Dark Force Rising (Star Wars)

CHAPTER

16

It took them only a few minutes to make their way back to the headquarters lounge. Han kept an eye on the pedestrian and vehicle traffic as they walked, hoping they were still early enough for the place to be empty. Getting a close look at that repeater display would be tricky enough without a whole bunch of people sitting around with nothing better to do than watch what was happening at the bar. "What exactly are we looking for?" he asked as they came in sight of the building.

"There should be some specialized input slots on the back for the full-rig slave circuitry readouts," Lando told him. "And there'll be production serial numbers, too."

Han nodded. So they were going to need to get the thing off the wall. Great. "How come you know so much about the fleet?"

"Like I said, I did a lot of studying." Lando snorted under his breath. "If you must know, I got stuck with a fake map to it as part of a deal back when I was selling used ships. I figured if I could learn enough about it to look like an expert I might be able to unload the map on someone else and get my money back."

"Did you?"

"You really want to know?"

"I guess not. Get ready; it's show time." They were in luck. Aside from the bartender and a couple of deactivated serving droids behind the bar, the place was deserted. "Welcome back, gentlemen," the bartender greeted them. "What can I get you?"

"Something to take back to our quarters," Han told giving the shelves behind the bar a quick once-over. They had a good selection here-there were probably a hundred bottles of various shapes and sizes. But there was also a door off to the side that probably led back to a small storeroom. That'd be their best bet. "I don't suppose you'd have any Vistulo brandale on hand."

"I think we do," the bartender said, peering back at his selection.

"Yes-there it is."

"What's the vintage?" Han asked.

"Ah-" The bartender brought the bottle over. "It's a `49." Han made a face. "Don't have any `46, do you? Maybe stashed in the back room somewhere?"

"I don't think so, but I'll check," the bartender said agreeably, heading toward the door.

"I'll come with you," Han offered, ducking under the bar and joining him. "If you don't have any `46, mayle there'll be something else that'll do as well."

For a second the bartender looked like he was going to object. But he'd seen the two of them having a friendly drink earlier with Bel Iblis himself, and anyway, Han was already halfway to the storeroom door. "I guess that'd be okay," he said.

"Great," Han said, opening the door and ushering the bartender through.

He didn't know how long it would take Lando to get the repeater display off the wall, check it out, and then put it back up. On the theory it was better to play it safe, he managed to drag out the search for a `46

Vistulo for a full five minutes. Eventually, with cheerful good grace, he settled for a `48 Kibsbae instead. The bartender led the way out of the room; mentally crossing his fingers, Han followed.

Lando was standing at the same place at the bar where he'd been when Han had left him, his bands on the bar, his face tight. And for good reason. Standing a few paces behind him, her hand on the butt of her blaster, was Irenez.

"Well, hello, Irenez," Han said, trying his best innocent look on her. "Funny meeting you here."

The innocent look was wasted. "Not all that funny," Irenez said tartly. "Sena assigned me to keep an eye on you. You get what you came for?" Han looked at Lando, saw the fractional nod. "I think so, yeah," he said.

"Glad to hear it. Let's go-outside."

Han handed the bottle of Kibshae to the bartender. "Keep it," he said. "Looks like the party's been canceled."

There was an old five-passenger landspeeder waiting outside when they emerged from the lounge. "Inside," Irenez said, motioning to the vehicle's aft doorway.

Han and Lando obeyed. There, sitting with uncharacteristic stiffless in one of the passenger seats, Sena Leikvold Midanyl was waiting. "Gentlemen," she said gravely as they entered. "Sit down, please." Han chose one of the seats, swiveled it to face her. "Time for dinner already?"

"Irenez, take the controls," Sena said, ignoring him. "Drive us around the camp-I don't care where."

Silently, Irenez made her way to the front of the vehicle; and with a slight lurch they were off. "You didn't stay in your room very long," Sena said to Han.

"I don't remember the Senator saying anything about being confined to quarters," Han countered.

"He didn't," Sena agreed. "On the other hand, a properly brought up guest should know better than to wander unescorted around sensitive areas.

"I apologize," Han said, trying to keep a sarcastic edge out of his voice. "I didn't realize your liquor supply was classified." He glanced out the window. "If you're trying to take us back to our quarters, you're going the wrong way."

Sena studied his face a moment. "I came to ask you a favor." It was about the last thing Han would have expected her to say, and it took him a second to find his voice again. "What sort of favor?"

"I want you to talk to Mon Mothma for me. To ask her and the Council to invite Senator Bel Iblis to join the New Republic." Han shrugged. Was that why they'd brought him and Lando all the way over here? "You don't need a special invitation to join up. All you have to do is contact someone on the Council and offer your services." A muscle in Sena's cheek twitched. "I'm afraid that in the Senator's case it's not going to be quite that easy," she said. "It's not so much a matter of joining the New Republic as of rejoining it." Han threw a frown at Lando. "Oh?" he said carefully. Sena sighed, half turning to gaze out the side window. "It happened a long time ago," she said. "Before the various resistance groups fighting the Empire were formally consolidated into the Rebel Alliance. You know anything about that period of history?"

"Just what's in the official record," Han said. "Mon Mothma and Bail Organa of Alderaan got three of the biggest groups together and convinced them to make an alliance. After that the whole thing snowballed."

"Have you ever heard the name of that first agreement?"

"Sure. It was called the Corellian Treaty-" Han broke off. "The Corellian Treaty?"

"Yes," Sena nodded. "It was Senator Bel Iblis, not Mon Mothma, who convinced those three resistance groups to agree to a meeting. And, furthermore, who guaranteed protection for them."

For a long minute the only sound in the speeder was the hum of the repulsorlifts. "What happened?" Lando asked at last.

"To put it bluntly, Mon Mothma began to take over," Sena said.

"Senator Bel Iblis was far better at strategy and tactics than she was, better even than many of the Rebellion's generals and admirals in those early days. But she had the gift of inspiration, the knack of getting diverse groups and species to work together. Gradually, she became the most visible symbol of the Rebellion, with Organa and the Senator increasingly relegated to the background."

"Must have been hard for someone like Bel Iblis to take," Lando murmured.

"Yes, it was," Sena said. "But you have to understand that it wasn't just pride that drove him to withdraw his support. Bail Organa had been a strong moderating influence on Mon Mothma he was one of the few people whom she respected and trusted enough to pay serious attention to. After he was killed in the Death Star's attack on Alderaan, there was really no one of equal status who could stand up to her. She began to take more and more power to herself, and the Senator began to suspect that she was going to overthrow the Emperor only to set herself up in his place."

"So he pulled you out of the Alliance and started his own private War against the Empire," Lando said. "Did you know any of this, Han?"

"Never heard a whisper," Han shook his head.

"I'm not surprised," Sena said. "Would you have advertised a defection by someone of the Senator's stature? Especially in the middle of a war?"

"Probably not," Han conceded. "I suppose the only surprise is that more groups didn't back out like you did. Mon Mothma can be pretty overbearing when she wants to be."

"There wasn't any doubt as to who was in charge during the war, either," Lando added dryly. "I once saw her make Admiral Ackbar and General Madine both back down on one of their pet projects when she decided she didn't like it."

Han looked at Sena, a sudden thought striking him.

"Is that why you've cut back your raids against the Empire? So that you'd be ready to move against Mon Mothma if she turned the New Republic into a dictatorship?"

"That's it exactly," Sena said. "We moved here to Peregrine's Nest just under three years ago, suspended all operations except materiel raids, and started working up tactical contingency plans. And settled in to wait for the Senator's triumphal vindication." Her cheek twitched again. "And we've been waiting ever since."

Han looked out the window at the camp passing by outside, a hollow sense of loss filling him. The legendary Senator Bel Iblis ... waiting for a return to power that would never come. "It's not going to happen," he told Sena quietly.

"I know that." She hesitated. "Down deep, so does the Senator."

"Except that he can't swallow his pride long enough to go to Mon Mothma and ask to be let back in." Han nodded. "So he gets you to ask us-"

"The Senator had nothing to do with this," Sena cut him off sharply.

"He doesn't even know I'm talking to you. This is on my responsibility alone." Han drew back a little. "Sure," he said. "Okay." Sena shook her head. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "I didn't mean to snap at you.

"It's okay," Han said, feeling some sympathetic ache of his own. She could have all the good intentions and logic in the galaxy on her side, but this probably still looked and felt to her like betrayal. A stray memory clicked: the expression on Luke's face, just before the battle off Yavin with the first Death Star. When he'd thought Han was going to run off and abandon them ...

"Han," Lando said quietly.

Han looked over at his friend, shaking off the memory. Lando raised his eyebrows slightly in reminder ... "We'll make you a deal, Sena," Han said, turning back to her. "We'll talk to Mon Mothma about the Senator. You talk to us about the Katana fleet."

Sena's face went rigid. "The Katana fleet?"

"Where your six Dreadnaughts came from," Lando said. "Don't bother denying it-I got a good look at that repeater display,you've got up over the bar in the headquarters lounge.

Sena took a deep breath. "No. I can't tell you anything about that."

"Why not?" Lando asked. "We're all about to be allies again, remember?"

An unpleasant tingle ran up Han's back. "Unless you've already promised the fleet to Fey'lya."

"We've promised Fey'lya nothing," Sena said flatly. "Not that he hasn't asked for it."

Han grimaced. "So he is trying for a coup."

"Not at all," Sena shook her head. "Fey'lya wouldn't know what to do with a military coup if you gift wrapped it and handed it to him on a drinks tray. You have to understand that Bothans think in terms of political and persuasive influence, not military power. The typical Bothan's goal is to go through life getting more and more people to listen to what he has to say. Fey'lya thinks that being the one to bring the Senator back into the New Republic will be a large step in that direction."

"Especially if Ackbar isn't around to oppose him?" Han asked. Sena nodded. "Yes, that's unfortunately another typical Bothan move. A Bothan leader who stumbles is invariably jumped on by all those who want to take over his position. In the distant past the attacks were literal-fought with knives and usually death. Now, it's been modified to more of a verbal assassination. Progress, I suppose."

"Ackbar's not a Bothan," Lando pointed out.

"The technique is easily adapted to other races. Han grunted. "What a great group to have as allies. So do they just stab, or do they also help with the tripping?"

"You mean the bank transfer?" Sena shook her head. "No, I doubt that was Fey'lya's doing. As a rule Bothus don't stick their necks out far enough to concoct plots on their own. They much prefer to take advantage of other people's."

"More like scavengers than hunters," Han said sourly. Probably explained why he'd always disliked Fey'lya and his crowd. "So what do we do about him?"

Sena shrugged. "All you really need to do is get Ackbar cleared. As soon as he's not vulnerable to attack anymore, Fey'lya should back off."

"Great," Han growled. "Problem is, with a Grand Admiral in charge of the Empire, we might not have that much time.

"And if we don't, neither do you," Lando added. "Wounded dignity aside, Sena, the Senator had better start facing reality. You're a small, isolated group with a line on the Katana fleet, and there's an Empire out there hungry for new warships. The minute the Grand Admiral tumbles to what you've got, he'll have the whole Imperial Fleet on you before you can blink twice. Bring the Katana fleet over to the New Republic and you get to be heroes. Wait too long, and you'll lose everything."

"I know that," Sena said, her voice almost too low to hear. Han waited, mentally crossing his fingers..."We don't actually know where the fleet is," she said. "Our Dreadnaughts came from a man who says he stumbled on them about fifteen years ago. He's thin, below-average height, with a sort of weasely look about him. He has short white hair and a heavily lined face, though I suspect much of that appearance is due more to some past disease or injury than actual age."

"What's his name?" Han asked.

"I don't know. He's never told us that." She hesitated again, then plunged ahead. "He loves to gamble, though. All our meetings with him have been aboard the Coral Vanda, usually across gaming tables. The staff there seemed to know him quite well, though the way he was throwing money around, that may not mean anything. Croupiers always get to know the losers quickly."

"The Coral Vanda?" Han asked.

"It's a subocean luxury casino on Pantolomin," Lando told him. "Does three-and seven-day runs through the big network of reefs lying off the northern continent. I've always wanted to go there, but never had the chance."

"Well, you've got it now," Han said. He looked at Sena. "I suppose the next question is how we're going to get out of here."

"That won't be a problem," she said, her voice sounding strained. Already having second thoughts, probably. "I can get the Harrier to take you back to New Cov. When do you want to leave?"

"Right now," Han said. He saw Sena's expression-"Look, no matter when we go, you're going to have some explaining to do to the Senator. We're in a race with the Empire here even a few hours might make a difference."

"I suppose you're right," she said with a reluctant nod. "Irenez, take us to their ship. I'll make the arrangements from there." It turned out there was no need to make arrangements from the Lady Luck. Standing outside the ship's ramp as they arrived, clearly waiting for them, was Senator Bel Iblis.

