Heir to the Empire

C H A P T E R 24

“I must apologize for chasing you out like that,” Karrde said as he walked Han toward the central building. “Particularly in the middle of a meal. Not exactly the sort of hospitality we strive for here.”

“No problem,” Han told him, eyeing him as best he could in the gathering dusk. The light from the building ahead was casting a faint glow on Karrde’s face; with luck, it would be enough to read the other’s expression by. “What was that all about, anyway?”

“Nothing serious,” Karrde assured him easily. “Some people with whom I’ve had business dealings wanted to come and look the place over.”

“Ah,” Han said. “So you’re working directly for the Empire now?”

Karrde’s expression cracked, just a little. Han expected him to make some sort of reflexive denial; instead, he stopped and turned to look at Lando and Ghent, walking behind them. “Ghent?” he asked mildly.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the kid said, sounding miserable. “They insisted on coming out to see what was happening.”

“I see.” Karrde looked back at Han, his face calm again. “No harm done, probably. Not the wisest of risks to take, though.”

“I’m used to taking risks,” Han told him. “You haven’t answered my question.”

Karrde resumed walking. “If I’m not interested in working for the Republic, I’m certainly not interested in working for the Empire. The Imperials have been coming here for the past few weeks to collect ysalamiri—sessile creatures, like the ones hanging on to the tree in the greatroom. I offered my assistance in helping them safely remove the ysalamiri from their trees.”

“What did you get in return?”

“The privilege of watching them work,” Karrde said. “Giving me that much extra information to try to figure out what they wanted with the things.”

“And what did they want with them?”

Karrde glanced at Han. “Information costs money here, Solo. Actually, to be perfectly honest, we don’t know what they’re up to. We’re working on it, though.”

“I see. But you do know their commander personally.”

Karrde smiled faintly. “That’s information again.”

Han was starting to get sick of this. “Have it your way. What’ll this Grand Admiral’s name cost me?”

“For the moment, the name’s not for sale,” he told Han. “Perhaps we’ll talk about it later.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think there’s going to be a later,” Han growled, stopping. “If you don’t mind, we’ll just say our good-byes here and get back to the ship.”

Karrde turned to him in mild surprise. “You’re not going to finish our dinner? You hardly had a chance to get started.”

Han looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t especially like sitting on the ground like a practice target when there are stormtroopers wandering around,” he said bluntly.

Karrde’s face hardened. “At the moment, sitting on the ground is preferable to drawing attention in the air,” he said coldly. “The Star Destroyer hasn’t left orbit yet. Lifting off now would be an open invitation for them to swat you down.”

“The Falcon’s outrun Star Destroyers before,” Han countered. But Karrde had a point … and the fact that he hadn’t turned the two of them over to the Imperials probably meant that he could be trusted, at least for now. Probably.

On the other hand, if they did stay … “But I suppose it wouldn’t hurt us to stick around a little longer,” he conceded. “All right, sure, we’ll finish dinner.”

“Good,” Karrde said. “It will just take a few minutes to get things put back together.”

“You took everything apart?” Lando asked.

“Everything that might have indicated we had guests,” Karrde said. “The Grand Admiral is highly observant, and I wouldn’t have put it past him to know exactly how many of my associates are staying here at the moment.”

“Well, while you’re getting things ready,” Han said, “I want to go back to the ship and check on a couple of things.”

Karrde’s eyes narrowed slightly. “But you will be back.”

Han gave him an innocent smile. “Trust me.”

Karrde gazed at him a moment longer, then shrugged. “Very well. Watch yourselves, though. The local predators don’t normally come this close in to our encampment, but there are exceptions.”

“We’ll be careful,” Han promised. “Come on, Lando.”

They headed back the way they’d come. “So what did we forget to do back at the Falcon?” Lando asked quietly as they reached the trees.

“Nothing,” Han murmured back. “I just thought it’d be a good time to go check out Karrde’s storage sheds. Particularly the one that was supposed to have a prisoner in it.”

They went about five meters into the forest, then changed direction to circle the compound. A quarter of the way around the circle, they found a likely looking group of small buildings.

“Look for a door with a lock,” Lando suggested as they came out among the sheds. “Either permanent or temporary.”

“Right.” Han peered through the darkness. “That one over there—the one with two doors?”

“Could be,” Lando agreed. “Let’s take a look.”

The leftmost of the two doors did indeed have a lock. Or, rather, it had had a lock. “It’s been shot off,” Lando said, poking at it with a finger. “Strange.”

“Maybe the prisoner had friends,” Han suggested, glancing around. There was no one else in sight. “Let’s go inside.”

