legs, forcing herself to breathe slowly and quietly and running through the Jedi sensory enhancement techniques Luke had taught her. From above her Chewbacca's breathing rasped in her ears, the heat from his body flowing like an invisible waterfall onto her head and shoulders. She was suddenly and acutely aware of the weight and bulge of her belly and of the small movements of the twins within it; of the hardness of the bench she was sitting on; of the intermingling smells of Wookiee hair, the alien wood around her, and her own sweat. Behind her, through the wall of the dukha, she could hear the sound of purposeful footsteps and the occasional clink of laser rifles against stormtrooper armor, and said silent thanks that they'd scrubbed her earlier plan of trying to escape that way.

And from the inside of the dukha, she could hear voices.

"Good morning, maitrakh," a calm, coolly modulated voice said. "I see that your thirdson, Khabarakh, is here with you. How very convenient." Leia shivered, the rough rubbing of her tunic against her skin horribly loud in her ears. That voice had the unmistakable tone of an Imperial commander, but with a calmness and sheer weight of authority behind it. An authority that surpassed even the smug condescension she'd faced from Governor Tarkin aboard the Death Star.

It could only be the Grand Admiral.

"I greet you, my lord," the maitrakh's voice mewed, her own tone rigidly controlled. "We are honored by your visit."

"Thank you," the Grand Admiral said, his tone still polite but with a new edge of steel beneath it. "And you, Khabarakh clan Kihm'bar. Are you also pleased at my presence here?"

Slowly, carefully, Leia eased her head to the right, hoping to get a look at the newcomer through the dark mesh of the booth window. No good; they were all still over by the double doors, and she didn't dare get her face too close to the mesh. But even as she eased back to her previous position there was the sound of measured footsteps...and a moment later, in the center of the dukha, the Grand Admiral came into view.

Leia stared at him through the mesh, an icy chill running straight through her. She'd heard Han's description of the man he'd seen on Myrkr-the pale blue skin, the glowing red eyes, the white Imperial uniform. She'd heard, too, Fey'lya's casual dismissal of the man as an impostor, or at best a self-promoted Moff. And she'd wondered privately if Han might indeed have been mistaken.

She knew now that he hadn't been.

"Of course, my lord," Khabarakh answered the Grand Admiral's question. "Why should I not be?"

"Do you speak to your lord the Grand Admiral in such a tone?" an unfamiliar Noghri voice demanded.

"I apologize," Khabarakh said. "I did not mean disrespect." Leia winced. Undoubtedly not; but the damage was already done. Even with her relative inexperience of the subtleties of Noghri speech, the words had sounded too quick and too defensive. To the Grand Admiral, who knew this race far better than she did...

"What then did you mean?" the Grand Admiral asked, turning around to face Khabarakh and the maitrakh.

"I-" Khabarakh floundered. The Grand Admiral stood silently, waiting.

"I am sorry, my lord," Khabarakh finally got out. "I was overawed by your visit to our simple village."

"An obvious excuse," the Grand Admiral said. "Possibly even a believable one...except that you weren't overawed by my visit last night." He cocked an eyebrow. "Or is it that you didn't expect to face me again so soon?"

"My lord-"

"What is the Noghri penalty for lying to the lord of your overclan?" the Grand Admiral interrupted, his cool voice suddenly harsh. "Is it death, as it was in the old days? Or do the Noghri no longer prize such outdated concepts as honor?"

"My lord has no right to bring such accusations against a son of the clan Kihm'bar," the maitrakh spoke up stiffly.

The Grand Admiral shifted his gaze slightly. "You would be well advised to keep your counsel to yourself, maitrakh. This particular son of the clan Kihm'bar has lied to me, and I do not take such matters lightly." The glowing gaze shifted back. "Tell me, Khabarakh clan Kihm'bar, about your imprisonment on Kashyyyk."

Leia squeezed her lightsaber hard, the cool metal ridges of the grip biting into the palm of her hand. It had been during Khabarakh's brief imprisonment on Kashyyyk that he'd been persuaded to bring her here to Honoghr. If Khabarakh blurted out the whole story "I do not understand," Khabarakh said.

"Really?" the Grand Admiral countered. "Then allow me to refresh your memory. You didn't escape from Kashyyyk as you stated in your report and repeated last night in my presence and in the presence of your family and your clan dynast. You were, in fact, captured by the Wookiees after the failure of your mission. And you spent that missing month not meditating, but undergoing interrogation in a Wookiee prison. Does that help your memory any?" Leia took a careful breath, not daring to believe what she was hearing. However it was the Grand Admiral had learned about Khabarakh's capture, he'd taken that fact and run in exactly the wrong direction with it. They'd been given a second chance ... if Khabarakh could, hold on to his wits and poise a little longer.

Perhaps the maitrakh didn't trust his stamina, either. "My thirdson would not lie about such matters, my lord," she said before Khabarakh could reply. "He has always understood the duties and requirements of honor."

"Has he, now," the Grand Admiral shot back. "A Noghri commando, captured by the enemy for interrogation-and still alive? Is this the duty and requirement of honor?"

"I was not captured, my lord," Khabarakh said stiffly. "My escape from Kashyyyk was as I said it."

For a half dozen heartbeats the Grand Admiral gazed in his direction in silence. "And I say that you lie, Khabarakh clan Kihm'bar," he said softly.

"But no matter. With or without your cooperation I will have the truth about your missing month ... and whatever the price was you paid for your freedom. Rukh?"

"My lord," the third Noghri voice said.

"Khabarakh clan Kihm'bar is hereby placed under Imperial arrest. You and Squad Two will escort him aboard the troop shuttle and take him back to the Chimaera for interrogation."

There was a sharp hiss. "My lord, this is a violation-"

"You will be silent, maitrakh," the Grand Admiral cut her off. "Or you will share in his imprisonment."

"I will not be silent," the maitrakh snarled. "A Noghri accused of treason to the overclan must be given over to the clan dynasts for the ancient rules of discovery and judgment. It is the law."

"I am not bound by Noghri law," the Grand Admiral said coldly.

"Khabarakh has been a traitor to the Empire. By Imperial rules will he be judged and condemned."

"The clan dynasts will demand-"

"The clan dynasts are in no position to demand anything," the Grand Admiral barked, touching the comlink cylinder pocketed beside his tunic insignia. "Do you require a reminder of what it means to defy the Empire?" Leia heard the faint sound of the maitrakh's sigh. "No, my lord," she said, her voice conceding defeat.

The Grand Admiral studied her. "You shall have one anyway. He touched his comlink again And abruptly the interior of the dukha flashed with a blinding burst of green light.

Leia jerked her head back into Chewbacca's legs, squeezing her eyelids shut against the sudden searing pain ripping through her eyes and face. For a single, horrifying second she thought that the dukha had taken a direct hit, a turbolaser blast powerful enough to bring the whole structure down in flaming ruin around them. But the afterimage burned into her retina showed the Grand Admiral still standing proud and unmoved; and belatedly she understood.