"Hello, Solo; Calrissian," he smiled as Han and Lando stepped out of the speeder. "You weren't at your quarters, and I thought you might be here. I see I guessed right."

His eyes flicked over Han's shoulder as Sena emerged from the speeder. Looked again into Han's face ... and abruptly the easy smile vanished. "Sena? What's going on?"

"They know about the Katana fleet, Commander," she said quietly, coming up beside Han. "And ... I told them about our contact.

"I see," Bel Iblis said evenly. "And so you're leaving. To see if you can persuade him to turn the Dark Force over to the New Republic."

"That's right, sir," Han said, matching his tone. "We need the ships-need them pretty badly. But not as much as we need good fighters. And good commanders."

For a long moment Bel Iblis gazed at him. "I won't go to Mon Mothma like a beggar pleading to be let in," he said at last.

"You left for good reasons," Han persisted. "You can come back the same way.

Again, Bel Iblis's eyes flicked to Sena. "No," he said. "Too many people know what happened between us. I would look like an old fool. Or like a beggar."

He looked past Han, his eyes sweeping slowly across the buildings of Peregrine's Nest. "I don't have anything to bring, Solo," he said, his voice tinged with something that sounded like regret. "Once I'd dreamed of having a fleet that would rival the best in the New Republic. A fleet, and a string of decisive and pivotal victories over the Empire. With that, perhaps I could have returned with dignity and respect." He shook his head. "But what we have here barely qualifies as a strike force."

"Maybe so, but six Dreadnaughts aren't anything to sneer at," Lando put in. "And neither is your combat record. Forget Mon Mothma for a minute-every military person in the New Republic would be delighted to have you in."

Bel Iblis cocked an eyebrow. "Perhaps. I suppose it's worth thinking about."

"Especially with a Grand Admiral in charge of the Empire," Han pointed out. "If he catches you here alone, you'll have had it." Bel Iblis smiled tightly. "That thought has occurred to me, Solo. Several times a day." He straightened up.

"The Harrier is leaving in half an hour to take Breil'lya back to New Cov. I'll instruct them to take you and the Lady Luck along." Han and Lando exchanged glances. "You think it'll be safe to go back to New Cov, sir?" Han asked. "There might still be Imperials hanging around."

"There won't be." Bel Iblis was positive. "I've studied the Imperials and their tactics a long time. Aside from not expecting us to show up again so soon, they really can't afford to hang around any one place for long. Besides, we have to go there-Breil'lya will need to pick up his ship." Han nodded, wondering what kind of report Breil'lya would be giving to his boss when he got back to Coruscant. "All right. Well ... I guess we'd better get the ship prepped."

"Yes." Bel Iblis hesitated, then held out his hand. "It was good to see you, Solo. I hope we'll meet again."

"I'm sure we will, sir," Han assured him, grasping the outstretched hand.

The Senator nodded to Lando. "Calrissian," he said. Releasing Han's hand, he turned and walked away across the landing field. Han watched him go, trying to figure out whether he admired the Senator more than he pitied him or vice versa. It was a useless exercise. "Our luggage is still back at our quarters," he told Sena.

"I'll have it sent over while you get the ship prepped." She looked at Han, her eyes suddenly blazing with a smoldering fire. "But I want you to remember one thing," she said with deadly earnestness. "You can go now, with our blessings. But if you betray the Senator-in any way-you will die. At my hand, personally, if necessary."

Han held her gaze, considering what to say. To remind her, perhaps, that he'd been attacked by bounty hunters and interstellar criminals, shot at by Imperial stormtroopers, and tortured at the direction of Darth Vader himself. To suggest that after all that, a threat coming from someone like Sena was too laughable to even take seriously. "I understand," he said gravely. "I won't let you down."

From the dorsal hatchway connection behind them came the creak of a stressed seal; and through the Lady Luck's canopy the patch of stars visible around the bulk of the Dreadnaught abruptly flashed into starlines. "Here we go again," Lando said, his voice sounding resigned. "How do I keep letting you talk me into these things?"

"Because you're the respectable one," Han told him, running an eye over the Lady Luck's instruments. There wasn't a lot there to see, with the engines and most of the systems running at standby. "And because you know as well as I do that we have to do it. Sooner or later the Empire's going to find out that the Katana fleet's been found and start looking for it themselves. And if they get to it before we do, we're going to be in big trouble." And here they were, stuck uselessly for another two days in hyperspace while the Harrier took them back to New Cov. Not because they wanted to go there, but because Bel Iblis wasn't willing to trust them with the location of his stupid Peregrine's Nest base "You're worried about Leia, aren't you?" Lando asked into the silence.

"I shouldn't have let her go," Han muttered. "Something's gone wrong. I just know it. That lying little alien's turned her over to the Empire, or the Grand Admiral's out-thought us again. I don't know, but something."

"Leia can take care of herself, Han," Lando said quietly. "And even Grand Admirals sometimes make mistakes."

Han shook his head. "He made his mistake at Sluis Van, Lando. He won't make another one. Bet you the Falcon he won't." Lando clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on, buddy, brooding about it won't help. We've got two days to kill. Let's go break out a sabacc deck." The Grand Admiral read the dispatch twice before turning his glowing eyes on Pellaeon. "You vouch for the reliability of this report, Captain?"

"As much as I can vouch for any report that doesn't originate with an Imperial agent," Pellaeon told him. "On the other hand, this particular smuggler has fed us fifty two reports over the last ten years, forty eight of which proved to be accurate. I'd say he's worth believing." Thrawn looked back at the reader. "Endor," he murmured, half to himself. "Why Endor?"

"I don't know, sir," Pellaeon said. "Perhaps they were looking for another place to hide."

"Among the Ewoks?" Thrawn snorted derisively. "That would be desperation indeed. But no matter. If the Millennium Falcon is there, then so is Leia Organa Solo. Alert Navigation and Engineering; we leave immediately fur Endor-"

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon nodded, keying in the orders. "Shall I have Khabarakh brought up from Nystao?"

"Yes. Khabarakh." Thrawn said the name thoughtfully. "Note the interesting timing here, Captain. Khabarakh comes back to Honoghr after a month's absence, just as Solo and Organa Solo head off on secret errands to New Cov and Endor. Coincidence?"

Pellaeon frowned. "I don't follow you, sir." Thrawn smiled thinly. "What I think, Captain, is that we re seeing a new degree of subtlety among our enemies. They knew that the return of a survivor from the failed Kashyyyk operation would catch my attention. They therefore arranged his release to coincide with their own missions, in the hope I would be too preoccupied to notice them. Doubtless when we break Khabarakh, we'll learn a great many things from him that will cost us countless man-hours to finally prove wrong." Thrawn snorted again. "No, leave him where he is. You may inform the dynasts that I have decided to permit them the full seven days of public shame, after which they may perform the rites of discovery as they choose. No matter how useless his information, Khabarakh may still serve the Empire by dying painfully. As an object lesson to his race."

"Yes, sir." Pellaeon hesitated. "May I point out, though, that such a drastic psychological fragmentation and reconditioning is well outside the Rebellion's usual operating procedure."

"I agree," Thrawn said grimly. "Which implies all the more strongly that whatever Organa Solo is looking for on Endor, it's considerably mote vital to the Rebellion's war effort than mere sanctuary." Pellaeon frowned, trying to think of what might be on Endor that anyone could possibly want. "Some of the materiel left over from the Death Star project?" he hazarded.

"More valuable than that," the Grand Admiral shook his head.

"Information, perhaps, that the Emperor might have had with him when he died. Information they may think they can still retrieve." And then Pellaeon got it. "The location of the Mount Tantiss storehouse."

Thrawn nodded. "That's the only thing I can think of that would be worth this much effort on their part. At any rate, it's a risk we can't afford to take. Not now."

"Agreed." Pellaeon's board pinged: Navigation and Engineering signaling ready. "Shall I break orbit?"

"At your convenience, Captain."

Pellaeon nodded to the helm. "Take us out. Course as set by Navigation."

Through the viewports the planet below began to fall away; and as it did so there was the short trill of a priority message coming through. Pellaon pulled it up, read the heading. "Admiral? Report from the Adamant, in the Abregado system. They've captured one of Talon Karrde's freighters. Transcript of the preliminary interrogation is coming through now." He frowned as he glanced down to the end. "It's rather short, sir."

"Thank you," Thrawn said with quiet satisfaction as he pulled up the report to his own station.

He was still reading it when the Chimaera made the jump to lightspeed. Reading it very, very carefully.

CHAPTER

17

Mara had never been to the Abregado-rae Spaceport before; but as she walked along its streets she decided it deserved every bit of the rock-bottom reputation it had worked so hard to achieve.

Not that it showed on the surface. On the contrary, the place was neat and almost painfully clean, though with that grating antiseptic quality that showed the cleanliness had been imposed from above by government decree instead of from below by the genuine wishes of the inhabitants. It seemed reasonably peaceful, too, as spaceports went, with lots of uniformed security men patrolling the streets around the landing pits.

But beneath the surface glitter the rot showed straight through. Showed in the slightly furtive manner of the locals; in the halfhearted swaggering of the uniformed security men; in the lingering stares of the plainclothes but just as obvious quiet security men. The whole spaceport-maybe the whole planet-was being held together with tie wire and blaster power packs.

A petty totalitarian regime, and a populace desperate to escape it. Just the sort of place where anyone would betray anyone else for the price of a ticket off planet. Which meant that if any of the locals had tumbled to the fact that there was a smuggling ship sitting here under Security's nose, Mara had about ten steps to go before the whole place came down on top of her. Walking toward a faded door with the equally faded sign "Landing Pit 21" over it, she hoped sardonically that it wasn't a trap. She would really hate to die in a place like this.

The door to the landing pit was unlocked. Taking a deep breath, acutely conscious of the two pairs of uniformed security men within sight of her, she went inside.

It was the Etherway, all right, looking just as shabby and decrepit as it had when Fynn Torve had had to abandon it in Landing Pit 63 of this same spaceport. Mara gave it a quick once-over, checked out all the nooks and crannies in the pit where an armed ambush squad could be skulking, and finally focused on the dark-haired young man lounging in a chair by the freighter's lowered ramp. Even in that casual slouch he couldn't shake the military air that hovered around him. "Hello, there," he called to her, lowering the data pad he'd been reading. "Nice day for flying. You interested in hiring a ship?"

"No," she said, walking toward him as she tried to watch all directions at once. "I'm more in a buying mood, myself. What kind of ship is this flying hatbox, anyway?"

"It's a Harkners-Balix Nine-Oh-Three," the other sniffed with a second-rate attempt at wounded pride. "Flying hatbox, indeed." Not much of an actor, but he was clearly getting a kick out of all this cloak-and-blade stuff. Setting her teeth firmly together, Mara sent a silent curse down on Torve's head for setting up such a ridiculous identification procedure in the first place. "Looks like a Nine-Seventeen to me," she said dutifully. "Or even a Nine-Twenty-Two."

"No, it's a Nine-Oh-Three," he insisted. "Trust m my uncle used to make landing gear pads for them. Come inside and I'll show you how to tell the difference."

"Oh, that'll be great," Mara muttered under her breath as she followed him up the ramp.

"Glad you finally got here," the man commented over his shoulder as they reached the top of the ramp. "I was starting to think you'd been caught.

"That could still happen if you don't shut up," Mara growled back.

"Keep your voice down, will you?"

"It's okay," he assured her. "I've got all your MSE droids clattering around on cleaning duty just inside the outer hull. That should block out any audio probes."

Theoretically, she supposed, he was right. As a practical matter ... well, if the locals had the place under surveillance they were in trouble, anyway. "You have any trouble getting the ship out of impoundment?" she asked him.

"Not really," he said. "The spaceport administrator said the whole thing was highly irregular, but he didn't give me any major grief about it." He grinned. "Though I suppose the size of the bribe I slipped him might have had something to do with that. My name's Wedge Antilles, by the way. I'm a friend of Captain Solo's."

"Nice to meet you," Mara said. "Solo couldn't make it himself?" Antilles shook his head. "He had to leave Coruscant on some kind of special mission, so he asked me to get the ship sprung for you. I was scheduled for escort duty a couple systems over anyway, so it wasn't a problem."

Mara ran a quick eye over him. From his build and general manner..."B-wing pilot?" she hazarded.

"X-wing," he corrected her. "I've got to get back before my convoy finishes loading. Want me to give you an escort out of here?"

"Thanks, but no," she said, resisting the urge to say something sarcastic. The first rule of smuggling was to stay as inconspicuous as possible, and flying out of a third-rate spaceport with a shiny New Republic X-wing starfighter in tow didn't exactly qualify as a low-profile stance.

"Tell Solo thanks."

"Right. Oh, one other thing," Antilles added as she started past him.

"Han also wanted me to ask you if your people might be interested in selling information on our friend with the eyes."