They slid the door open and went in, closing it behind them before turning on the light. The shed was less than half full, with most of the boxes piled against the right-hand wall. The exceptions to that rule …

Han stepped over for a closer look. “Well, well,” he murmured, gazing at the removed power outlet plate and the wires poking through the gap. “Someone’s been busy over here.”

“Someone’s been even busier over here,” Lando commented from behind him. “Come have a look.”

Lando was crouched down beside the door, peering into the inside of the door lock mechanism. Like the outside, half of its covering plate had been blasted off. “That must have been one beaut of a shot,” Han frowned, coming over.

“It wasn’t a single shot,” Lando said, shaking his head. “The stuff in between is mostly intact.” He pushed back the cover a little, poking at the electronics inside with his fingers. “Looks like our mysterious prisoner was tampering with the equipment.”

“I wonder how he got it open.” Han glanced back at the removed power plate. “I’m going to take a look next door,” he told Lando, stepping back to the entrance and tapping the release.

The door didn’t open. “Uh-oh,” he muttered, trying again.

“Wait a second—I see the problem,” Lando said, fiddling with something behind the plate. “There’s a power supply been half spliced into the works …”

Abruptly, the door slid open. “Back in a second,” Han told him, and slipped outside.

The shed’s right-hand room wasn’t much different from the other one. Except for one thing: in the center, in a space that had very obviously been cleared for the purpose, lay an open droid restraint collar.

Han frowned down at it. The collar hadn’t been properly put away, or even closed again—hardly the way someone in an organization like Karrde’s would be expected to take care of company equipment. Roughly in the center of the collar’s open jaws were three faint marks on the floor. Skid marks, he decided, formed by the restrained droid’s attempts to move or get free.

Behind him, the door whispered open. Han spun around, blaster in hand—

“You seem to have gotten lost,” Karrde said calmly. His eyes flicked around the room. “And to have lost General Calrissian along the way.”

Han lowered the blaster. “You need to tell your people to put their toys away when they’re done,” he said, nodding his head at the abandoned restraint collar. “You were holding a droid prisoner, too?”

Karrde smiled thinly. “I see Ghent was talking out of turn again. Amazing, isn’t it, how so many expert slicers know everything about computers and droids and yet don’t know when to keep their mouths shut.”

“It’s also amazing how so many expert smugglers don’t know when to leave a messy deal alone,” Han shot back. “So what’s your Grand Admiral got you doing? Formal slaving, or just random kidnappings?”

Karrde’s eyes flashed. “I don’t deal in slaves, Solo. Slaves or kidnapping. Never.”

“What was this one, then? An accident?”

“I didn’t ask for him to come into my life,” Karrde countered. “Nor did I especially want him there.”

Han snorted. “You’re stretching, Karrde. What’d he do, drop in out of the sky on top of you?”

“As a matter of fact, that’s very nearly the way it happened,” Karrde said stiffly.

“Oh, well, that’s a good reason to lock someone up,” Han said sardonically. “Who was he?”

“That information’s not for sale.”

“Maybe we don’t need to buy it,” Lando said from behind him.

Karrde turned. “Ah,” he said as Lando stepped past him into the room. “There you are. Exploring the other half of the shed, were you?”

“Yeah, we don’t stay lost very long,” Han assured him. “What’d you find, Lando?”

“This.” Lando held up a tiny red cylinder with a pair of wires coming out of each end. “It’s a micrel power supply—the kind used for low-draw applications. Our prisoner wired it into the door lock control after the power lines had been burned away—that’s how he got out.” He moved it a little closer. “The manufacturer’s logo is small, but readable. Recognize it?”

Han squinted at it. The script was alien, but it seemed vaguely familiar. “I’ve seen it before, but I don’t remember where.”

“You saw it during the war,” Lando told him, his gaze steady on Karrde. “It’s the logo of the Sibha Habadeet.”

Han stared at the tiny cylinder, a strange chill running through him. The Sibha Habadeet had been one of the Alliance’s major suppliers of micrel equipment. And their specialty had been—“That’s a bioelectronic power supply?”

“That’s right,” Lando said grimly. “Just like the kind that would have been put in, say, an artificial hand.”

Slowly, the muzzle of Han’s blaster came up again to point at Karrde’s stomach. “There was a droid in here,” he told Lando. “The skid marks on the floor look just about right for an R2 unit.” He raised his eyebrows. “Feel free to join the conversation anytime, Karrde.”

Karrde sighed, his face a mixture of annoyance and resignation. “What do you want me to say?—that Luke Skywalker was a prisoner here? All right—consider it said.”