She was trying desperately to reverse her sensory enhancement when the thunderclap slammed like the slap of an angry Wookiee into the side of her head.

She would later have a vague recollection of several more turbolaser blasts, seen and heard only dimly through the thick gray haze that clouded over her mind, as the orbiting Star Destroyer fired again and again into the hills surrounding the village. By the time her throbbing head finally dragged her back to full consciousness the Grand Admiral's reminder was over, the final thunderclap roiling away into the distance.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes, squinting a little against the pain. The Grand Admiral was still standing where he'd been, in the center of the dukha...and as the last thunderclap faded into silence he spoke. "I am the law on Honoghr now, maitrakh," he said, his voice quiet and deadly. "If I choose to follow the ancient laws, I will follow them. If I choose to ignore them, they will be ignored. Is that clear?"

The voice, when it came, was almost too alien to recognize. If the purpose of the Grand Admiral's demonstration had been to frighten the maitrakh half out of her mind, it had clearly succeeded. "Yes, my lord."

"Good." The Grand Admiral let the brittle silence hang in the air for another moment. "For loyal servants of the Empire, however, I am prepared to make compromises. Khabarakh will be interrogated aboard the Chimaera; but before that, I will allow the first stage of the ancient laws of discovery." His head turned slightly. "Rukh, you will remove Khabarath clan Kihm'bar to the center of Nystao and present him to the clan dynasts. Perhaps three days of public shaming will serve to remind the Noghri people that we are still at war."

"Yes, my lord."

There was the sound of footsteps, and the opening and closing of the double doors. Hunched against the ceiling above her, his sense in unreadable turmoil, Chewbacca rumbled softly to himself. Leia clenched her teeth, hard enough to send flashes of pain through her still throbbing head. Public shaming ... and something called the laws of discovery.

The Rebel Alliance had unwittingly destroyed Honoghr. Now, it seemed, she was going to do the same to Khabarakh.

The Grand Admiral was still standing in the middle of the dukha. "You are very quiet, maitrakh," he said.

"My lord ordered me to be silent," she countered.

"Of course." He studied her. "Loyalty to one's clan and family is all well and good, maitrakh. But to extend that loyalty to a traitor would he foolish. As well as potentially disastrous to your family and clan."

"I have not heard evidence that my thirdson is a traitor." The Grand Admiral's lip twitched. "You will," he promised softly. He walked toward the double doors, passing out of Leia's sight, and there was the sound of the doors opening. The footsteps paused, clearly waiting; and a moment later the quieter paces of the maitrakh joined him. Both left, the doors dosed again, and Leia and Chewbacca were alone. Alone. In enemy territory. Without a ship. And with their only ally about to undergo an Imperial interrogation. "I think, Chewie," she said softly, "we're in trouble."

CHAPTER

14

One of the first minor truths about interstellar flight that any observant traveler learned was that a planet seen from space almost never looked anything at all like the official maps of it. Scatterings of cloud cover, shadows from mountain ranges, contour-altering effects of large vegetation tracts, and lighting tricks in general, all combined to disguise and distort the nice clean computer-scrubbed lines drawn by the cartographers. It was an effect that had probably caused a lot of bad moments for neophyte navigators, as well as supplying the ammunition for innumerable practical jokes played on those same neophytes by their more experienced shipmates. It was therefore something of a surprise to find that, on this particular day and coming in from this particular angle, the major continent of the planet Jomark did indeed look almost exactly like a precisely detailed map. Of course, in all fairness, it was a pretty small continent to begin with.

Somewhere on that picture-perfect continent was a Jedi Master. Luke tapped his fingers gently on the edge of his control board, gazing out at the greenish-brown chunk of in is X-wing's canopy. He could sense Jedi's presence-had been able to sense it, in fact, since first dropping out of hyperspace-but so far he'd been unable to make a more direct contact. Master C'baoth? he called silently, trying one more time. This is Luke Skywalker. Can you hear me?

There was no response. Either Luke wasn't doing it right, or C'baoth was unable to reply ... or else this was a deliberate test of Luke's abilities.

Well, he was game. "Let's do a sensor focus on the main continent, Artoo," he called, looking over his displays and trying to put himself into the frame of mind of a Jedi Master who'd been out of circulation for a while. The bulk of Jomark's land area was in that one small continent-not much more than an oversized island, really-but there were also thousands of much smaller islands scattered in clusters around the vast ocean. Taken all together, there were probably close to three hundred thousand square kilometers of dry land, which made for an awful lot of places to guess wrong. "Scan for technology, and see if you can pick out the main population centers." Artoo whistled softly to himself as he ran the X-wing's sensor readings through his programmed life-form algorithms. He gave a series of beeps, and a pattern of dots appeared superimposed on the scope image.

"Thanks," Luke said, studying it. Not surprisingly, most of the population seemed to be living along the coast. But there were a handful of other, smaller centers in the interior, as well. Including what seemed to be a cluster of villages near the southern shore of an almost perfectly ring-shaped lake.

He frowned at the image, keyed for a contour overlay. It wasn't just an ordinary lake, he saw now, but one that had formed inside what was left of a cone-shaped mountain, with a smaller cone making a large island in the center. Probably volcanic in origin, given the mountainous terrain around it. A wilderness region thick with mountains, where a Jedi Master could have lived in privacy for a long time. And a cluster of villages nearby where he could have emerged from his isolation when he was finally ready to do so. It was as good a place to start as any. "Okay, Artoo, here's the landing target," he told the droid, marking it on his scope. "I'll take us down; you watch the sensors and let me know if you spot anything interesting." Artoo beeped a somewhat nervous question. "Yes, or anything suspicious," Luke agreed. Artoo had never fully believed that the Imperial attack on them the last time they'd tried to come here had been purely coincidence.

They dropped in through the atmosphere, switching to repulsorlifts about halfway down and leveling off just below the tops of the highest mountains. Seen up close, the territory was rugged enough but not nearly as desolate as Luke had first thought. Vegetation was rich down in the valley areas between mountains, though it was sparse on the rocky sides of the mountains themselves. Most of the gaps they flew over seemed to have at least a couple of houses nestled into them, and occasionally even a village that had been too small for the X-wing's limited sensors to notice. They were coming up on the lake from the southwest when Artoo spotted the mansion perched up on the rim.

"Never seen a design like that before," Luke commented. "You getting any life readings from it?"

Artoo warbled a moment: inconclusive. "Well, let's give it a try," Luke decided, keying in the landing cycle. "If we're wrong, at least it'll be a downhill walk to everywhere else."

The mansion was set into a small courtyard bordered by a fence that appeared more suited for decoration than defense. Killing the X-wing's forward velocity, he swung the ship parallel to the fence and set it down a few meters outside its single gate. He was in the process of shutting down the systems when Artoo's trilled warning made him look up again.

Standing just outside the gate, watching them, was the figure of a man.