Mara sent him a sharp look. "Our friend with the eyes?" Antilles shrugged. "That's what he said. He said you'd understand." Mara felt her lip twist. "I understand just fine. Tell him I'll pass on the message."

"Okay." He hesitated. "It sounded like it was pretty important-"

"I said I'll pass on the message."

He shrugged again. "Okay-just doing my job. Have a good trip." With a friendly nod, he headed back down the ramp. Still half expecting a trap, Mara got the hatchway sealed for flight and went up to the bridge. It took a quarter hour to run the ship through its preflight sequence, almost exactly the amount of time it took the spaceport controllers to confirm her for takeoff. Easing in the repulsorlifts, she lifted clear of the landing pit and made for space.

She was nearly high enough to kick in the sublight drive when the back of her neck began to tingle.

"Uh-oh," she muttered aloud, giving the displays a quick scan. Nothing was visible; but this close to a planetary mass, that meant less than nothing. Anything could be lurking just over the horizon, from a single flight of TIE fighters all the way up to an Imperial Star Destroyer. But maybe they weren't quite ready yet...

She threw full power to the drive, feeling herself pressed back into the seat cushion for a few seconds as the acceleration compensators fought to catch up. An indignant howl came from the controller on the comm speaker; ignoring him, she keyed the computer, hoping that Torve had followed Karrde's standard procedure when he'd first put down on Abregado.

He had. The calculation for the jump out of here had already been computed and loaded, just waiting to be initiated. She got the computer started making the minor adjustments that would correct for a couple of months of general galactic drift, and looked back out the forward viewport. There, emerging over the horizon directly ahead, was the massive bulk of a Victory-class Star Destroyer.

Bearing toward her.

For a long heartbeat Mara just sat there, her mind skimming through the possibilities, all the time knowing full well how futile the exercise was. The Star Destroyer's commander had planned his interception with exquisite skill: given their respective vectors and the Etherway's proximity to the planet, there was absolutely no way she would be able to elude the larger ship's weapons and tractor beams long enough to make her escape to lightspeed. Briefly, she toyed with the hope that the Imperials might not be after her at all, that they were actually gunning for that Antilles character still on the surface. But that hope, too, evaporated quickly. A single X-wing pilot could hardly be important enough to tie up a Victory-class Star Destroyer for. And if he was, they would certainly not have been so incompetent as to spring the trap prematurely.

"Freighter Etherway," a cold voice boomed over her comm speaker.

"This is the Star Destroyer Adamant. You are ordered to shut down your engines and prepare to be brought aboard."

So that was that. They had indeed been looking for her. In a very few minutes now she would be their prisoner.

Unless ...

Reaching over, she keyed her mike. "Star Destroyer Adamant, this is the Etherway," she said briskly. "I congratulate you on your vigilance; I was afraid I was going to have to search the next five systems to find an Imperial ship."

"You will shut down all deflector systems-" The voice faltered halfway through the standard speech as the fact belatedly penetrated that this was not the normal response of the normal Imperial prisoner.

"I'll want to speak to your captain the minute I'm aboard," Mara said into the conversational gap. "I'll need him to set up a meeting with Grand Admiral Thrawn and provide me transport to wherever he and the Chimaera are at the moment. And get a tractor beam ready-I don't want to have to land this monster in your hangar bay myself."

The surprises were coming too fast for the poor man. "Ah-freighter Etherway-" he tried again.

"On second thought, put the captain on now," Mara cut him off. She had the initiative now, and was determined to keep it as long as possible.

"There's no one around who can tap into this communication." There was a moment of silence. Mara continued on her intercept course, a trickle of doubt beginning to worm its way through her resolve. It's the only way, she told herself sternly.

"This is the captain," a new voice came on the speaker. "Who are you?"

"Someone with important information for Grand Admiral Thrawn," Mara told him, shifting from brisk to just slightly haughty. "For the moment, that's all you need to know."

But the captain wasn't as easily bullied as his junior officers.

"Really," he said dryly. "According to our sources, you're a member of Talon Karrde's smuggling gang."

"And you don't believe such a person could tell the Grand Admiral anything useful?" she countered, letting her tone frost over a bit.

"Oh, I'm sure you can," the captain said. "I simply don't see any reason why I should bother him with what will be, after all, a routine interrogation."

Mara squeezed her left hand into a fist. At all costs she had to avoid the kind of complete mind-sifting the captain was obviously hinting at.

"I wouldn't advise that," she told him, throwing every bit of the half-remembered dignity and power of the old Imperial court into her voice.

"The Grand Admiral would be extremely displeased with you. Extremely displeased."

There was a short pause. Clearly, the captain was starting to recognize that he had more here than he'd bargained for. Just as clearly, he wasn't ready yet to back down. "I have my orders," he said flatly. "I'll need more than vague hints before I can make you an exception to them." Mara braced herself. This was it. After all these years of hiding from the Empire, as well as from everyone else, this was finally it. "Then send a message to the Grand Admiral," she said. "Tell him the recognition code is Hapspir, Barrini, Corbolan, Triaxis."

There was a moment of silence, and Mara realized she'd finally gotten through to the other. "And your name?" the captain asked, his voice suddenly respectful.

Beneath her, the Etherway jolted slightly as the Adanant's tractor beam locked on. She was committed now. The only way out was to see it all through. "Tell him," she said, "that he knew me as the Emperor's Hand." They brought her and the Etherway aboard, settled her with uncertain deference into one of the senior officers' quarters ... and then headed away from Abregado like a mynock with its tail on fire.

She was left alone in the cabin for the rest of the day and into the night, seeing no one, speaking with no one. Meals were delivered by an SE4

servant droid; at all other times the door was kept locked. Whether the enforced privacy was on the captain's orders or whether it came from above was impossible to tell, but at least it gave her time to do such limited planning as she could.

There was similarly no way of knowing where they were going, but from the labored sound of the engines, she could guess they were pushing uncomfortably far past a Victory Star Destroyer's normal flank speed of Point Four Five. Possibly even as high as Point Five, which would mean they were covering a hundred twenty-seven light-years per hour. For a while she kept her mind occupied by trying to guess which system they might be making for; but as the hours ticked by and the number of possibilities grew too unwieldy to keep track of, she abandoned the game.

Twenty-two hours after leaving Abregado, they arrived at the rendezvous. At the last place Mara would have expected. At the very last place in the galaxy she would have wanted to go. The place where her universe had died a sudden and violent death.

Endor.

"The Grand Admiral will see you now," the stormtrooper squad leader said, stepping back from the opening door and motioning her ahead. Mara threw a glance at the silent Noghri bodyguard standing on the other side of the doorway and stepped through.

"Ah," a well-remembered voice called quietly from the command center in the middle of the room. Grand Admiral Thrawn sat in the double display ring, his red eyes glowing at her above the glistening white uniform. "Come in.

Mara stayed where she was. "Why did you bring me to Endor?" she demanded.

The glowing eyes narrowed. "I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me," she said. "Endor. Where the Emperor died. Why did you choose this place for the rendezvous?"

The other seemed to consider that. "Come closer, Mara Jade." The voice was rich with the overtones of command, and Mara found herself walking toward him before she realized what she was doing. "If it's supposed to be a joke, it's in poor taste," she bit out. "If it's supposed to be a test, then get it over with."

"It is neither," Thrawn said as she came to the edge of the outer display ring and stopped. "The choice was forced upon us by other, unconnected business." One blue-black eyebrow raised slightly. "Or perhaps not entirely unconnected. That still remains to be seen. Tell me, can you really sense the Emperor's presence here?"

Mara took a deep breath, feeling the air shuddering through her lungs with an ache as real as it was intangible. Could Thrawn see how much this place hurt her? she wondered. How thick with memories and sensations the whole Endor system still remained? Or would he even care about any of that if he did?

He saw, all right. She could tell that much from the way he was looking at her. What he thought of it she didn't much care. "I can feel the evidence of his death," she told him. "It's not pleasant. Let's get this over with so I can get out of here."

His lip quirked, perhaps at her assumption that she would in fact be leaving the Chimaera. "Very well. Let's begin with some proof of who you were."

"I gave the Adamant's captain a high-level recognition code," she reminded him.

"Which is why you're here instead of in a detention cell," Thrawn said. "The code isn't proof in itself."

"All right, then," Mara said. "We met once, during the public dedication of the new Assemblage wing of the Imperial Palace on Coruscant. At that ceremony the Emperor introduced me to you as Lianna, one of his favorite dancers. Later, during the more private ceremony that followed, he revealed to you my true identity."

"And what was that private ceremony?"

"Your secret promotion to the rank of Grand Admiral." Thrawn pursed his lips, his eyes never leaving her face. "You wore a white dress to both ceremonies," he said. "Aside from the sash, the dress had only one decoration. Do you recall what that decoration was?" Mara had to think back. "It was a small shouldersculp," she said slowly. "Left shoulder. A Xyquine design, as I remember."

"It was indeed." Thrawn reached to his control board, touched a switch; and abruptly, the room was filled with holos of shouldersculps on ornate pillars. "The one you wore is somewhere in this room. Find it." Mara swallowed, turning slowly as she looked around. She'd had literally hundreds of fancy dresses for her cover role as a member of the Emperor's entourage. To remember one particular shouldersculp out of all that...

She shook her head, trying to clear away the unpleasant buzzing sensation that hovered deep in her mind. She'd had an excellent memory once, one which the Emperor's training had made even better. Focusing her thoughts, fighting upstream against the disquieting aura of this place, she concentrated

... "That's it," she said, pointing to a delicate filigree of gold and blue. Thrawn's expression didn't change, but he seemed to relax a little in his seat. "Welcome back, Emperor's Hand." He touched the switch a second time, and the art gallery vanished. "You've been a long time in returning." The glowing eyes bored into her face, the question unspoken but obvious. "What was here for me before?" she countered. "Who but a Grand Admiral would have accepted me as legitimate?"

"Was that the only reason?"

Mara hesitated, recognizing the trip wire. Thrawn had been in command of the Empire for over a year now, and yet she hadn't approached him until now. "There were other reasons," she said. "None of which I wish to discuss at this time."

His face hardened. "As, I presume, you don't wish to discuss why you helped Skywalker escape from Talon Karrde?"

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.

Mara jerked, unsure for that first frozen heartbeat whether the voice had been real or just in her mind. The strange buzzing intensified, and for a moment she could almost see the Emperor's wizened face glaring at her. The image grew clearer, the rest of the room beginning to swim before her eyes ... She took a deep breath, forcing calmness. She would not fall apart. Not here; not in front of the Grand Admiral. "It wasn't my idea to let Skywalker escape," she said.

"And you were unable to alter that decision?" Thrawn asked, the eyebrow lifting again. "You, the Emperor's Hand?"

"We were on Myrkr," Mara reminded him stiffly. "Under the influence of a planet full of ysalamiri." She glanced over his shoulder at the ysalamir hanging from the nutrient frame behind his chair. "I doubt you've forgotten their effect on the Force."

"Oh, I remember it quite well," Thrawn nodded. "It's their dampening of the Force, in fact, that proves Skywalker had help in his escape. All I need to know from you is whether it was Karrde himself who gave the order, or others of his group acting independently."

So that he would know where to focus his revenge. Mara looked into those glowing eyes, beginning to remember now why the Emperor had made this man a Grand Admiral. "It doesn't matter who's responsible," she said. "I'm here to offer a deal that'll clear the debt."

"I'm listening," Thrawn said, his face neutral.

"I want you to stop your harassment of Karrde and his organization. To cancel the cash bounty on all of us, and clear us with all Imperial forces and worlds that you control." She hesitated; but this was no time to go all bashful. "I also want a monetary credit of three million to be deposited under Karrde's name toward the purchase of Imperial goods and services."

"Indeed," Thrawn said, his lip twitching in an amused smile. "I'm afraid Skywalker isn't worth nearly that much to me. Or do you propose to deliver Coruscant, as well?"

"I'm not offering Skywalker or Coruscant," Mara said. "I'm offering the Katana fleet."

The amused smile vanished. "The Katana fleet?" Thrawn repeated quietly, his eyes glittering.

"Yes, the Katana fleet," Mara said. "The Dark Force, if you prefer the more dramatic title. I presume you've heard of it?"

"I have indeed. Where is it?"

The tone of command again; but this time Mara was ready for it. Not that it would have done him any good anyway. "I don't know," she told him.

"But Karrde does."

For a long moment Thrawn gazed at her in silence. "How?" he asked at last.

"He was on a smuggling mission that went sour," she told him. "They escaped past some Imperial watchdogs, but didn't have time to do a proper jump calculation. They ran into the fleet, thought it was a trap, and jumped again, nearly destroying the ship in the process. Karrde was on nav duty; later, he figured out what they'd hit."

"Interesting," he murmured. "When exactly was this?"