Han felt his jaw tighten. And he and Lando had been right here. Blissfully unaware … “Where is he now?” he demanded.

“I thought Ghent would have told you,” Karrde said darkly. “He escaped in one of my Skipray blastboats.” His lips twisted. “Crashing it in the process.”

“He what?”

“He’s all right,” Karrde assured him. “Or at least he was a couple of hours ago. The stormtroopers who went to investigate said that both wrecks were deserted.” His eyes seemed to flatten, just for a minute. “I hope that means they’re working together to make their way out.”

“You don’t sound sure of that,” Han prompted.

The eyes flattened a little more. “Mara Jade was the one who went after him. She has a certain—well, why mince words. In point of fact, she wants very much to kill him.”

Han threw a startled glance at Lando. “Why?”

Karrde shook his head. “I don’t know.”

For a moment the room was silent. “How did he get here?” Lando asked.

“As I said, purely by accident,” Karrde said. “No—I take that back. It wasn’t an accident for Mara—she led us directly to his crippled starfighter.”

“How?”

“Again, I don’t know.” He fixed Han with a hard look. “And before you ask, we had nothing to do with the damage to his ship. He’d burned out both hyperdrive motivators tangling with one of the Empire’s Star Destroyers. If we hadn’t picked him up, he’d almost certainly be dead by now.”

“Instead of roaming a forest with someone who still wants him that way,” Han countered. “Yeah, you’re a real hero.”

The hard look hardened even further. “The Imperials want Skywalker, Solo. They want him very badly. If you look carefully, you’ll notice that I didn’t give him to them.”

“Because he escaped first.”

“He escaped because he was in this shed,” Karrde retorted. “And he was in this shed because I didn’t want the Imperials stumbling over him during their unannounced visit.”

He paused. “You’ll also notice,” he added quietly, “that I didn’t turn the two of you over to them, either.”

Slowly, Han lowered the blaster. Anything said at the point of a gun was of course suspect; but the fact that Karrde had indeed not betrayed them to the Imperials was a strong argument in his favor.

Or rather, he hadn’t betrayed them yet. That could always change. “I want to see Luke’s X-wing,” he told Karrde.

“Certainly,” Karrde said. “I’d recommend not going there until tomorrow morning, though. We moved it somewhat farther into the forest than your ship; and there will be predators roaming around it in the darkness.”

Han hesitated, then nodded. If Karrde had something subtle going here, he almost certainly would have already erased or altered the X-wing’s computer log. A few more hours wouldn’t make any difference. “All right. So what are we going to do about Luke?”

Karrde shook his head, his gaze not quite focused on Han. “There’s nothing we can do for them tonight. Not with vornskrs roaming the forest and the Grand Admiral still in orbit. Tomorrow … We’ll have to discuss it, see what we can come up with.” His focus came back, and with it a slightly ironic smile. “In the meantime, dinner should be ready by now. If you’ll follow me …?”¹

The dimly lit holographic art gallery had changed again, this time to a collection of remarkably similar flame-shaped works that seemed to pulsate and alter in form as Pellaeon moved carefully between the pedestals. He studied them as he walked, wondering where this batch had come from. “Have you found them, Captain?” Thrawn asked as Pellaeon reached the double display circle.

He braced himself. “I’m afraid not, sir. We’d hoped that with the arrival of local nightfall we’d be able to get some results from the infrared sensors. But they don’t seem able to penetrate the tree canopy, either.”

Thrawn nodded. “What about that pulse transmission we picked up just after sundown?”

“We were able to confirm that it originated from the approximate location of the crash site,” Pellaeon told him. “But it was too brief for a precise location check. The encrypt on it is a very strange one—Decrypt thinks it might be a type of counterpart coding. They’re still working on it.”

“They’ve tried all the known Rebellion encrypts, I presume.”

“Yes, sir, as per your orders.”

Thrawn nodded thoughtfully. “It looks like we’re at something of a stalemate, then, Captain. At least as long as they’re in the forest. Have you calculated their likely emergence points?”

“There’s really only one practical choice,” Pellaeon said, wondering why they were making so much of a fuss over this. “A town called Hyllyard City, on the edge of the forest and almost directly along their path. It’s the only population center anywhere for more than a hundred kilometers. With only the one survival pack between them, they almost have to come out there.”

“Excellent.” Thrawn nodded. “I want you to detail three squads of stormtroopers to set up an observation post there. They’re to assemble and depart ship immediately.”

Pellaeon blinked. “Stormtroopers, sir?”