Luke gazed at him, heart starting to beat a little harder. The man was old, obviously-the gray-white hair and long beard that the mountain winds were blowing half across his lined face were evidence enough of that. But his eyes were keenly alert, his posture straight and proud and unaffected by even the harder gusts of wind, and the halfopen brown robe revealed a chest that was strongly muscled.

"Finish shutting down, Artoo," Luke said, hearing the slight quaver in his voice as he slipped off his helmet and popped the X-wing's canopy. Standing up, he vaulted lightly over the cockpit side to the ground. The old man hadn't moved. Taking a deep breath, Luke walked over to him. "Master C'baoth," he said, bowing his head slightly. "I'm Luke Skywalker."

The other smiled faintly. "Yes," he said. "I know. Welcome to Jomark."

"Thank you," Luke said, letting his breath out in a quiet sigh. At last. It had been a long and circuitous journey, what with the unscheduled stopovers at Myrkr and Sluis Van. But at last he'd made it. C'baoth might have been reading his mind. Perhaps he was. "I expected you long before now," he said reproachfully.

"Yes, sir," Luke said. "I'm sorry. Circumstances lately have been rather out of my control."

"Why?" C'baoth countered.

The question took Luke by surprise. "I don't understand." The other's eyes narrowed slightly. "What do you mean, you don't understand?" he demanded. "Are you or are you not a Jedi?"

"Well, yes-"

"Then you should be in control," C'baoth said firmly. "In control of yourselt, in control of the people and events around you. Always."

"Yes, Master," Luke said cautiously, trying to hide his confusion. The only other Jedi Master he'd ever known had been Yoda ... but Yoda had never talked like this.

For another moment C'baoth seemed to study him. Then, abruptly, the hardness in his face vanished. "But you've come," he said, the lines in his face shifting as he smiled. "That's the important thing. They weren't able to stop you."

"No," Luke said. "They tried, though. I must have gone through four Imperial attacks since I first started out this way." C'baoth looked at him sharply. "Did you, now. Were they directed specifically at you?"

"One of them was," Luke said. "For the others I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe the right place at the right time," he corrected.

The sharp look faded from C'baoth's face, replaced by something distant. "Yes," he murmured, gazing into the distance toward the edge of the cliff and the ring-shaped lake far below. "The wrong place at the wrong time. The epitaph of so many Jedi." He looked back at Luke. "The Empire destroyed them, you know."

"Yes, I know," Luke said. "They were hunted down by the Emperor and Darth Vader.

"And one or two other Dark Jedi with them," C'baoth said grimly, his gaze turned inward. "Dark Jedi like Vader. I fought the last of them on-" He broke off, shaking his head slowly. "So long ago." Luke nodded uncomfortably, feeling as if he was standing in loose sand. All these strange topic and mood shifts were hard to follow. A result of C'baoth's isolation? Or was this another test, this time of Luke's patience?

"A long time ago," he agreed. "But the Jedi can live again. We have a chance to rebuild."

C'baoth's attention returned to him. "Your sister," he said. "Yes. She'll be giving birth to Jedi twins soon."

"Potential Jedi, anyway," Luke said, a little surprised that C'baoth had heard about Leia's pregnancy. The New Republic's publicists had given the news wide dissemination, but he'd have thought Jomark too far out of the mainstream to have picked up on it. "The twins are the reason I came here, in fact."

"No," C'baoth said. "The reason you came here was because I called you."

"Well...yes. But-"

"There are no buts, Jedi Skywalker," C'baoth cut him off sharply. "To be a Jedi is to be a servant of the Force. I called you through the Force; and when the Force calls, you must obey."

"I understand," Luke nodded again, wishing that he really did. Was C'baoth just being figurative? Or was this yet another topic his training had skipped over? He was familiar enough with the general controlling aspects of the Force; they were what kept him alive every time he matched his lightsaber against blaster fire. But a literal "call" was something else entirely. "When you say the Force calls you, Master C'baoth, do you mean-?"

"There are two reasons why I called you," C'baoth interrupted him again. "First, to complete your training. And second ... because I need your help."

Luke blinked. "My help?"

C'baoth smiled wanly, his eyes suddenly very tired. "I am nearing the end of my life, Jedi Skywalker. Soon now I will be making that long journey from this life to what lies beyond."

A lump caught in Luke's throat. "I'm sorry," was all he could think of to say.

"It's the way of all life," C'baoth shrugged. "For Jedi as well as for lesser beings."

Luke's memory flicked back to Yoda, lying on his deathbed in his Dagobah home...and his own feeling of helplessness that he could do nothing but watch. It was not an experience he really wanted to go through again. "How can I help?" he asked quietly.

"By learning from me," C'baoth said. "Open yourself to me; absorb from me my wisdom and experience and power. In this way will you carry on my life and work."

"I see," Luke nodded, wondering exactly what work the other was referring to. "You understand, though, that I have work of my own to do-"

"And are you prepared to do it?" C'baoth said, arching his eyebrows.

"Fully prepared? Or did you come here with nothing to ask of me?"

"Well, actually, yes," Luke had to admit. "I came on behalf of the New Republic, to ask your assistance in the fight against the Empire."

"To what end?"

Luke frowned. He'd have thought the reasons self evident. "The elimination of the Empire's tyranny. The establishment of freedom and justice for all the beings of the galaxy."

"Justice." C'baoth's lip twisted. "Do not look to lesser beings for justice, Jedi Skywalker." He slapped himself twice on the chest, two quick movements of his fingertips. "We are the true justice of this galaxy. We two, and the new legacy of Jedi that we will forge to follow us. Leave the petty battles to others, and prepare yourself for that future."

"I ..." Luke floundered, searching for a response to that.

"What is it your sister's unborn twins need?" C'baoth demanded.

"They need-well, they're someday going to need a teacher," Luke told him, the words coming out with a strange reluctance. First impressions were always dicey, he knew; but right now he wasn't at all sure that this was the sort of man he wanted to be teaching his niece and nephew. C'baoth seemed to be too mercurial, almost on the edge of instability. "It's sort of been assumed that I'd be teaching them when they're old enough, like I'm teaching Leia. The problem is that just being a Jedi doesn't necessarily mean you can be a good teacher." He hesitated. "Obi-wan Kenobi blamed himself for Vader's turn to the dark side. I don't want that to happen to Leia's children. I thought maybe you could teach me the proper methods of Jedi instruction-"

"A waste of time," C'baoth said with an off handed shrug. "Bring them here. I'll teach them myself."

"Yes, Master," Luke said, picking his words carefully. "I appreciate the offer. But as you said, you have your own work to do. All I really need are some pointers-"

"And what of you, Jedi Skywalker?" C'baoth interrupted him again.

"Have you yourself no need of further instruction? In matters of judgment, perhaps?"

Luke gritted his teeth. This whole conversation was leaving him feeling a lot more transparent than he really liked. "Yes, I could use some more instruction in that area," he conceded. "I think sometimes that the Jedi Master who taught me expected me to pick that up on my own.