"That's all I'll give you until we have a deal," Mara told him. She caught the expression on his face-"And if you're thinking of running me through one of Intelligence's sifters, don't bother. I really don't know where the fleet is."

Thrawn studied her. "And you would have blocks set up around it even if you did," he agreed. "All right. Tell me where Karrde is, then."

"So Intelligence can sift him instead?" Mara shook her head. "No. Let me go back to him, and I'll get you the location. Then we'll trade. Assuming the deal is to your liking."

A dark shadow had settled across Thrawn's face. "Do not presume to dictate to me, Mara Jade," he said quietly. "Not even in private." A small shiver ran up Mara's back. Yes; she was remembering indeed why Thrawn had been made a Grand Admiral. "I was the Emperor's Hand," she reminded him, matching the steel in his tone as best she could. Even to her own ears it came out a poor second. "I spoke for him ... and even Grand Admirals were obliged to listen."

Thrawn smiled sardonically. "Really. Your memory serves you poorly, Emperor's Hand. When all is said and done, you were little more than a highly specialized courier."

Mara glared at him. "Perhaps it is your memory that needs refreshing, Grand Admiral Thrawn," she retorted. "I traveled throughout the Empire in his name, making policy decisions that changed lives at the highest levels of government-"

"You carried out his will," Thrawn cut her off sharply. "No more. Whether you heard his commands more clearly than the rest of his Hands is irrelevant. It was still his decisions that you implemented."

"What do you mean, the rest of his Hands?" Mara sniffed. "I was the only-"

She broke off. The look on Thrawn's face ... and abruptly, all her rising anger drained away. "No," she breathed. "No. You're wrong." He shrugged. "Believe what you wish. But don't attempt to blind others with exaggerated memories of your own importance." Reaching to his control board, he tapped a key. "Captain? What report from the boarding party?"

The reply wasn't audible; but Mara wasn't interested in what Thrawn's men were doing, anyway. He was wrong. He had to be wrong. Hadn't the Emperor himself given her the title of Emperor's Hand? Hadn't he himself brought her to Coruscant from her home and trained her, teaching her how to use her rare sensitivity to the Force to serve him?

He wouldn't have lied to her. He wouldn't have.

"No, there's no point to that," Thrawn said. He looked up at Mara.

"You don't happen to have any idea why Leia Organa Solo might have come to Endor, do you?"

With an effort, Mara brought her thoughts back from the past. "Organa Solo is here?"

"The Millennium Falcon is, at any rate," he said grimly. "Left in orbit, which unfortunately leaves us no way of knowing where she might be. If she's there at all." He turned back to his board. "Very well, Captain. Have the ship brought aboard. Perhaps a closer examination will tell us something." He got an acknowledgment and keyed off the circuit. "Very well, Emperor's Hand," he said, looking up at Mara again. "We have an agreement. The Dark Force for the lifting of our death mark against Karrde. How long will it take you to return to Karrde's current base?"

Mara hesitated; but that information wouldn't do the Grand Admiral much good. "On the Etherway, about three days. Two and a half if I push it."

"I suggest you do so," Thrawn said. "Since you have exactly eight days to obtain the location and bring it back here to me." Mara stared at him. "Eight days? But that-"

"Eight days. Or I find him and get the location my way. A dozen possible retorts rushed through Mar'a's mind. Another look at those glowing red eyes silenced all of them. "I'll do what I can," she managed. Turning, she headed back across the room.

"I'm sure you will," he said after her. "And afterward, we'll sit down and have a long talk together. About your years away from Imperial service ... and why you've been so long in returning." Pellaeon stared rigidly at his commander, heart thudding audibly in his chest. "The Katana fleet?" he repeated carefully.

"So our young Emperor's Hand told me," Thrawn said. His gaze was fixed solidly on one of the displays in front of him. "She may be lying, of course."

Pellaeon nodded mechanically, the possibilities sweeping out like a spread cloak before him. "The Dark Force," he murmured the old nickname, listening to the words echo through his mind. "You know, I once had hopes of finding the fleet myself."

"Most everyone your age did," Thrawn returned dryly. "Is the homing device properly installed aboard her ship?"

"Yes, sir." Pellaeon let his gaze drift around the room, his eyes focusing without real interest on the sculptures and flats that Thrawn had on display today. The Dark Force. Lost for nearly fifty-five years. Now within their grasp ...

He frowned suddenly at the sculptures. Many of them looked familiar, somehow.

"They're the various pieces of art that graced the offices of Rendili StarDrive and the Fleet planning department at the time they were working on the basic design of the Katana," Thrawn answered his unspoken question.

"I see," Pellaeon said. He took a deep breath and, reluctantly, brought himself back to reality. "You realize, sir, how improbable this claim of Jade's really is."

"Certainly it's improbable." Thrawn raised glowing eyes to Pellaeon.

"But it's also true." He tapped, a switch, and part of the art gallery vanished. "Observe.

Pellaeon turned to look. It was the same scene Thrawn had showed him a few days earlier: the three renegade Dreadnaughts providing cover fire off New Cov so that the Lady Luck and that unidentified freighter could escape He inhaled sharply, a sudden suspicion flooding into him. "Those ships?"

"Yes," Thrawn said, his voice grimly satisfied. "The differences between regular and slave-rigged Dreadnaughts are subtle, but visible enough when you know to look for them."

Pellaeon frowned at the holo, trying hard to fit all of it together.

"Your permission, Admiral, but it doesn't make sense for Karrde to be supplying this renegade Corellian with ships."

"I agree," Thrawn nodded. "Obviously, someone else from that ill-fated smuggling ship also realized what it was they'd stumbled across. We're going to find that someone."

"Do we have any leads?"

"A few. According to Jade, they escaped from an Imperial force on the way out of a botched job. All such incidents should be on file somewhere; we'll correlate with what we know about Karrde's checkered past and see what turns up. Jade also said that the ship was badly damaged in the process of doing its second jump. If they had to go to a major spaceport for repairs, that should be on file, as well."

"I'll put Intelligence on it immediately," Pellaeon nodded.

"Good." Thrawn's eyes unfocused for a moment. "And I also want you to get in contact with Niles Ferrier."

Pellaeon had to search his memory. "That ship thief you sent out to look for the Corellian's home base?"

"That's the one," Thrawn said. "Tell him to forget the Corellian and concentrate instead on Solo and Calrissian." He cocked an eyebrow. "After all, if the Corellian is indeed planning to join the Rebellion, what better dowry could he bring than the Katana fleet?"

The comm pinged. "Yes?" Thrawn asked.

"Sir, the target has made the jump to lightspeed," a voice reported.

"We've got a strong signal from the beacon; we're doing a probability extrapolation now.

"Very good, Lieutenant," Thrawn said. "Don't bother with any extrapolations just yet-she'll change course at least once more before settling down on her true heading."

"Yes, sir."

"Still, we don't want her getting too far ahead of us," Thrawn told Pellaeon as he keyed off the comm. "You'd best return to the bridge, Captain, and get the Chimaera moving after her."

"Yes, sir." Pellaeon hesitated. "I thought we were going to give her time to get the Katana's location for us."

Thrawn's expression hardened. "She's not part of the Empire anymore, Captain," he said. "She may want us to believe that she's coming back-she may even believe it herself. But she isn't. No matter. She's leading us to Karrde, and that's the important thing. Between him and our Corellian renegade we have two leads to the Katana fleet. One way or the other, we'll find it." Pellaeon nodded, feeling the stirrings of excitement again despite his best efforts to remain unemotional about this. The Katana fleet. Two hundred Dreadnaughts, just sitting there waiting for the Empire to take possession...

"I have the feeling, Admiral," he said, "that our final offensive against the Rebellion may be ready to launch a bit ahead of schedule." Thrawn smiled. "I believe, Captain, that you may be right."

CHAPTER

18

They had been sitting around the table in the maitrakh's house since early morning, studying maps and floor plans and diagrams, searching for a plan of action that would be more than simply a complicated way of surrendering. Finally, just here noon, Leia called a halt. "I can't look at this anymore," she told Chewbacca, closing her eyes briefly and rubbing her thumbs against throbbing temples. "Let's go outside for a while." Chewbacca growled an objection. "Yes, of course there are risks," she agreed wearily. "But the whole village knows we're here, and no one's told the authorities yet. Come on; it'll be okay." Stepping to the door, she opened it and went out. Chewbacca grumbled under his breath, hut followed after her. The late morning sunshine was blazing brightly down, with only a scattering of high clouds to interfere. Leia glanced upward at the clear sky, shivering involuntarily at the sudden sensation of nakedness that flooded in on her. A clear sky, all the way up to space...but it was all right. A little before midnight the maitrakh had brought the news of the Star Destroyer's imminent departure, a departure which she and Chewbacca had been able to watch with the macrobinoculars from the Wookiee's kit. It had been their first break since Khabarakh's arrest: just as it had begun to look like she and Chewbacca would be pinned down here until it was too late, the Grand Admiral had abruptly left.

It was an unexpected gift...a gift which Leia couldn't help but view with suspicion. From the way the Grand Admiral had been talking in the dukha she'd expected him to stay here until Khabarakh's humiliation period had ended, after which the shipboard interrogation would begin. Perhaps he'd changed his mind and had taken Khabath back early, with a backhand gesture of contempt for Noghri tradition. But the maitrakh had said that Khabarakh was still on public display in the center of Nystao.

Unless she was lying about that. Or was herself being lied to about it. But if the Grand Admiral suspected enough to lie to the maitrakh, why hadn't a legion of Imperial troops already swooped down on them?

But he was a Grand Admiral, with all the cunning and subtlety and tactical genius that the title implied. This whole thing could be a convoluted, carefully orchestrated trap...and if it was, chances were she would never even see it until it had been sprung around her. Stop it! she ordered herself firmly. Letting herself get caught up in the mythos of infallibility that had been built up around the Grand Admirals would gain her nothing but mental paralysis. Even Grand Admirals could make mistakes, and there were any number of reasons why he might have had to leave Honoghr. Perhaps some part of the campaign against the New Republic had gone sour, requiring his attention elsewhere. Or perhaps he'd simply gone off on some short errand, intending to be back in a day or two.

Either way, it meant that the time to strike was now. If they could only find something to strike at.

Beside her, Chewbacca growled a suggestion. "We can't do that," Leia shook her head. "It'd be no better than a frill-blown attack on the spaceport. We have to keep damage to Nystao and its people to an absolute minimum." The Wookiee snarled impatiently.

"I don't know what else to do," she snapped back. "All know is that death and massive destruction won't do anything but put us back where we were before we came here. It certainly won't convince the Noghri that they should leave the Empire and come over to our side."

She looked out past the cluster of huts at the distant hills and the brown kholm-grass rippling in the breeze. Glinting in the sunlight, the squat box shapes of a dozen decon droids were hard at work, scooping up a quarter cubic meter of topsoil with each bite, running it through some exotic catalytic magic in their interiors, and dumping the cleansed product out the back. Slowly but steadily bringing the people of Honoghr back from the edge of the destruction they'd faced...and a highly visible reminder, if anyone needed it, of the Empire's benevolence toward them.

"Lady Vader," a gravelly voice mewed from just behind her. Leia jumped. "Good morning, maitrakh," she said, turning and giving the Noghri a solemn nod. "I trust you are well this morning?"

"I feel no sickness," the other said shortly.

"Good," Leia said, the word sounding rather lame. The maitrakh hadn't been so impolite as to say anything out loud, but it was clear enough that she considered herself to be in a no-win situation here, with dishonor and perhaps even death waiting for her family as soon as the Grand Admiral discovered what Khabarakh had done. It was probably only a matter of time, Leia knew, before she came to the conclusion that turning the intruders over to the Empire herself would be the least disastrous course still open to her.

"Your plans," the maitrakh said. "How do they go?" Leia glanced at Chewbacca. "We're making progress," she said. It was true enough, after a fashion: the elimination of every approach they'd come up with did technically qualify as progress. "We still have a long way to go, though."

"Yes," the maitrakh said. She looked out past the buildings. "Your droid has spent much time with the other machines."

"There isn't as much here for him to do as I'd thought there would be," Leia said. "You and many of your people speak Basic better than I'd anticipated."

"The Grand Admiral has taught us well."

"As did my father, the Lord Darth Vader, before him," Leia reminded her.

The maitrakh was silent a moment. "Yes," she conceded reluctantly. Leia felt a chill run up her back. The first step in a betrayal would be to put emotional distance between the Noghri and their former lord.

"That area will be finished soon," the maitrakh said, pointing to the laboring decon droids. "If they finish within the next ten days, we will be able to plant there this season.

"Will the extra land be enough to make you self-sufficient?" Leia asked.

"It will help. But not enough."

Leia nodded, feeling a fresh surge of frustration. To her, the Empire's scheme was as blatant as it was cynical: with careful tuning of the whole decontamination process, they could keep the Noghri on the verge of independence indefinitely without ever letting them quite make it over that line. She knew it; the maitrakh herself suspected it. But as for proving it...