“Stormtroopers,” Thrawn repeated, turning his gaze to one of the flame sculptures. “Better add half a biker scout unit, too, and three Chariot light assault vehicles.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said cautiously. Stormtroopers were in critically short supply these days. To waste them like this, on something so utterly unimportant as a smuggler squabble …

“Karrde lied to us, you see,” Thrawn continued, as if reading Pellaeon’s mind. “Whatever that little drama was this afternoon, it was not the common pursuit of a common thief. I’d like to know what, in fact, it was.”

“I … don’t think I follow, sir.”

“It’s very simple, Captain,” Thrawn said, in that tone of voice he always seemed to use when explaining the obvious. “The pilot of the chase vehicle never reported in during the pursuit. Nor did anyone from Karrde’s base communicate with him. We know that—we’d have intercepted any such transmissions. No progress reports; no assistance requests; nothing but complete radio silence.” He looked back at Pellaeon. “Speculation, Captain?”

“Whatever it was,” Pellaeon said slowly, “it was something they didn’t want us knowing about. Beyond that …” He shook his head. “I don’t know, sir. There could be any number of things they wouldn’t want outsiders to know about. They are smugglers, after all.”

“Agreed.” Thrawn’s eyes seemed to glitter. “But now consider the additional fact that Karrde refused our invitation to join in the search for Skywalker … and the fact that this afternoon he implied the search was over.” He raised an eyebrow. “What does that suggest to you, Captain?”

Pellaeon felt his jaw drop. “You mean … that was Skywalker in that Skipray?”

“An interesting speculation, isn’t it.” Thrawn agreed. “Unlikely, I’ll admit. But likely enough to be worth following up on.”

“Yes, sir.” Pellaeon glanced at the chrono, did a quick calculation. “Though if we stay here more than another day or two, we may have to move back the Sluis Van attack.”

“We’re not moving Sluis Van,” Thrawn said emphatically. “Our entire victory campaign against the Rebellion begins there, and I’ll not have so complex and far-reaching a schedule altered. Not for Skywalker; not for anyone else.” He nodded at the flame statues surrounding them. “Sluissi art clearly indicates a biannual cyclic pattern, and I want to hit them at their most sluggish point. We’ll leave for our rendezvous with the Inexorable and the cloaking shield test as soon as the troops and vehicles have been dropped. Three squads of stormtroopers should be adequate to handle Skywalker, if he is indeed here.”

His eyes bored into Pellaeon’s face. “And to handle Karrde,” he added softly, “if he turns out to be a traitor.”

The last bits of dark blue had faded from the tiny gaps in the canopy overhead, leaving nothing but blackness above them. Turning the survival kit’s worklight to its lowest setting, Mara set it down and sank gratefully to the ground against a large tree bole. Her right ankle, twisted somehow in the Skipray crash, had started to ache again, and it felt good to get the weight off it.

Skywalker was already stretched out a couple of meters on the other side of the worklight, his head pillowed on his tunic, his loyal droid standing at his side. She wondered if he’d guessed about the ankle, dismissed the question as irrelevant. She’d had worse injuries without being slowed down by them.

“Reminds me of Endor,” Skywalker said quietly as Mara arranged her glow rod and blaster in her lap where they’d be accessible. “A forest always sounds so busy at night.”

“Oh, it’s busy, all right,” Mara grunted. “A lot of the animals here are nocturnal. Including the vornskrs.”

“Strange,” he murmured. “Karrde’s pet vornskrs seemed wide enough awake in late afternoon.”

She looked across at him, mildly surprised he’d noticed that. “Actually, even in the wild they take small naps around the clock,” she said. “I call them nocturnal because they do most of their hunting at night.”

Skywalker mulled that over for a moment. “Maybe we ought to travel at night, then,” he suggested. “They’ll be hunting us either way—at least then we’d be awake and alert while they were on the prowl.”

Mara shook her head. “It’d be more trouble than it’s worth. We need to be able to see the terrain as far ahead of us as possible if we’re going to avoid running into dead ends. Besides, this whole forest is dotted with small clearings.”

“Through which a glow rod beam would show very clearly to an orbiting ship,” he conceded. “Point. You seem to know a lot about this place.”

“It wouldn’t take more than an observant pilot flying over the forest to see that,” she growled. But he was right, she knew, as she eased back against the rough bark. Know your territory was the first rule that had been drilled into her … and the first thing she’d done after establishing herself in Karrde’s organization had been to do precisely that. She’d studied the aerial maps of the forest and surrounding territory; had taken long walks, in both daylight and at night, to familiarize herself with the sights and sounds; had sought out and killed several vornskrs and other predators to learn the fastest ways of taking them down; had even talked one of Karrde’s people into running bio tests on a crateload of native plants to find out which were edible and which weren’t. Outside the forest, she knew something about the settlers, understood the local politics, and had stashed a small but adequate part of her earnings out where she could get hold of it.