"It's merely a matter of listening to the Force," C'baoth said briskly. For a moment his eyes seemed to unfocus; then they came back again.

"But come. We will go down to the villages and I will show you." Luke felt his eyebrows go up. "Right now?"

"Why not?" C'baoth shrugged. "I have summoned a driver; he will meet us on the road." His gaze shifted to something over Luke's shoulder. "No-stay there," he snapped.

Luke turned. Artoo had raised himself out of the X-wing's droid socket and was easing his way along the upper hull. "That's just my droid," he told C'baoth.

"He will stay where he is," C'baoth bit out. "Droids are an abomination-creations that reason, but yet are not genuinely part of the Force."

Luke frowned. Droids were indeed unique in that way, but that was hardly a reason to label them as abominations. But this wasn't the time or the place to argue the point. "I'll go help him back into his socket," he soothed C'baoth, hurrying back to the ship. Drawing on the Force, he leaped up to the hull beside Artoo. "Sorry, Artoo, but you're going to have to stay here," he told the droid. "Come on-let's get you back in." Artoo beeped indignantly. "I know, and I'm sorry," Luke said, herding the squat metal cylinder back to its socket. "But Master C'baoth doesn't want you coming along. You might as well wait here as on the ground-at least this way you'll have the X-wing's computer to talk to."

The droid warbled again, a plaintive and slightly nervous sound this time. "No, I don't think there's any danger," Luke assured him. "If you're worried, you can keep an eye on me through the X-wing's sensors." He lowered his voice to a murmur. "And while you're at it, I want you to start doing a complete sensor scan of the area. See if you can find any vegetation that seems to be distorted, like that twisted tree growing over the dark side cave on Dagobah. Okay?"

Artoo gave a somewhat bemused acknowledging beep. "Good. See you later," Luke said and dropped back to the ground. "I'm ready," he told C'baoth.

The other nodded. "This way," he said, and strode off along a path leading downward.

Luke hurried to catch up. It was, he knew, something of a long shot: even if the spot he was looking for was within Artoo's sensor range, there was no guarantee that the droid would be able to distinguish healthy alien plants from unhealthy ones. But it was worth a try. Yoda, he had long suspected, had managed to stay hidden from the Emperor and Vader only because the dark side cave near his home had somehow shielded his own influence on the Force. For C'baoth to have remained unnoticed, it followed that Jomark must also have a similar focus of dark side power somewhere.

Unless, of course, he hadn't gone unnoticed. Perhaps the Emperor had known all about him, but had deliberately left him alone. Which would in turn imply ... what?

Luke didn't know. But it was something he had better find out. They had walked no more than two hundred meters when the driver and vehicle C'baoth had summoned arrived: a tall, lanky man on an old SoroSuub recreational speeder bike pulling an elaborate wheeled carriage behind it.

"Not much more than a converted farm cart, I'm afraid," C'baoth said as he ushered Luke into the carriage and got in beside him. Most of the vehicle seemed to be made of wood, but the seats were comfortably padded. "The people of Chynoo built it for me when I first came to them." The driver got the vehicles turned around-no mean trick on the narrow path-and started downward. "How long were you alone before that?" Luke asked. C'baoth shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "Time was not something I was really concerned with. I lived, I thought, I meditated. That was all."

"Do you remember when it was you first came here?" Luke persisted.

"After the Outbound Flight mission, I mean.

Slowly, C'baoth turned to face him, his eyes icy. "Your thoughts betray you, Jedi Skywalker," he said coldly. "You seek reassurance that I was not a servant of the Emperor."

Luke forced himself to meet that gaze. "The Master who instructed me told me that I was the last of the Jedi," he said. "He wasn't counting Vader and the Emperor in that list."

"And you fear that I'm a Dark Jedi, as they were?"

"Are you?"

C'baoth smiled; and to Luke's surprise, actually chuckled. It was a strange sound, coming out of that intense face. "Come now, Jedi Skywalker," he said. "Do you really believe that Joruus C'baoth-Joruus C'baoth-would ever turn to the dark side?"

The smile faded. "The Emperor didn't destroy me, Jedi Skywalker, for the simple reason that during most of his reign I was beyond his reach. And after I returned ..."

He shook his head sharply. "There is another, you know. Another besides your sister. Not a Jedi; not yet. But I've felt the ripples in the Force. Rising, and then falling."

"Yes, I know who you're talking about," Luke said. "I've met her." C'baoth turned to him, his eyes glistening. "You've met her?" he breathed.

"Well, I think I have," Luke amended. "I suppose it's possible there's someone else out there who-"

"What is her name?"

Luke frowned, searching C'baoth's face and trying unsuccessfully to read his sense. There was something there he didn't like at all. "She called herself Mara Jade," he said.

C'baoth leaned back into the seat cushions, eyes focused on nothing.

"Mara Jade," he repeated the name softly.

"Tell me more about the Outbound Flight project," Luke said, determined not to get dragged off the topic. "You set off from Yoga Minor, remember, searching for other life outside the galaxy. What happened to the ship and the other Jedi Masters who were with you?"

C'baoth's eyes took on a faraway look. "They died, of course, he said, his voice distant. "All of them died. I alone survived to return." He looked suddenly at Luke. "It changed me, you know."

"I understand," Luke said quietly. So that was why C'baoth seemed so strange. Something had happened to him on that flight ... "Tell me about it." For a long moment C'baoth was silent. Luke waited, jostled by the bumps as the carriage wheels ran over the uneven ground. "No," C'baoth said at last, shaking his head. "Not now. Perhaps later." He nodded toward the front of the carriage. "We are here."

Luke looked. Ahead he could see half a dozen small houses, with more becoming visible as the carriage cleared the cover of the trees. Probably fifty or so all told: small, neat little cottages that seemed to combine natural building elements with selected bits of more modern technology. About twenty people could be seen moving about at various tasks; most stopped what they were doing as the speeder bike and carnage appeared. The driver pulled to roughly the center of the village and stopped in front of a thronelike chair of polished wood protected by a small, dome-roofed pavilion.

"I had it brought down from the High Castle," C'baoth explained, gesturing to the chair. "I suspect it was a symbol of authority to the beings who carved it."

"What's it used for now?" Luke asked. The elaborate throne seemed out of place, somehow, in such a casually rustic setting as this.

"It's from there that I usually give my justice to the people," C'baoth said, standing up and stepping out of the carriage. "But we will not be so formal today. Come."

The people were still standing motionless, watching them. Luke reached out with the Force as he stepped out beside C'baoth, trying to read their overall sense. It seemed expectant, perhaps a little surprised, definitely awed. There didn't seem to be any fear; but there was nothing like affection, either. "How long have you been coming here?" he asked C'baoth.

"Less than a year," C'baoth said, setting off casually down the street. "They were slow to accept my wisdom, but eventually I persuaded them to do so."

The villagers were starting to return to their tasks now, but their eyes still followed the visitors. "What do you mean, persuaded them?" Luke asked.