"Chewie, are you familiar at all with decon droids?" she asked suddenly. This thought had occurred to her once before, but she'd never gotten around to following up on it. "Enough that you could figure out how long it would take the number of droids they have on Honoghr to decontaminate this much land?"

The Wookiee growled an affirmative, and launched into a rundown of the relevant numbers clearly, the question had occurred to him, too. "I don't need the complete analysis right now," Leia interrupted the stream of estimates and extrapolations and rules of thumb. "Have you got a bottom line?" He did. Eight years.

"I see," Leia murmured, the brief flicker of hope fading back into the overall gloom. "That would have put it right about the height of the war, wouldn't it?"

"You still believe the Grand Admiral has deceived us?" the maitrakh accused.

"I know he's deceiving you," Leia retorted. "I just can't prove it." The maitrakh was silent for a minute. "What then will you do?" Leia took a deep breath, exhaled it quietly. "We have to leave Honoghr. That means breaking into the spaceport at Nystao and stealing a ship."

"There should be no difficulty in that for a daughter of the Lord Darth Vader."

Leia grimaced, thinking of how the maitrakh had effortlessly sneaked up on them a minute ago. The guards at the spaceport would be younger and far better trained. These people must have been fantastic hunters before the Emperor turned them into his private killing machines. "Stealing a ship won't be too hard," she told the maitrakh, aware of just how far she was stretching the truth here. "The difficulty arises from the fact that we have to take Khabarakh with us."

The maitrakh stopped short. "What is that you say?" she hissed.

"It's the only way," Leia said. "If Khabarakh is left to the Empire, they'll make him tell everything that's occurred here. And when that happens, he and you will both die. Perhaps your whole family with you. We can't allow that."

"Then you face death yourselves," the maitrakh said. "The guards will not easily allow Khabarakh to be freed."

"I know," Leia said, acutely aware of the two small lives she carried within her. "We'll have to take that risk."

"There will be no honor in such a sacrifice," the old Noghri all but snarled. "The clan Kihm'bar will not carve it into history. Neither will the Noghri people long remember."

"I'm not doing it for the praise of the Noghri people," Leia sighed, suddenly weary of banging her head against alien misunderstandings. She'd been doing it in one form or another, it seemed, for the whole of her life. "I'm doing it because I'm tired of people dying for my mistakes. I asked Khabarakh to bring me to Honoghr-what's happened is my responsibility. I can't just run off and leave you to the Grand Admiral's vengeance."

"Our lord the Grand Admiral would not deal so harshly with us." Leia turned to look the maitrakh straight in the eye. "The Empire once destroyed an entire world because of me," she said quietly. "I don't ever want that to happen again."

She held the maitrakh's gaze a moment longer, then turned away, her mind twisted in a tangle of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Was she doing the right thing?

She'd risked her life countless times before, but always for her comrades in the Rebellion and for a cause she believed in. To do the same for servants of the Empire-even servants who'd been duped into that role-was something else entirely. Chewbacca didn't like any of this; she could tell that much from his sense and the stiff way he stood at her side. But he would go along, driven by his own sense of honor and the life-debt he had sworn to Han.

She blinked back sudden tears, her hand going to the bulge of her belly. Han would understand. He would argue against such a risk, but down deep he would understand. Otherwise, he wouldn't have let her come here in the first place.

If she didn't return, he would almost certainly blame himself.

"The humiliation period has been extended for four more days," the maitrakh murmured beside her. "In two days' time the moons will give their least light. It would be best to wait until then."

Leia frowned at her. The maitrakh met her gaze steadily, her alien face unreadable. "Are you offering me your help?" Leia asked.

"There is honor in you, Lady Vader," the maitrakh said, her voice quiet. "For the life and honor of my thirdson, I will go with you. Perhaps we will die together."

Leia nodded, her heart aching. "Perhaps we will." But she wouldn't. The maitrakh and Khabarakh might die, and probably Chewbacca beside them. But not her. The Lady Vader they would take alive, and save as a gift for their lord the Grand Admiral.

Who would smile, and speak politely, and take her children away from her.

She looked out at the fields, wishing Han were here. And wondered if he would ever know what had happened to her.

"Come," the maitrakh said. "Let us return to the house. There are many things about Nystao which you must yet learn."

"I'm glad you finally called," Winter's voice came over the Lady Luck's speaker, distorted slightly by a not quite attuned scrambler package.

"I was starting to worry."

"We're okay-we just had to run silent awhile," Han assured her. "You got trouble back there?"

"No more than when you left," she said. "The Imperials are still hitting our shipping out there, and no one's figured out what to do about it. Fey'lya's trying to persuade the Council that he could do a better job of defense than Ackbar's people, but so far Mon Mothma hasn't taken him up on the offer. I get the feeling that some of the Council members are starting to have second thoughts about his motivations for all of this."

"Good," Han growled. "Maybe they'll tell him to shut up and put Ackbar back in command."

"Unfortunately, Fey'lya's still got too much support to ignore completely," Winter said. "Particularly among the military."

"Yeah." Han braced himself. "I don't suppose you ve heard from Leia."

"Not yet," Winter said; and Han could hear the underlying tension in her voice. She was worried, too. "But I did hear from Luke. That's why I wanted to get in touch with you, in fact."

"Is he in trouble?"

"I don't know-the message didn't say. He wants you to rendezvous with him on New Cov."

"New Cov?" Han frowned down at the cloudspeckled planet turning beneath them. "Why?"

"The message didn't say. Just that he'd meet you at the, quote, money-changing center, unquote.

"The-?" Han shifted his frown to Lando. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"He's talking about the Mishra tapcafe in Ilic where he and I met while you were following Breil'lya," Lando said. "Private joke-I'll fill you in later."

"So that means there's no question Luke sent the message?" Winter asked.

"Wait a minute," Han put in as Lando started to answer. "Didn't you talk to him personally?"

"No, the message came in printed," Winter said. "Not on any scrambler, either."

"He doesn't have a scrambler on his X-wing, does he?" Lando asked.

"No, but he could get a message coded at any New Republic diplomatic post," Han said slowly. "Is this private joke something only you two would know about?"

"Us two, plus maybe a hundred bystanders," Lando conceded. "You think it's a trap?"

"Could be. Okay, Winter, thanks. We'll be checking in more often from now on.

"All right. Be careful."

"You bet."

He signed off and looked at Lando. "It's your ship, pal. You want to go down and take a look, or give it a miss and go check out this swimming casino of yours?"

Lando hissed a breath between his teeth. "I don't think we've got much choice," he said. "If the message was from Luke, it's probably important."

"And if it wasn't?"

Lando favored him with a tight grin. "Hey, we've run Imperial traps before. Come on, let's take her down."

After the way they'd blasted out of Ilic a few days earlier, it was doubtful the local authorities would be especially overjoyed to see the return of the Lady Luck to their city. Fortunately, he'd put the past two days' worth of leisure time to good use; and as they set down inside the domed landing area, the spaceport computer dutifully logged the arrival of the pleasure yacht Tamar's Folly.

"It's just terrific to be back," Han commented dryly as he and Lando started down the ramp. "Probably ought to snoop around a little before we head down to the Mishra.

Beside him, Lando stiffened. "I don't think we're going to have to bother with the Mishra," he said quietly.

Han threw a quick glance at him, dropping his hand casually to his blaster as he shifted his gaze to where Lando was looking. Standing five meters from the end of the Lady Luck's ramp was a bulky man in an ornate tunic, chewing on the end of a cigarra, and smiling with sly innocence up at them.

"Friend of yours?" Han murmured.

"I wouldn't go that far," Lando murmured back. "Name's Niles Ferrier. Ship thief and occasional smuggler."

"He was in on the Mishra thing, I take it?"

"One of the key players, actually."

Han nodded, letting his eyes drift around the spaceport. Among the dozens of people moving briskly about their business, he spotted three or four who seemed to be loitering nearby. "Ship thief huh?"

"Yes, but he's not going to bother with anything as small as the Lady Luck," Lando assured him.

Han grunted. "Watch him anyway.

"You bet."

They reached the foot of the ramp and, by unspoken but mutual consent, stopped there and waited. Ferrier's grin broadened a bit, and he sauntered forward to meet them. "Hello there, Calrissian," he said. "We keep bumping into each other, don't we?"

"Hello, Luke," Han spoke up before Lando could reply. "You've changed."

Ferrier's smile turned almost sheepish. "Yeah-sorry about that. I didn't figure you'd come if I put my own name on the message."

"Where's Luke?" Han demanded.

"Search me," Ferrier shrugged. "He burned out of here same time you did-that was the last I saw of him."

Han studied his face, looking for a lie. He didn't see one. "What do you want?"

"I want to cut a deal with the New Republic," Ferrier said, lowering his voice. "A deal for some new warships. You interested?" Han felt a tingle at the back of his neck. "We might be," he said, trying to sound casual. "What kind of ships are we talking about?" Ferrier gestured to the ramp. "How about we talk in the ship?"

"How about we talk out here?" Lando retorted. Ferrier seemed taken aback. "Take it easy, Calrissian," he said soothingly. "What do you think I'm going to do, walk off with your ship in my pocket?"

"What kind of ships?" Han repeated.

Ferrier looked at him for a moment, then made a show of glancing around the area. "Big ones," he said, lowering his voice. "Dreadnaught class." He lowered his voice still (further. "The Katana fleet." With an effort, Han kept his sabacc face in place. "The Katana fleet. Right."

"I'm not kidding," Ferrier insisted. "The Katana's been found ... and I've got a line on the guy who found it."

"Yeah?" Han said. Something in Ferrier's face He turned around quickly, half expecting to see someone trying to sneak up over the edge of the ramp into the Lady Luck. But aside from the usual mix of shadows from the spaceport lights, there was nothing there.

"Something?" Lando demanded.

"No," Han said, turning back to Ferrier. If the thief really did have a line on Bel Iblis's supplier, it could save them a lot of time. But if he had nothing but rumors-and was maybe hoping to wangle something a little more solid ... "What makes you think this guy has anything?" he demanded. Ferrier smiled slyly. "Free information, Solo? Come on-you know better than that."

"All right, then," Lando said. "What do you want from us, and what are you offering in trade?"

"I know the guy's name," Ferrier said, his face turning serious again. "But I don't know where he is. I thought we could pool our resources, see if we can get to him before the Empire does."

Han felt his throat tighten. "What makes you think the Empire's involved?"

Ferrier threw him a scornful look. "With Grand Admiral Thrawn in charge over there? He's involved in everything."

Han smiled lopsidedly. At last they had a name to go with the uniform. "Thrawn, huh? Thanks, Ferrier."

Ferrier's face went rigid as he suddenly realized what he'd just given away. "No charge," he said between stiff lips.

"We still haven't heard what we're getting out of the deal," Lando reminded him.

"Do you know where he is?" Ferrier asked.

"We have a lead," Lando said. "What are you offering?" Ferrier shifted a measuring gaze back and forth between them. "I'll give you half the ships we take out," he said at last. "Plus an option for the New Republic to buy out the rest at a reasonable price."

"What's a reasonable price?" Han asked.

"Depends on what kind of shape they're in," Ferrier countered. "I'm sure we'll be able to come to an agreement.

"Mn." Han looked at Lando. "What do you think?"

"Forget it," Lando said, his voice hard. "You want to give us the name, fine-if it checks out, we'll make sure you're well paid once we've got the ships. Otherwise, shove off."

Ferrier drew back. "Well, fine," he said, sounding more hurt than annoyed. "You want to do it all by yourselves, be my guest. But if we get to the ships first, your precious little New Republic's going to pay a lot more to get them. A lot more."

Spinning around, he stalked off. "Come on, Han, let's get out of here," Lando muttered, his eyes on Ferrier's retreating back.

"Yeah," Han said, looking around for the loiterers he'd spotted earlier. They, too, were drifting away. It didn't look like trouble; but he kept his hand on his blaster anyway until they were inside the Lady Luck with the hatch sealed.

"I'll prep for lift," Lando said as they headed back to the cockpit.

"You talk to Control, get us an exit slot."

"Okay," Han said. "You know, with a little more bargaining-"

"I don't trust him," Lando cut him off, running his hand over the start-up switches. "He was smiling too much. And he gave up too easily." It was a hard comment to argue against. And as Han had noted earlier, it was Lando's ship. Shrugging to himself he keyed for spaceport control. They were out in ten minutes, once again leaving an unhappy group of controllers behind them. "I hope this is the last time we have to come here," Han said, scowling across the cockpit at Lando. "I get the feeling we've worn out our welcome."

Lando threw him a sideways glance. "Well, well. Since when did you start caring what other people thought about you?"

"Since I married a princess and started carrying a government ID," Han growled back. "Anyway, I thought you were supposed to be respectable, too."