"I showed them that it was in their best interests to listen to me." C'baoth gestured to the cottage just ahead. "Reach out your senses, Jedi Skywalker. Tell me about that house and its inhabitants." It was instantly apparent what C'baoth was referring to. Even without focusing his attention on the place Luke could feel the anger and hostility boiling out of it. There was a flicker of something like murderous intent"Uh-oh," he said. "Do you think we should-?"

"Of course we should," C'baoth said. "Come." He stepped up to the cottage and pushed open the door Keeping his hand on his lightsaber, Luke followed.

There were two men standing in the room, one holding a large knife toward the other, both frozen in place as they stared at the intruders. "Put the knife down, Tarm," C'baoth said sternly. "Svan, you will likewise lay aside your weapon.

Slowly, the man with the knife laid it on the floor. The other looked at C'baoth, back at his now unarmed opponent-"I said lay it aside!" C'baoth snapped.

The man cringed back, hastily pulled a small slugthrower from his pocket and dropped it beside the knife. "Better," C'baoth said, his voice calm but with a hint of the fire still there. "Now explain yourselves." The story came out in a rush from both men at once, a loud and confusing babble of charges and countercharges about some kind of business deal gone sour. C'baoth listened silently, apparently having no trouble following the windstorm of fact and assumption and accusation. Luke waited beside him, wondering how he was ever going to untangle the whole thing. As near as he could understand it, both men seemed to have equally valid arguments.

Finally, the men ran out of words. "Very well," C'baoth said. "The judgment of C'baoth is that Svan will pay to Tarm the full wages agreed upon." He nodded at each man in turn. "The judgment will be carried out immediately." Luke looked at C'baoth in surprise. "That's all?" he asked. C'baoth turned a steely gaze on him. "You have something to say?" Luke glanced back at the two villagers, acutely aware that arguing the ruling in front of them might undermine whatever authority C'baoth had built up here. "I just thought that more of a compromise might be in order."

"There is no compromise to be made," C'baoth said firmly. "Svan is at fault, and he will pay."

"Yes, but-"

Luke caught the flicker of sense a half second before Svan dived for the slugthrower. With a single smooth motion he had his lightsaber free of his belt and ignited. But C'baoth was faster. Even as Luke's green-white blade snapped into existence, C'baoth raised his hand; and from his fingertips flashed a sizzling volley of all-too-well-remembered blue lightning bolts. Svan took the blast full in the head and chest, snapping over backwards with a scream of agony. He slammed into the ground, screaming again as C'baoth sent a second blast at him. The slugthrower flew from his hand, its metal surrounded for an instant by a blue-white coronal discharge. C'baoth lowered his hand, and for a long moment the only sound in the room was a soft whimpering from the man on the floor. Luke stared at him in horror, the smell of ozone wrenching at his stomach. "C'baoth-!"

"You will address me as Master," the other cut him off quietly. Luke took a deep breath, forcing calm into his mind and voice. Closing down his lightsaber, he returned it to his belt and went over to kneel beside the groaning man. He was obviously still hurting, but aside from some angry red burns on his chest and arms, he didn't seem to be seriously hurt. Laying his hand gently on the worst of the burns, Luke reached out with the Force, doing what he could to alleviate the other's pain.

"Jedi Skywalker," C'baoth said from behind him. "He is not permanently damaged. Come away.

Luke didn't move. "He's in pain."

"That is as it should be," C'baoth said. "He required a lesson, and pain is the one teacher no one will ignore. Now come away." For a moment Luke considered disobeying. Svan's face and sense were in agony...

"Or would you have preferred that Tarm lie dead now?" C'baoth added. Luke looked at the slugthrower lying on the floor, then at Tarm standing stiffly with wide eyes and face the color of dirty snow. "There were other ways to stop him," Luke said, getting to his feet.

"But none that he will remember longer." C'baoth locked eyes with Luke. "Remember that, Jedi Skywalker; remember it well. For if you allow your justice to be forgotten, you will be forced to repeat the same lessons again and again."

He held Luke's gaze a pair of heartbeats longer before turning back to the door. "We're finished here. Come."

The stars were blazing overhead as Luke eased open the low gate of the High Castle and stepped out of the courtyard. Artoo had clearly noticed his approach; as he closed the gate behind him the droid turned on the X-wing's landing lights, illuminating his path. "Hi, Artoo," Luke said, walking to the short ladder and wearily pulling himself up into the cockpit.

"I just came out to see how you and the ship were doing." Artoo beeped his assurance that everything was fine. "Good," Luke said, flicking on the scopes and keying for a status check anyway. "Any luck with the sensor scan I asked for?"

The reply this time was less optimistic. "That bad, huh?" Luke nodded heavily as the translation of Artoo's answer scrolled across the X-wing's computer scope. "Well, that's what happens when you get up into mountains." Artoo grunted, a distinctly unenthusiastic sound, then warbled a question. "I don't know," Luke told him. "A few more days at least. Maybe longer, if he needs me to stay." He sighed. "I don't know, Artoo. I mean, it's just never what I expect. I went to Dagobah expecting to find a great warrior, and I found Master Yoda. I came here expecting to find someone like Master Yoda...and instead I got Master C'baoth."

Artoo gave a slightly disparaging gurgle, and Luke had to smile at the translation. "Yes, well, don't forget that Master Yoda gave you a hard time that first evening, too," he reminded the droid, wincing a little himself at the memory. Yoda had also given Luke a hard time at that encounter. It had been a test of Luke's patience and of his treatment of strangers. And Luke had flunked it. Rather miserably.

Artoo warbled a point of distinction. "No, you're right," Luke had to concede. "Even while he was still testing us Yoda never had the kind of hard edge that C'baoth does."

He leaned back against his headrest, staring past the open canopy at the mountaintops and the distant stars beyond them. He was weary-wearier than he'd been, probably, since the height of that last climactic battle against the Emperor. It had been all he could do to come out here to check on Artoo.

"I don't know, Artoo. He hurt someone today. Hurt him a lot. And he pushed his way into an argument without being invited, and then forced an arbitrary judgment on the people involved, and-" He waved a hand helplessly. "I just can't see Ben or Master Yoda acting that way. But he's a Jedi, just like they were. So which example am I supposed to follow?"

The droid seemed to digest that. Then, almost reluctantly, he trilled again. "That's the obvious question," Luke agreed. "But why would a Dark Jedi of C'baoth's power bother playing games like this? Why not just kill me and be done with it?"

Artoo gave an electronic grunt, a list of possible reasons scrolling across the screen. A rather lengthy list-clearly, the droid had put a lot of time and thought into the question. "I appreciate your concern, Artoo," Luke soothed him. "But I really don't think he's a Dark Jedi. He's erratic and moody, but he doesn't have the same sort of evil aura about him that I could sense in Vader and the Emperor." He hesitated. This wasn't going to be easy to say. "I think it's more likely that Master C'baoth is insane." It was possibly the first time Luke had ever seen Artoo actually startled speechless. For a minute the only sound was the whispering of the mountain winds playing through the spindly trees surrounding the High Castle. Luke stared at the stars and waited for Artoo to find his voice. Eventually, the droid did. "No, I don't know for sure how something like that could happen," Luke admitted as the question appeared on his screen.