"It comes and goes. Ah-ha." He smiled humorlessly at Han. "It looks like while we were talking to Ferrier, someone sneaked up and put something on our hull. Ten'll get you one it's a homing beacon."

"What a surprise," Han said, keying his display for its location. It was on the rear lower hull, back near the ramp where it would be out of most of the lift-off turbulence.

"What do you want to do with it?"

"The Terrijo system's more or less on the way to Pantolomin," Lando said, consulting his display. "We'll swing through there and drop it off."

"Okay." Han scowled at his display. "Too bad we can't put it on another ship right here. That way he wouldn't even know what direction we're going."

Lando shook his head. "He'll know we've spotted it if we put down on New Cov now. Unless you want to take it off up here and try to toss it onto another passing ship." He glanced at Han; paused for a longer look. "We're not going to try it, Han," he said firmly. "Get that look out of your eye.

"Oh, all right," Han grumbled. "That'd get him off our backs, though."

"And might get you killed in the process," Lando retorted. "And then I'd have to go back and explain it to Leia. Forget it." Han gritted his teeth. Leia. "Yeah," he said with a sigh. Lando looked at him again. "Come on, buddy, relax. Ferrier hasn't got a hope of beating us. Trust me-we re going to win this one." Han nodded. He hadn't been thinking about Ferrier, actually. Or about the Katana fleet. "I know," he said.

The Lady Luck disappeared smoothly through one of the ducts in the transparisteel dome, and Ferrier shifted his cigarra to the other side of his mouth. "You're sure they won't find the second beacon?" he asked. Beside him, the oddly shaped shadow between a pile of shipping crates stirred. "They will not," it said in a voice like cold running water.

"You'd better be right," Ferrier warned, a note of menace in his voice. "I didn't stand there and take that garbage from them for nothing." He glared at the shadow. "As it was, you almost gave the game away," he said accusingly. "Solo looked straight back at you once.

"There was no danger," the wraith said flatly. "Humans need movement to see. Not-moving shadows are of no concern."

"Well, it worked this time," Ferrier was willing to concede. "You're still lucky it was Solo and not Calrissian who looked-he saw you once before, you know. Next time, keep your big feet quiet.

The wraith said nothing. "Oh, go on, get back to the ship," Ferrier ordered. "Tell Abric to get 'er ready to lift. We've got ourselves a fortune to make."

He threw a last look upward. "And maybe," he added with grim satisfaction, "a smart-mouthed gambler to take out."

CHAPTER

19

The Etherway was clearly visible now, dropping like a misshapen rock out of the sky toward its assigned landing pit. Standing in the protective shadow of the exit tunnel, Karrde watched its approach, stroking the grip of his blaster gently with his fingertips and trying to ignore the uneasiness still tickling the back of his mind. Mara was over three days late in bringing the freighter back from Abregado-not a particularly significant delay under normal conditions, but this trip had hardly qualified as normal. But there had been no other ships on her tail as she entered orbit, and she'd transmitted all the proper "all clear" code signals to him as she dropped into the approach pattern. And aside from the incompetence of the controllers, who'd taken an inordinate amount of time to decide which pit she was actually being assigned to, the landing itself had so far been completely routine. Karrde smiled wryly as he watched the ship come down. There had been times in the past three days when he'd thought about Mara's hatred of Luke Skywalker, and had wondered if she had decided to drop out of his life as mysteriously as she'd dropped into it. But it seemed now that his original reading of her had been correct. Mara Jade wasn't the sort of person who gave her loyalty easily, but once she'd made a decision she stuck with it. If she ever ran out on him, she wouldn't do so in a stolen ship. Not stolen from him, anyway.

The Etherway was on its final approach now, rotating on its repulsorlifts to orient its hatchway toward the exit tunnel. Obviously, Karrde's reading of Han Solo had been correct, too. Even if the other hadn't been quite gullible enough to send a Mon Cal Star Cruiser out to Myrkr, he'd at least kept his promise to get the Etherway out of impoundment. Apparently, all of Karrde's private worrying of the past three days had been for nothing. But the uneasiness was still there.

With a hiss of back-release outgassing, the Etherway settled to the stress-scored paving of the landing pit. His eyes on the closed hatchway, Karrde pulled his comlink from his belt and thumbed for his backup spotter.

"Dankin? Anything suspicious in sight?"

"Not a thing," the other's voice came back promptly. "Looks very quiet over there."

Karrde nodded. "All right. Keep out of sight, but stay alert." He replaced the comlink in his belt. The Etherway's landing ramp began to swing down, and he shifted his hand to a grip on his blaster. If this was a trap, now would be the likely time to spring it.

The hatchway opened, and Mara appeared. She glanced around the pit as she started down the ramp, spotting him immediately in his chosen shadow.

"Karrde?" she called.

"Welcome home, Mara," he said, stepping out into the light. "You're a bit late."

"I wound up making a little detour," she said grimly, coming toward him.

"That can happen," he said, frowning. Her attention was still flitting around the pit, her face lined with a vague sort of tension.

"Trouble?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know," she murmured. "I feel-" She never finished the sentence. At Karrde's belt his comlink suddenly squawked, screeched briefly with the electronic stress of blanket jamming, and then went silent. "Come on," Karrde snapped, drawing his blaster and spinning back toward the exit. At the far end of the tunnel he could see shapes moving; lifting his blaster, he fired toward the violent thunderclap of a sonic boom shattered the air around him, slamming hard against his head and nearly toppling him to the ground. He glanced up, ears ringing, just as two slower-moving TIE fighters swooped past overhead, laying down a spitting pattern of laser fire at the mouth of the exit tunnel. The paving erupted into steaming blocks of half-molten ceramic under the assault, blocking any chance of quick escape in that direction. Kaerde snapped off a reflexive if meaningless shot toward the TIE fighters; and he was just beginning to shift his aim back toward the figures in the tunnel when a dozen stormtroopers suddenly leaped into view at the upper rim of the landing pit, sliding down droplines to the ground. "Down!" he snapped at Mara, his voice hardly audible to his paralyzed sense of hearing. He dived for the ground, hitting awkwardly on his left arm and bringing his blaster to bear on the nearest stormtrooper. He fired, missing by half a meter...and he was just noticing the curious fact that the Imperials weren't returning fire when the blaster was deftly plucked from his hand.

He rolled half over, looking up at Mara with stunned disbelief.

"What-"

She was standing over him, her face so pinched with emotion he could hardly recognize it, her lips moving with words he couldn't hear. But he didn't really need any explanation. Strangely, he felt no anger at her; not for concealing her Imperial past from him all this time, nor for now returning to her origins. Only chagrin that he'd been fooled so easily and so thoroughly ... and a strange regret that he had lost such a skilled associate.

The stormtroopers hauled him to his feet and moved him roughly toward a drop ship that was settling onto the paving beside the Etherway; and as he stumbled toward it, a stray thought occurred to him.

He was betrayed and captured and probably facing death ... but at least he now had a partial answer to the mystery of why Mara wanted to kill Luke Skywalker.

Mara glared at the Grand Admiral, her hands curled into fists, her body trembling with rage. "Eight days, Thrawn," she snarled, her voice echoing oddly through the background noises of the Chimaera's vast shuttle bay. "You said eight days. You promised me eight days."

Thrawn gazed back with a polite calmness that made her long to burn him down where he stood. "I changed my mind," he said coolly. "It occurred to me that Karrde might not only refuse to divulge the Katana fleet's location, but might even abandon you here for suggesting that he make such a deal with us."

"The gates of hell you did," Mara snapped back. "You planned to use me like this right from the start."

"And it got us what we wanted," the red-eyed freak said smoothly.

"That's all that matters."

Deep within Mara, something snapped. Ignoring the armed stormtroopers standing just behind her, she threw herself at Thrawn, fingers hooking like a hunting bird's talons for his throat And came to an abrupt bone-wrenching stop as Thrawn's Noghri bodyguard sidled in from two meters away, threw his arm across her neck and shoulder, and spun her around and halfway to the deck.

She grabbed at the iron-hard arm across her throat, simultaneously throwing her right elbow back toward his torso. But the blow missed; and even as she shifted to a two-handed grip on his arm, white spots began to flicker in her vision. His forearm was pressing solidly against her carotid artery, threatening her with unconsciousness.

There wasn't anything to be gained by blacking out. She relaxed her struggle, felt the pressure ease. Thrawn was still standing there, regarding her with amusement. "That was very unprofessional of you, Emperor's Hand," he chided.

Mara glared at him and lashed out again, this time with the Force. Thrawn frowned slightly, fingers moving across his neck as if trying to brush away an intangible cobweb. Mara leaned into her tenuous grip on his throat; and he brushed again at his neck before understanding came. "All right, that's enough," he said, his voice noticeably altered, his tone starting to get angry. "Stop it, or Rukh will have to hurt you." Mara ignored the order, digging in as hard as she could. Thrawn gazed unblinkingly back at her, his throat muscles moving as he fought against the grip. Mara clenched her teeth, waiting for the order or hand movement that would signal permission for the Noghri to choke her, or for the stormtroopers to burn her down.

But Thrawn remained silent and unmoving ... and a minute later, gasping for breath, Mara had to concede defeat.

"I trust you've learned the limits of your small powers," Thrawn said coldly, fingering his throat. But at least he didn't sound amused anymore. "A little trick the Emperor taught you?"

"He taught me a great many tricks," Mara bit out, ignoring the throbbing in her temples. "How to deal with traitors was one of them." Thrawn's glowing eyes glittered. "Have a care, Jade," he said softly.

"I rule the Empire now. Not some long-dead Emperor; certainly not you. The only treason is defiance of my orders. I'm willing to let you come back to your rightful place in the Empire-as first officer, perhaps, of one of the Katana Dreadnaughts. But any further outbursts like this one and that offer will be summarily withdrawn."

"And then you'll kill me, I suppose," Mara growled. "My Empire isn't in the habit of wasting valuable resources, the other countered. "You'd be given instead to Master C'baoth as a little bonus gift. And I suspect you would soon wish I'd had you executed."

Mara stared at him, an involuntary shiver running up her back. "Who is C'baoth?"

"Joruus C'baoth is a mad Jedi Master," Thrawn told her darkly. "He's consented to help our war effort, in exchange for Jedi to mold into whatever twisted image he chooses. Your friend Skywalker has already walked into his web; his sister, Organa Solo, we hope to deliver soon." His face hardened. "I would genuinely hate for you to have to join them."

Mara took a deep breath. "I understand," she said, forcing out the words. "You've made your point. It won't happen again." He eyed her a moment, then nodded. "Apology accepted," he said.

"Release her, Rukh. Now. Do I take it you wish to rejoin the Empire?" The Noghri let go of her neck-reluctantly, Mara thought-and took a short step away. "What about the rest of Karrde's people?" she asked.

"As we agreed, they're free to go about their business. I've already canceled all Imperial search and detention orders concerning them, and Captain Pellaeon is at this moment calling off the bounty hunters."

"And Karrde himself?"

Thrawn studied her face. "He'll remain aboard until he tells me where the Katana fleet is. If he does so with a minimum of wasted time and effort on our part, he'll receive the three million in compensation which you and I agreed on at Endor. If not...there may not be much left of him to pay compensation to."

Mara felt her lip twitch. He wasn't bluffing, either. She'd seen what a full-bore Imperial interrogation could do. "May I talk to him?" she asked.

"Why?"

"I might be able to persuade him to cooperate." Thrawn smiled slightly. "Or could at least assure him that you did not, in fact, betray him?"

"He'll still be locked in your detention block," Mara reminded him, forcing her voice to stay calm. "There's no reason for him not to know the truth."

Thrawn lifted his eyebrows. "On the contrary," he said. "A sense of utter abandonment is one of the more useful psychological tools available to us. A few days with only thoughts of that sort to relieve the monotony may convince him to cooperate without harsher treatment."

"Thrawn-" Mara broke off, strangling back the sudden flash of anger.

"That's better," the Grand Admiral approved, his eyes steady on her face. "Especially considering that the alternative is for me to turn him directly over to an interrogator droid. Is that what you want?"

"No, Admiral," she said, feeling herself slump a little. "I just ... Karrde helped me when I had nowhere else to go.

"I understand your feelings," Thrawn said, his face hardening again.

"But they have no place here. Mixed loyalties are a luxury no officer of the Imperial Fleet can afford. Certainly not if she wishes someday to be given a command of her own."

Mara drew herself up again to her full height. "Yes, sir. It won't happen again."

"I trust not." Thrawn glanced past her shoulder and nodded. With a rustle of movement, her stormtrooper escort began to withdraw. "The deck officer's station is just beneath the control tower," he said, gesturing to the large transparisteel bubble nestled in among the racked TIE fighters three-quarters of the way up the hangar bay's back wall. "He'll assign you a shuttle and pilot to take you back to the surface."

It was clearly a dismissal. "Yes, Admiral," Mara said. Stepping past him, she headed toward the door he'd indicated. For a moment she could feel his eyes on her, then heard the faint sound of his footsteps as he turned away toward the lift cluster beyond the starboard blast doors. Yes; the Grand Admiral had made his point. But it wasn't exactly the one he'd intended to make. With that single casual act of betrayal, he had finally destroyed her last wistful hope that the new Empire might someday measure up to the one that Luke Skywalker had destroyed out from under her. The Empire she'd once been proud to serve was gone. Forever. It was a painful revelation, and a costly one. It could erase in one stroke everything she'd worked so hard to build up for herself over the last year.

It could also cost Karrde his life. And if it did, he would die believing that she had deliberately betrayed him to Thrawn. The thought twisted in her stomach like a heated knife, mixing with her bitter anger toward Thrawn for lying to her and her shame at her own gullibility in trusting him in the first place. No matter how she looked at it, this mess was her fault.

It was up to her to fix it.

Beside the door to the deck officer's office was the huge archway that led from the hangar bay proper into the service and prep areas behind it. Mara threw a glance over her shoulder as she walked, and spotted Thrawn stepping into one of the turbolifts, his tame Noghri at his side. Her stormtrooper escort, too, had disappeared, its members probably returning to their private section aft for debriefing over the mission they'd just completed. There were twenty or thirty other people in the bay, but none of them seemed to be paying any particular attention to her. It was probably the only chance she would ever get. With her ear cocked for the shout-or the blaster shot-that would mean she'd been noticed, she bypassed the deck officer's office and stepped past the retracted blast doors into the prep area.

There was a computer terminal just inside the archway, built against the wall where it would be accessible to both the forward prep area and the aft hangar bay. Its location made it an obvious target for unauthorized access, and as a consequence it would undoubtedly be protected by an elaborate entry code. Probably changed hourly, if she knew Thrawn; but what even a Grand Admiral might not know was that the Emperor had had a private back door installed into the main computer of every Star Destroyer. It had been his guarantee, first during his consolidation of power and then during the upheaval of Rebellion, that no commander could ever lock him out of his own ships. Not him, and not his top agents.

Mara keyed in the backdoor entry code, permitting herself a tight smile as she did so. Thrawn could consider her a glorified courier if he liked. But she knew better.

The code clicked, and she was in.

She called up a directory, trying to suppress the creepy awareness that she might already have brought the stormtroopers down on top of her. The backdoor code was hard wired into the system and impossible to eliminate, but if Thrawn suspected its existence, he might well have set a flag to trigger an alarm if it was ever used. And if he had, it would take far more than another show of humble loyalty to keep her out of trouble.

No stormtroopers had appeared by the time the directory came up. She keyed for the detention section and flicked her eye down the listing, wishing fleetingly that she had an R2 astromech droid like Skywalker's to help cut through all of it. Even if Thrawn had missed the backdoor code, he would certainly have alerted the deck officer to expect her. If someone in the control tower noticed she was overdue and sent someone out to look for her ... There it was: an updated prisoner list. She keyed for it, pulling up a diagram of the entire detention block while she was at it. A duty roster was next, with attention paid to the shift changes, then back to the daily orders and a listing of the Chimaera's projected course and destinations for the next six days. Thrawn had implied he would be waiting a few days before beginning a formal interrogation, letting boredom and tension and Karrde's own imagination wear down his resistance. Mara could only hope she could get back before that softening-up period was over.

A drop of sweat trickled down her spine as she cleared the display. And now came the really painful part. She'd run through the logic a dozen times while walking across the hangar bay deck, and each time had been forced to the same odious answer. Karrde would almost certainly have had a backup spotter watching the Etherway's approach, who would have had a front-row view of the stormtroopers' trap. If Mara now returned free and clear from the Chimaera, she would never be able to convince Karrde's people that she hadn't betrayed him to the Imperials. She'd be lucky, in fact, if they didn't burn her down on sight.

She couldn't rescue Karrde alone. She couldn't expect any help from his organization. Which left only one person in the galaxy she might be able to enlist. Only one person who might possibly feel he owed Karrde something. Clenching her teeth, she keyed for the current location of a Jedi Master named Joruus C'baoth.

It seemed to take the computer an inordinate amount of time to dig out the information, and the skin on Mara's back was starting to crawl by the time the machine finally spat it out. She caught the planet's name-Jomark-and keyed off, doing what she could to bury the fact that this interaction had ever taken place. Already she'd pushed her timing way too close to the wire; and if they caught her here on a computer she shouldn't have been able to access at all, she was likely to find herself in the cell next to Karrde's. She barely made it. She'd just finished her cleanup and started back toward the archway when a young officer and three troopers came striding through from the hangar bay, their eyes and weapons clearly ready for trouble. One of the troopers spotted her, muttered something to the officer "Excuse me," Mara called as all four turned to her. "Can you tell me where I can find the deck officer?"

"I'm the deck officer," the officer said, scowling at her as the group came to a halt in front of her. "You Mara Jade?"

"Yes," Mara said, putting on her best unconcernedly innocent expression. "I was told your office was over here somewhere, but I couldn't find it."

"It's on the other side of the wall," the officer growled. Brushing past her, he stepped to the terminal she'd just left. "Were you fiddling with this?" he asked, tapping a few keys.

"No," Mara assured him. "Why?"

"Never mind it's still locked down," the officer muttered under his breath. For a moment he looked around the area, as if searching for some other reason Mara might have wanted to be back here. But there was nothing; and almost reluctantly, he brought his attention back to her again. "I've got orders to give you transport down to the planet."

"I know," she nodded. "I'm ready." The shuttle lifted and turned and headed off into the sky. Standing by the Etherway's ramp, the stink of burned paving still thick in the air, Mara watched the Imperial craft disappear over the top of the landing pit.

"Aves?" she called. "Come on, Aves, you've got to be here somewhere."

"Turn around and put your hands up," the voice came from the shadows inside the ship's hatchway. "All the way up. Ai,d don't forget I know about that little sleeve gun of yours.

"The Imperials have it now," Mara said as she turned her back to him and raised her hands. "And I'm not here for a fight. I came for help."

"You want help, go to your new friends upstairs," Aves retorted. "Or maybe they were always your friends, huh?"

He was goading her, Mara knew, pushing for a chance to vent his own anger and frustration in an argument or gun battle. "I didn't betray him, Aves," she said. "I got picked up by the Imperials and blew them a smoke ring that I thought would buy us enough time to get out. It didn't."

"I don't believe you," Aves said flatly. There was a muffled clank of boot on metal as he came cautiously down the ramp.

"No, you believe me," Mara shook her head. "You wouldn't have come here if you didn't."

She felt a breath of air on the back of her neck as he stepped close behind her. "Don't move," he ordered. Reaching carefully to her left arm, he pulled the sleeve down to reveal the empty holster. He checked her other sleeve, then ran a hand down each side of her body. "All right, turn around," he said, stepping back again.

She did so. He was standing a meter away from her, his face tight, his blaster pointed at her stomach. "Turn the question around, Aves," she suggested. "If I betrayed Karrde to the Imperials, why would I come back here?

Especially alone?"

"Maybe you needed to get something from the Etherway," he countered harshly. "Or maybe it's just a trick to try to round up the rest of us." Mara braced herself. "If you really believe that," she said quietly,

"you might as well go ahead and shoot. I can't get Karrde out of there without your help."

For a long minute Aves stood there in silence. Mara watched his face, trying to ignore the white-knuckled hand holding the blaster. "The others won't help you, you know," he said. "Half of them think you've been manipulating Karrde from the minute you joined up. Most of the rest figure you for the type who switches loyalties twice a year anyway.

Mara grimaced. "That was true once, she admitted. "Not anymore.

"You got any way to prove that?"

"Yeah-by getting Karrde out," Mara retorted. "Look, I haven't got time to talk. You going to help, or shoot?"

He hesitated for a handful of heartbeats. Then, almost reluctantly, he lowered the blaster until it was pointed at the ground. "I'm probably scribing my own death mark," he growled. "What do you need?"

"For starters, a ship," Mara said, silently letting out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Something smaller and faster than the Etherway. One of those three boosted Skipray blastboats we brought in from Vagran would do nicely. I'll also need one of those ysalamiri we've been carrying around on the Wild Karrde. Preferably on a nutrient frame that's portable."

Aves frowned. "What do you want with an ysalamir?"

"I'm going to talk to a Jedi," she said briefly. "I need a guarantee he'll listen."

Aves studied her a moment, then shrugged. "I suppose I really don't want to know. What else?"

Mara shook her head. "That's it."

His eyes narrowed. "That's it?"

"That's it. How soon can you get them to me?" Aves pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Let's say an hour," he said.

"That big swamp about fifty kilometers north of the city-you know it?" Mara nodded. "There's a soggy sort of island near the eastern edge."

"Right. You bring the Etherway to the island and we do the switch there." He glanced up at the freighter towering over him. "If you think it's safe to move it."

"It should be for now," Mara said. "Thrawn told me he'd lifted all the search and detention orders for the rest of the group. But you'd better disappear anyway after I go. He'll have the whole Fleet screaming down your necks again if and when I get Karrde out. Better run a fine-edge scan on the Etherway before you take it anywhere, though-there has to be a homing beacon aboard for Thrawn to have gotten the jump on me the way he did." She felt her lip twitch. "And knowing Thrawn, he's probably got someone tailing me, too. I'll have to get rid of him before I leave the planet."

"I can give you a hand with that," Aves said grimly. "We're disappearing anyway, right?"

"Right." Mara paused, trying to think if there was anything else she needed to tell him. "I guess that's it. Let's get going."

"Right." Aves hesitated. "I still don't know whose side you're on, Mara. If you're on ours...good luck."

She nodded, feeling a hard lump settle into her throat. "Thanks." Two hours later she was strapped into the Skipray's cockpit, a strange and unpleasant sense of déjà vu burning through her as she drove toward deep space. It had been in a ship just like this one that she'd screamed off into the sky over the Myrkr forest a few weeks ago, in hot pursuit of an escaped prisoner. Now, like a twisted repeat of history, she once again found herself chasing after Luke Skywalker.

Only this time, she wasn't trying to kill or capture him. This time, she was going to plead for his help.

CHAPTER

20

The last pair of villagers detached themselves from the group standing at the back wall and made their way to ward the raised judgment seat. C'baoth stood there, watching them come; and then, as Luke had known he would, the Jedi Master stood up. "Jedi Skywalker," he said, gesturing Luke to the seat. "The final case of the evening is yours."

"Yes, Master C'baoth," Luke said, bracing himself as he stepped over and gingerly sat down. It was, to his mind, a thoroughly uncomfortable chair: too warm, too large, and far too ornate. Even more than the rest of C'baoth's home, it had an alien smell to it, and a strangely disturbing aura that Luke could only assume was a lingering aftereffect of the hours the Jedi Master had spent in it judging his people.

Now it was Luke's turn to do so.

Taking a deep breath, trying to push back the fatigue that had become a permanent part of him, he nodded at the two villagers. "I'm ready," he said.

"Please begin."

It was a relatively simple case, as such things went. The first villager's livestock had gotten through the second's fence and had stripped half a dozen of his fruit bushes before they'd been discovered and driven back. The animals' owner was willing to pay compensation for the ruined bushes, but the second was insisting that he also rebuild the fence. The first countered that a properly built fence wouldn't have failed in the first place and that, furthermore, his livestock had suffered injuries from the sharp edges as they went through. Luke sat quietly and let them talk, waiting until the arguments and counterarguments finally ended.

"All right," he said. "In the matter of the fruit bushes themselves, my judgment is that you"-he nodded to the first villager-"will pay for the replacement of those damaged beyond repair, plus an additional payment to compensate for the fruit eaten or destroyed by your livestock. The latter amount will be determined by the village council."

Beside him C'baoth stirred, and Luke winced at the disapproval he could sense from the Jedi Master. For a second he floundered, wondering if he should back up and try a different solution. But changing his mind so abruptly didn't sound like a good thing to do. And anyway, he really didn't have any better ideas.

So what was he doing here?

He looked around the room, fighting against a sudden flush of nervousness. They were all looking at him: C'baoth, the two supplicants, the rest of the villagers who'd come tonight for Jedi judgment. All of them expecting him to make the right decision.

"As to the fence, I'll examine it tomorrow morning," he continued. "I want to see how badly it was damaged before I make my decision. The two men bowed and backed away. "I therefore declare this session to be closed," C'baoth called. His voice echoed grandly, despite the relatively small size of the room. An interesting effect, and Luke found himself wondering if it was a trick of the room's acoustics or yet another Jedi technique that Master Yoda had never taught him. Though why he would ever need such a technique he couldn't imagine.