"But I've got an idea."

He reached up to lace his fingers behind his neck, the movement easing the pressure in his chest. The dull fatigue in his mind seemed to be matched by an equally dull ache in his muscles, the kind he sometimes got if he went through an overly strenuous workout. Dimly, he wondered if there was something in the air that the X-wing's biosensors hadn't picked up on. "You never knew, but right after Ben was cut down-back on the first Death Star-I found out that I could sometimes hear his voice in the back of my mind. By the time the Alliance was driven off Hath, I could see him, too." Artoo twittered. "Yes, that's who I sometimes talked to on Dagobah," Luke confirmed. "And then right after the Battle of Endor, I was able to see not only Ben but Yoda and my father, too. Though the other two never spoke, and I never saw them again. My guess is that there's some way for a dying Jedi to-oh, I don't know; to somehow anchor himself to another Jedi who's close by."

Artoo seemed to consider that, pointed out a possible flaw in the reasoning. "I didn't say it was the tightest theory in the galaxy," Luke growled at him, a glimmer of annoyance peeking through his fatigue. "Maybe I'm way off the mark. But if I'm not, it's possible that the five other Jedi Masters from the Outbound Flight project wound up anchored to Master C'baoth." Artoo whistled thoughtfully. "Right," Luke agreed ruefully. "It didn't bother me any to have Ben around-in fact, I wish he had talked to me more often. But Master C'baoth was a lot more powerful than I was. Maybe it was different with him."

Artoo made a little moan, and another, rather worried suggestion appeared on the screen. "I can't just leave him, Artoo," Luke shook his head tiredly. "Not with him like this. Not when there's a chance I can help him." He grimaced, hearing in the words a painful echo of the past. Darth Vader, too, had needed help, and Luke had similarly taken on the job of saving him from the dark side. And had nearly gotten himself killed in the process. What am I doing? he wondered silently. I'm not a healer. Why do I keep trying to be one?

Luke?

With an effort, Luke dragged his thoughts back to the present. "I've got to go," he said, levering himself out of the cockpit seat. "Master C'baoth's calling me.

He shut down the displays, but not before the translation of Artoo's worried jabbering scrolled across the computer display. "Relax, Artoo," Luke told him, leaning back over the open cockpit canopy to pat the droid reassuringly. "I'll be all right. I'm a Jedi, remember? You just keep a good eye on things out here. Okay?"

The droid trilled mournfully as Luke dropped down the ladder and onto the ground. He paused there, looking at the dark mansion, lit only by the backwash of the X-wing's landing lights. Wondering if maybe Artoo was right about them getting out of here.

Because the droid had a good point. Luke's talents didn't lean toward the healing aspects of the force-that much he was pretty sure of. Helping C'baoth was going to be a long, time consuming process, with no guarantee of success at the end of the road. With a Grand Admiral in command of the Empire, political infighting in the New Republic, and the whole galaxy hanging in the balance, was this really the most efficient use of his time?

He raised his eyes from the mansion to the dark shadows of the rim mountains surrounding the lake below. Snowcapped in places, barely visible in the faint light of Jomark's three tiny moons, they were reminiscent somehow of the Manarai Mountains south of the Imperial City on Coruscant. And with that memory came another one: Luke, standing on the Imperial Palace rooftop gazing at those other mountains, sagely explaining to Threepio that a Jedi couldn't get so caught up in galactic matters that he was no longer concerned about individual people.

The speech had sounded high and noble when he'd given it. This was his chance to prove that it hadn't been just words.

Taking a deep breath, he headed back toward the gate.

CHAPTER

15

"Tangrene was our real crowning achievement," Senator Bel Iblis said, draining the last of his glass and raising it high above his head. Across the expansive but largely empty headquarters lounge the bartender nodded in silent acknowledgment and busied himself with his drinks dispenser. "We'd been sniping at the Imperials for probably three years at that point," Bel Iblis continued. "Hitting small bases and military supply shipments and generally making as much trouble for them as we could. But up till Tangrene they weren't paying much attention to us."

"What happened at Tangrene?" Han asked.

"We blasted a major Ubiqtorate center into fine powder," Bel Iblis told him with obvious satisfaction. "And then waltzed out right under the collective nose of the three Star Destroyers that were supposed to be guarding the place. I think that was when they finally woke up to the fact that we were more than just a minor irritant. That we were a group to be taken seriously."

"I'll bet they did," Han agreed, shaking his head in admiration. Even getting within sight of one of Imperial Intelligence's Ubiqtorate bases was a tricky job, let alone blasting it and getting out again. "What did it cost you?"

"Amazingly enough, we got all five warships out," Bel Iblis said.

"There was a fair amount of damage all around, of course, and one of them was completely out of commission for nearly seven months. But it was worth it."

"I thought you said you had six Dreadnaughts," Lando spoke up.

"We have six now," Bel Iblis nodded. "At the time we only had five."

"Ah," Lando said, and lapsed back into silence.

"So after that was when you started moving your base around?" Han asked.

Bel Iblis eyed Lando a moment longer before turning back to Han.

"That was when mobility became a top priority, yes," he corrected. "Though we hadn't exactly been sitting still before that. This place is, what, our thirteenth location in seven years, Sena?"

"Fourteenth," Sena said. "That's if you count Womrik and the Mattri asteroid bases."

"Fourteen, then," Bel Iblis nodded. "You probably noticed that every building here is built of hi-state memory plastic. Makes it relatively simple to fold everything up and toss it aboard the transports." He chuckled. "Though that's ben known to backfire on us. Once on Lelmra we got hit by a violent thunderstorm, and the lightning strikes were hitting so close to us that the edge currents triggered the flip-flop on a couple of barracks buildings and a targeting center. Folded them up neat as a set of birthday presents, with nearly fifty people still inside."

"That was terrific fun," Sena put in dryly. "No one was killed, fortunately, but it took us the better part of the night to cut them all free. With the storm still blazing on around us."

"Things finally quieted down just before daylight," Bel Iblis said.

"We were out of there by the next evening. Ah." The bartender had arrived with the next round of drinks. Twistlers, Bel Iblis had called them: a blend of Corellian brandy with some unidentified but very tart fruit extract. Not the sort of drink Han would have expected to find in a military camp, but not bad either. The Senator took two of the drinks off the tray and handed them across to Han and Sena; took the other two off "I'm still good, thanks," Lando said before Bel Iblis could offer him one.

Han frowned across the table at his friend. Lando was sitting stiffly in his lounge chair, his face impassive, his glass still half full. His first glass, Han realized suddenly-Lando hadn't had a refill in the hour and a half since Bel Iblis had brought them here. He caught Lando's eye, raised his eyebrows fractionally. Lando looked back, his expression still stony, then dropped his gaze and took a small sip of his drink.

"It was about a month after Tangrene," Bel Iblis went on, "that we first met Borsk Fey'lya."

Han turned back to him, feeling a twitch of guilt. He'd gotten so wrapped up in Bel Iblis's storytelling that he'd completely forgotten why he and Lando had set off on this mission in the first place. Probably that was what had Lando glaring crushed ice in his direction. "Yeah-Fey'lya," he said.

"What's your deal with him?"

"Considerably less of a deal than he'd like, I assure you," Bel Iblis said. "Fey'lya did us some favors during the height of the war years, and he seems to think we should be more grateful for them."

"What sort of favors?" Lando asked.

"Small ones," Bel Iblis told him. "Early on he helped us set up a supply line through New Cov, and he whistled up some Star Cruisers once when the Imperials started nosing around the system at an awkward moment. He and some of the other Bothans also shifted various funds to us, which enabled us to buy equipment sooner than we otherwise would have. That sort of thing."

"So how grateful are you?" Lando persisted. Bel Iblis smiled slightly. "Or in other words, what exactly does Fey'lya want from me?"

Lando didn't smile back. "That'll do for starters," he agreed.

"Lando," Han said warningly.

"No, that's all right," Bel Iblis said, his own smile fading. "Before I answer, though, I'd like you to tell me a little about the New Republic hierarchy. Mon Mothma's position in the new government, Fey'lya's relationship to her-that sort of thing."

Han shrugged. "That's pretty much public record."

"That's the official version," Bel Iblis said. "I'm asking what things are really like."

Han glanced over at Lando. "I don't understand," he said. Bel Iblis took a swallow of his Twistler. "Well, then, let me be more direct," he said, studying the liquid in his glass. "What's Mon Mothma really up to?"

Han felt a trickle of anger in his throat. "Is that what Breil'lya told you?" he demanded. "That she's up to something?" Bel Iblis raised his eyes over the rim of his glass. "This has nothing to do with the Bothans," he said quietly. "It's about Mon Mothma. Period."

Han looked back at him, forcing down his confusion as he tried to collect his thoughts. There were things he didn't like about Mon Mothma-a lot of things, when you came right down to it. Starting with the way she kept running Leia off her feet doing diplomacy stuff instead of letting her concentrate on her Jedi training. And there were other things, too, that drove him crazy. But when you came right down to it ... "As far as I know," he told Bel Iblis evenly, "the only thing she's trying to do is put together a new government."

"With herself at its head?"

"Shouldn't she be?"

A shadow of something seemed to cross Bel Iblis's face, and he dropped his eyes to his glass again. "I suppose it was inevitable," he murmured. For a moment he was silent. Then he looked up again, seeming to shake himself out of the mood. "So you'd say that you're becoming a republic in fact as well as in name?"

"I'd say that, yes," Han nodded. "What does this have to do with Fey'lya?"

Bel Iblis shrugged. "It's Fey'lya's belief that Mon Mothma wields altogether too much power," he said. "I presume you'd disagree with that assessment?"

Han hesitated. "I don't know," he conceded. "But she sure isn't running the whole show, like she did during the war.

"The war's still going on," Bel Iblis reminded him.

"Yeah. Well ..."

"What does Fey'lya think ought to be done about it?" Lando spoke up. Bel Iblis's lip twitched. "Oh, Fey'lya has some rather personal and highly unsurprising ideas about the reapportionment of power. But that's Bothans for you. Give them a sniff of the soup pot and they climb all over each other to be in charge of the ladle."

"Especially when they can claim to have been valued allies of the winning side," Lando said. "Unlike others I could mention." Sena stirred in her seat; but before she could say anything, Bel Iblis waved a hand at her. "You're wondering why I didn't join the Alliance," he said calmly. "Why I chose instead to run my own private war against the Empire."

"That's right," Lando said, matching his tone. "I am. Bel Iblis gave him a long, measuring look. "I could give you several reasons why I felt it was better for us to remain independent," he said at last. "Security, for one. There was a great deal of communication going on between various units of the Alliance, with a correspondingly large potential for interception of that information by the Empire. For a while it seemed like every fifth Rebel base was being lost to the Imperials through sheer sloppiness in security."

"We had some problems," Han conceded. "But they've been pretty well fixed."

"Have they?" Bel Iblis countered. "What about this information leak I understand you have right in the Imperial Palace?"

"Yeah, we know it's there," Han said, feeling strangely like a kid who's been called on the carpet for not finishing his homework. "We've got people looking into it."

"They'd better do more than just look," Bel Iblis warned. "If our analysis of Imperial communique's is correct, this leak has its own name-Delta Source-and is furthermore reporting personally to the Grand Admiral."

"Okay," Lando said. "Security. Let's hear some of the other reasons."

"Ease off, Lando," Han said, glaring across the table at his friend.

"This isn't a trial, or-"

He broke off at a gesture from Bel Iblis. "Thank you, Solo, but I'm quite capable of defending my own actions," the Senator said. "And I'll be more than happy to do so ... when I feel the time is right for such a discussion."

He looked at Lando, then at his watch. "But right now, I have other duties to attend to. It's getting late, and I know you really haven't had time to relax since landing. Irenez has had your baggage taken to a vacant officers' efficiency back toward the landing pad. It's small, I'm afraid, but I trust you'll find it comfortable enough." He stood up. "Perhaps later over dinner we can continue this discussion."

Han looked at Lando. Such convenient timing, the other's expression said; but he kept the thought to himself. "Sounds fine," Han told Bel Iblis for both of them.

"Good," Bel Iblis smiled. "I'll need Sena with me, but we'll point you in the direction of your quarters on our way out. Unless you'd rather I assign you a guide."

"We can find it," Han assured him.

"All right. Someone will come to get you for dinner. Until later, then."

They walked in silence for probably half the distance to their quarters before Lando finally spoke. "You want to go ahead and get it over with?"

"Get what over with?" Han growled.

"Chewing me out for not bowing and scraping in front of your pal the Senator," Lando said. "Do it and get it over with, because we have to talk." Han kept his eyes straight ahead. "You weren't just not bowing and scraping, pal," he bit out. "I've seen Chewie in a bad mood be more polite than you were back there."

"You're right," Lando acknowledged. "You want to be mad a little longer, or are you ready to hear my reasons?"

"Oh, this should be interesting," Han said sarcastically. "You've got a good reason to be rude to a former Imperial Senator, huh?"

"He's not telling us the truth, Han," Lando said earnestly. "Not the whole truth, anyway.

"So?" Han said. "Who says he has to tell strangers everything?"

"He brought us here," Lando countered. "Why do that and then lie to us about it?"

Han frowned sideways at his friend ... and through his annoyance he saw for the first time the tension lines in Lando's face. Whatever Lando was reaching for here, he was serious about it. "Okay," he said, a little more calmly. "What did he lie about?"