The last of the villagers filed out of the room. C'baoth cleared his throat; reflexively, Luke braced himself. "I sometimes wonder, Jedi Skywalker," the old man said gravely, "whether or not you have really been listening to me these past few days.

"I'm sorry, Master C'baoth," Luke said, an all too familiar lump sticking in his throat. No matter how hard he tried, it seemed, he was never quite able to measure up to C'baoth's expectations.

"Sorry?" C'baoth's eyebrows rose sardonically. "Sorry? Jedi Skywalker, you had it all right there in your hands. You should have cut off their prattle far sooner than you did-your time is too valuable to waste with petty recriminations. You should have made the decision yourself on the amount of compensation, but instead gave it over to that absurd excuse of a village council. And as to the fence-" He shook his head in mild disgust. "There was absolutely no reason for you to postpone judgment on that. Everything you needed to know about the damage was right there in their minds. It should have been no trouble, even for you, to have pulled that from them." Luke swallowed. "Yes, Master C'baoth," he said. "But reading another person's thoughts that way seems wrong-"

"When you are using that knowledge to help him?" C'baoth countered.

"How can that be wrong?"

Luke waved a hand helplessly. "I'm trying to understand, Master C'baoth. But this is all so new to me."

C'baoth's bushy eyebrows lifted. "Is it, Jedi Skywalker? Is it really? You mean you ve never violated someone's personal preference in order to help him? Or ignored some minor bureaucratic rule that stood between you and what needed to be done?"

Luke felt his cheeks flush, thinking back to Lando's use of that illegal slicer code to get his X-wing repaired at the Sluis Van shipyards.

"Yes, I've done that on occasion," he admitted. "But this is different, somehow. It feels ... I don't know. Like I'm taking more responsibility for these people's lives than I should."

"I understand your concerns," C'baoth said, less severely this time.

"But that is indeed the crux of the matter. It is precisely the acceptance and wielding of responsibility that sets a Jedi apart from all others in the galaxy." He sighed deeply. "You must never forget, Luke, that in the final analysis these people are primitives. Only with our guidance can they ever hope to achieve any real maturity."

"I wouldn't call them primitive, Master C'baoth," Luke suggested hesitantly. "They have modern technology, a reasonably efficient system of government-"

"The trappings of civilization without the substance," C'baoth said with a contemptuous snort. Machines and societal constructs do not define a culture's maturity, Jedi Skywalker. Maturity is defined solely by the understanding and use of the Force."

His eyes drifted away, as if peering into the past. "There was such a society once, Luke," he said softly. "A vast and shining example of the heights all could aspire to. For a thousand generations we stood tall among the lesser beings of the galaxy, guardians of justice and order. The creators of true civilization. The Senate could debate and pass laws; but it was the Jedi who turned those laws into reality."

His mouth twisted. "And in return, the galaxy destroyed us." Luke frowned. "I thought it was just the Emperor and a few Dark Jedi who exterminated the Jedi."

C'baoth smiled bitterly. "Do you truly believe that even the Emperor could have succeeded in such a task without the consent of the entire galaxy?" He shook his head. "No, Luke. They hated us-all the lesser beings did. Hated us for our power, and or knowledge, and our wisdom. Hated us for our maturity." His smile vanished. "And that hatred still exists. Waiting only for the Jedi to reemerge to blaze up again."

Luke shook his head slowly. It didn't really seem to fit with what little he knew about the destruction of the Jedi. But on the other hand, he hadn't lived through that era. C'baoth had. "Hard to believe," he murmured.

"Believe it, Jedi Skywalker," C'baoth rumbled. His eyes caught Luke's, burning suddenly with a cold fire. "That's why we must stand together, you and I. Why we must never let down our guard before a universe that would destroy us. Do you understand?"

"I think so," Luke said, rubbing at the corner of his eye. His mind felt so sluggish in the fatigue dragging at him. And yet, even as he tried to think about C'baoth's words, images flowed unbidden from his memory. Images of Master Yoda, gruff but unafraid, with no trace of bitterness or anger toward anyone at the destruction of his fellow Jedi. Images of Ben Kenobi in the Mos Eisley cantina, treated with a sort of aloof respect, but respect nonetheless, after he'd been forced to cut down those two troublemakers. And clearest of all, images of his encounter at the New Cov tapcafe. Of the Barabel, asking for the mediation of a stranger, and accepting without question even those parts of Luke's judgment that had gone against him. Of the rest of the crowd, watching with hope and expectation and relief that a Jedi was there to keep things from getting out of hand. "I haven't experienced any such hatred."

C'baoth gazed at him from under bushy eyebrows. "You will," he said darkly. "As will your sister. And her children." Luke's chest tightened. "I can protect them."

"Can you teach them, as well?" C'baoth countered. "Have you the wisdom and skill to bring them to full knowledge of the was of the Force?"

"I think so, yes.

C'baoth snorted. "If you think but do not know then you gamble with their lives," he bit out. "You risk their futures over a selfish whim."

"It's not a whim, Luke insisted. "Together, Leia and I can do it."

"If you try, you will risk losing them to the dark side," C'baoth said flatly. He sighed, his eyes drilling away from Luke as he looked around the room. "We can't take that chance, Luke," he said quietly. "There are so few of us as it is. The endless war for power still rages-the galaxy is in turmoil. We who remain must stand together against those who would destroy everything." He turned his eyes suddenly back on Luke. "No; we can't risk being divided and destroyed again. You must bring your sister and her children to me."

"I can't do that," Luke said. C'baoth's expression changed-"Not now, at least," Luke amended hastily. "It wouldn't be safe for Leia to travel right now. The Imperials have been hunting her for months, and Jomark isn't all that far from the edge of their territory."

"Do you doubt that I can protect her?"

"I...no, I don't doubt you," Luke said, choosing his words carefully.

"It's just that-"

He paused. C'baoth had gone abruptly stiff, his eyes gazing outward at nothing. "Master C'baoth?" he asked. "Are you all right?" There was no reply. Luke stepped to his side, reaching out with the Force and wondering uneasily if the other was ill. But as always the Jedi Master's mind was closed to him. "Come, Master C'baoth," he said, taking the other's arm. "I'll help you to your chambers."

C'baoth blinked twice, and with what seemed to be an effort, brought his gaze back to Luke's face. He took a shuddering breath; and suddenly he was back to normal again. "You're tired, Luke," he said. "Leave me and return to your chambers for sleep."

Luke was tired, he had to admit. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," C'baoth assured him, a strangely grim tone to his voice.

"Because if you need my help-"

"I said leave me!" C'baoth snapped. "I am a Jedi Master. I need help from no one.

Luke found himself two paces back from C'baoth without any recollection of having taken the steps. "I'm sorry, Master C'baoth," he said.

"I didn't mean any disrespect.

The other's face softened a bit. "I know you didn't," he said. He took another deep breath, exhaled it quietly. "Bring your sister to me, Jedi Skywalker. I will protect her from the Empire; and will teach her such power as you can't imagine."

Far in the back of Luke's mind, a small warning bell went off. Something about those words ... or perhaps the way C'baoth had said them ...

"Now return to your chambers," C'baoth ordered. Once again his eyes seemed to be drifting away toward nothing. "Sleep, and we will talk further in the morning."

He stood before her, his face half hidden by the cowl of his robe, his yellow eyes piercingly bright as they gazed across the infinite distance between them. His lips moved, but his words were drowned out by the throaty hooting of alarms all around them, filling Mara with an urgency that was rapidly edging into panic. Between her and the Emperor two figures appeared: the dark, imposing image of Darth Vader, and the smaller blackclad figure of Luke Skywalker. They stood before the Emperor, facing each other, and ignited their lightsabers. The blades crossed, brilliant red-white against brilliant green-white, and they prepared for battle.

And then, without warning, the blades disengaged ... and with twin roars of hatred audible even over the alarms, both turned and strode toward the Emperor.

Mara heard herself cry out as she struggled to rush to her master's aid. But the distance was too great, her body too sluggish. She screamed a challenge, trying to at least distract them. But neither Vader nor Skywalker seemed to hear her. They moved outward to flank the Emperor ... and as they lifted their lightsabers high, she saw that the Emperor was gazing at her. She looked back at him, wanting desperately to turn away from the coming disaster but unable to move. A thousand thoughts and emotions flooded in through that gaze, a glittering kaleidoscope of pain and fear and rage that spun far too fast for her to really absorb. The Emperor raised his hands, sending cascades of jagged blue-white lightning at his enemies. Both men staggered under the counterattack, and Mara watched with the sudden agonized hope that this time it might end differently. But no. Vader and Skywalker straightened; and with another roar of rage, they lifted their lightsabers high YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER!

And with a jerk that threw her against her restraints, Mara snapped out of the dream.

For a minute she just sat there, gasping for breath and struggling against the fading vision of lightsabers poised to strike. The small cockpit of the Skipray pressed tightly around her, triggering a momentary surge of claustrophobia. The back and neck of her flight suit were wet with perspiration, clammy against her skin. From what seemed to be a great distance, a proximity alert was pinging.

The dream again. The same dream that had followed her around the galaxy for five years now. The same situation; the same horrifying ending; the same final, desperate plea.

But this time, things were going to be different. This time, she had the power to kill Luke Skywalker.

She looked out at the mottling of hyperspace spinning around the Skipray's canopy, some last bit of her mind coming fully awake. No, that was wrong. She wasn't going to kill Skywalker at all. She was She was going to ask him for help. The sour taste of bile rose into her throat; with an effort, she forced it down. No argument, she told herself sternly. If she wanted to rescue Karrde, she was going to have to go through with it.

Skywalker owed Karrde this much. Later, after he'd repaid the debt, there would be time enough to kill him.

The proximity alert changed tone, indicating thirty seconds to go. Cupping the hyperdrive levers in her hand, Mara watched the indicator go to zero and gently pushed the levers back. Mottling became starlines became the black of space. Space, and the dark sphere of a planet directly ahead. She had arrived at Jomark.

Mentally crossing her fingers, she tapped the comm, keying the code she'd programmed in during the trip. Luck was with her: here, at least, Thrawn's people were still using standard Imperial guidance transponders. The Skipray's displays flashed the location, an island forming the center of a ring-shaped lake just past the sunset line. She triggered the transponder once more to be sure, then keyed in the sublight drive and started down. Trying to ignore that last image of the Emperor's face ...

The wailing of the ship's alarm jerked her awake. "What?" she barked aloud to the empty cockpit, sleep sticky eyes flicking across the displays for the source of the trouble. It wasn't hard to find: the Skipray had rolled half over onto its side, its control surfaces screaming with stress as the computer fought to keep her from spinning out of the sky. Inexplicably, she was already deep inside the lower atmosphere, well past the point where she should have switched over to repulsorlifts.

Clenching her teeth, she made the switchover and then gave the scan map a quick look. She'd only been out of it for a minute or two, but at the speed the Skipray was doing even a few seconds of inattention could be fatal. She dug her knuckles hard into her eyes, fighting against the fatigue pulling at her and feeling sweat breaking out again on her forehead. Flying while half asleep, her old instructor had often warned her, was the quickest if messiest way to end your life. And if she had gone down there would have been no one to blame but herself.

Or would there?

She leveled the ship off confirmed that there were no mountains in her path, and keyed in the autopilot. The ysalamir and portable nutrient framework that Aves had given her were back near the aft hatchway, secured to the engine access panel. Unstrapping from her seat, Mara made her way back toward it It was as if someone had snapped on a light switch. One second she felt as if she had just finished a four-day battle; half a step later, a meter or so from the ysalamir, the fatigue abruptly vanished.

She smiled grimly to herself. So her suspicion had been correct: Thrawn's mad Jedi Master didn't want any company. "Nice try"' she called into the air. Unfastening the ysalamir frame from the access panel, she lugged it back to the cockpit and wedged it beside her seat.

The rim of mountains surrounding the lake was visible now on the electropulse scanner, and the infrared had picked up an inhabited structure on the far side. Probably where Skywalker and this mad Jedi Master were, she decided, a guess that was confirmed a moment later as the sensors picked up a small mass of spaceship-grade metal just outside the building. There were no weapons emplacements or defense shields anywhere that she could detect, either on the rim or on the island beneath her. Maybe C'baoth didn't think he needed anything so primitive as turbolasers to protect him.

Maybe he was right. Hunching herself over the control board, hair-trigger alert for any danger, Mara headed in.

She was nearly to the midpoint of the crater when the attack came, a sudden impact on the Skipray's underside that kicked the entire craft a few centimeters upward. The second impact came on the heels of the first, this one centered on the ventral fin and yawing the ship hard to starboard. The ship jolted a third time before Mara finally identified the weapon: not missiles or laser blasts, but small, fast-moving rocks, undetectable by most of the Skipray's sophisticated sensors.

The fourth impact knocked out the repulsorlifts, sending the Skipray falling out of the sky.