"This camp, for starters, Lando said, gesturing toward the nearest building. "The Senator said they move around a lot-fourteen sites in seven years, remember? But this place has been here a lot longer than half a year. Han looked at the building as they passed it. At the smoothness of the edges where the memory-plastic would fold up, at the signs of wear in the subfoundation ... "There are other things, too," Lando went on. "That headquarters lounge back there-did you notice all the decoration they had in that place? Probably a dozen sculptures scattered around on those corner ledges between the booths, plus a lot of light poles. And that doesn't even count all the stuff on the walls. There was a whole antique repeater display panel mounted over the main bar, a ship's chrono next to the exit-"

"I was there, too, remember?" Han cut him off. "What's your point?"

"My point is that this place isn't ready to pack up and ship off planet on three minutes' notice," Lando said quietly. "Not anymore. And you don't get this soft and comfortable if you're still in the business of launching major attacks against Imperial bases."

"Maybe they decided to lie low for a while," Han said. This business of having to defend Bel Iblis was starting to feel uncomfortable.

"Could be," Lando said. "In that case, the question is why? What else could he be holding his ships and troops back for?"

Han chewed at the inside of his cheek. He saw where Lando was going with this, all right. "You think he's made a deal with Fey'lya."

"That's the obvious answer, Lando agreed soberly. "You heard how he talked about Mon Mothma, like he expected her to declare herself Emperor any day now. Fey'lya's influence?"

Han thought it over. It was still crazy, but not nearly as crazy as it had seemed at first blush. Though if Fey'lya thought he could stage a coup with six private Dreadnaughts, he was in for a rude surprise. But on the other hand-"Wait a minute, Lando, this is crazy, he said.

"If they're plotting against Mon Mothma, why bring us here?" Lando hissed softly between his teeth. "Well, that brings us to the worst case scenario, Han old buddy. Namely, that your friend the Senator is a complete phony ... and that what we've got here is a giant Imperial scam." Han blinked. "Now you've lost me."

"Think about it," Lando urged, lowering his voice as a group of uniformed men rounded a corner of one of the buildings and headed off in another direction. "Garm Bel Iblis, supposedly killed, suddenly returned from the dead? And not only alive, but with his own personal army on top of it? An army that neither of us has ever heard of?"

"Yeah, but Bel Iblis wasn't exactly a recluse," Han pointed out.

"There were a lot of holos and recordings of him when I was growing up. You'd have to go to a lot of effort to look and sound that much like him."

"If you had those records handy to compare him with, sure," Lando agreed. "But all you've got is memories. It wouldn't take that much effort to rig a fairly close copy. And we know that this base has been sitting here for more than a year. Maybe abandoned by someone else; and it wouldn't take much effort to throw a fake army together. Not for the Empire." Han shook his head. "You're skating on drive trails, Lando. The Empire's not going to go to this much effort just for us."

"Maybe they didn't," Lando said. "Maybe it was for Fey'lya's benefit, and we just happened to stumble in on it."

Han frowned. "Fey'lya's benefit?"

"Sure," Lando said. "Start with the Empire gimmicking Ackbar's bank account. That puts Ackbar under suspicion and ripe for someone to push him off his perch. Enter Fey'lya, convinced that he's got the support of the legendary Garm Bel Iblis and a private army behind him. Fey'lya makes his bid for power, the New Republic hierarchy is thrown into a tangle; and while no one's watching, the Empire moves in and takes back a sector or two. Quick, clean, and simple."

Han snorted under his breath. "That's what you call simple, huh?"

"We're dealing with a Grand Admiral, Han," Lando reminded him.

"Anything is possible."

"Yeah, well, possible doesn't mean likely," Han countered. "If they're running a con game, why would they bring us here?"

"Why not? Our presence doesn't hurt the plan any. Might even help it a little. They show us the setup, send us back, we blow the whistle on Fey'lya, and Mon Mothma pulls back ships to protect Coruscant from a coup attempt that never materializes. More chaos, and even more unprotected sectors for the Imperials to gobble up."

Han shook his head. "I think you're jumping at shadows."

"Maybe," Lando said darkly. "And maybe you're putting too much trust in the ghost of a Corellian Senator."

They had reached their quarters now, one of a double row of small square buildings each about five meters on a side. Han keyed in the lock combination Sena had given them, and they went inside.

The apartment was about as stark and simple as it could be while still remaining even halfway functional. It consisted of a single room with a compact cooking niche on one side and a door leading to what was probably a bathroom on the other. A brown fold down table/console combo and two old-fashioned contour chairs upholstered in military gray occupied much of the space, with the cabinets of what looked like two fold-down beds positioned to take up the table's share of the floor space at night. "Cozy," Lando commented.

"Probably can be packed up and shipped off planet on three minutes'

notice, too," Han said.

"I agree," Lando nodded. "This is exactly the sort of feel that lounge should have had, only it didn't.

"Maybe they figured they ought to have at least one building around here that didn't look like it came out of the Clone Wars," Han suggested.

"Maybe," Lando said, squatting down beside one of the chairs and peering at the edge of the seat cushion. "Probably pulled them out of that Dreadnaught up there." Experimentally he dug his fingers under the gray material. "Looks like they didn't even add any extra padding before they reupholstered them with this-"

He broke off, and abruptly his face went rigid. "What is it?" Han demanded.

Slowly, Lando turned to look up at him. "This chair," he whispered.

"It's not gray underneath. It's blue-gold."

"Okay," Han said, frowning. "So?"

"You don't understand. The Fleet doesn't do the interiors of military ships in blue-gold. They've never done them in blue-gold. Not under the Empire, not under the New Republic, not under the Old Republic. Except one time."

"Which was?" Han prompted.

Lando took a deep breath. "The Katana fleet." Han stared at him, an icy feeling digging up under his breastbone. The Katana fleet ... "That can't be right, Lando," he said. "Got to be a mistake."

"No mistake, Han," Lando shook his head. Digging his fingers in harder, he lifted the edge of the gray covering high enough to show the material beneath it. "I once spent two whole months researching the Dark Force. This is it."

Han gazed at the age-dulled blue-gold cloth, a sense of unreality creeping over him. The Katana fleet. The Dark Force. Lost for half a century

... and now suddenly found.

Maybe. "We need something better in the way of proof," he told Lando.

"This doesn't do it by itself."

Lando nodded, still half in shock. "That would explain why they kept us aboard the Lady Luck the whole way here," he said. "They'd never be able to hide the fact that their Dreadnaught was running with only two thousand crewers instead of the normal sixteen. The Katana fleet."

"We need to get a look inside one of the ships," Han persisted. "That recognition code Irenez sent-I don't suppose you made a recording of it?" Lando took a deep breath and seemed to snap out of it. "We can probably reconstruct it," he said. "But if they've got any sense, their code for getting in won't be the same as their code for getting out. But I don't think we have to get aboard the ships themselves. All I need is a good, close look at that,t repeater display panel back in the headquarters lounge."

"Okay," Han nodded grimly. "Let's go and get you that look."