More than anyone else in Karrde’s organization, she was equipped to survive outside the confines of his encampment. So why was she trying so hard to get back there?

It wasn’t for Karrde’s sake—that much she was sure of. All that he’d done for her—her job, her position, her promotions—she’d more than repaid with hard work and good service. She didn’t owe him anything, any more than he owed her. Whatever the story was he’d concocted this afternoon to explain the Skipray chase to Thrawn, it would have been designed to protect his own neck, not hers; and if he saw that the Grand Admiral wasn’t buying it, he was at perfect liberty to pull his group off Myrkr tonight and disappear down one of the other ratholes he had scattered throughout the galaxy.

Except that he wouldn’t. He would sit there, sending out search party after search party, and wait for Mara to come out of the forest. Even if she never did.

Even if by doing so he overstayed Thrawn’s patience.

Mara clenched her teeth, the unpleasant image of Karrde pinned against a cell wall by an interrogation droid dancing in front of her eyes. Because she knew Thrawn—knew the Grand Admiral’s tenacity and the limits of his patience both. He would wait and watch, or set someone to do it for him, and follow through on Karrde’s story.

And if neither she nor Skywalker ever reappeared from the forest, he would almost certainly jump to the wrong conclusion. At which point he would take Karrde in for a professional Imperial interrogation, and eventually would find out who the escaping prisoner had been.

And then he’d have Karrde put to death.

Across from her, the droid’s dome rotated a few degrees and it gave a quietly insistent gurgle. “I think Artoo’s picked up something,” Skywalker said, hiking himself up on his elbows.

“No kidding,” Mara said. She picked up her glow rod, pointed it at the shadow she’d already seen moving stealthily toward them, and flicked it on.

A vornskr stood framed in the circle of light, its front claws dug into the ground, its whip tail pointed stiffly back and waving slowly up and down. It paid no attention to the light, but continued moving slowly toward Skywalker.

Mara let it get another two paces, then shot it neatly through the head.

The beast collapsed to the ground, its tail giving one last spasmodic twitch before doing likewise. Mara gave the rest of the area a quick sweep with the glow rod, then flicked it off. “Awfully good thing we have your droid’s sensors along,” she said sarcastically into the relative darkness.

“Well, I wouldn’t have known there was any danger without him,” Skywalker came back wryly. “Thank you.”

“Forget it,” she grunted.

There was a short silence. “Are Karrde’s pet vornskrs a different species?” Skywalker asked. “Or did he have their tails removed?”

Mara peered across the gloom at him, impressed in spite of herself. Most men staring down a vornskr’s gullet wouldn’t have noticed a detail like that. “The latter,” she told him. “They use those tails as whips—pretty painful, and there’s a mild poison in them, too. At first it was just that Karrde didn’t want his people walking around with whip welts all over them; we found out later that removing the tails also kills a lot of their normal hunting aggression.”

“They seemed pretty domestic,” he agreed. “Even friendly.”

Only they hadn’t been friendly to Skywalker, she remembered. And here, the vornskr had ignored her and gone directly for him. Coincidence? “They are,” she said aloud. “He’s thought occasionally about offering them for sale as guard animals. Never gotten around to exploring the potential market.”

“Well, you can tell him I’d be glad to serve as a reference,” Skywalker said dryly. “Having looked a vornskr square in the teeth, I can tell you it’s not something the average intruder would like to do twice.”

Her lip twisted. “Get used to it,” she advised him. “It’s a long way to the edge of the forest.”

“I know.” Skywalker lay back down again. “Fortunately, you seem to be an excellent shot.”

He fell silent. Getting ready to sleep … and probably assuming she was going to do the same.

Wish away, she thought sardonically at him. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the survival kit’s tube of stimpills. A steady stream of the things could ruin one’s health in short order, but going to sleep five meters away from an enemy would ruin it a lot faster.

She paused, tube in hand, and frowned at Skywalker. At his closed eyes and calm, apparently totally unworried face. Which seemed strange, because if anyone had ever had reason to be worried, it was he. Stripped of all his vaunted Jedi powers by a planetful of ysalamiri, trapped in a forest on a world whose name and location he didn’t even know, with her, the Imperials, and the vornskrs lining up for the privilege of killing him—he should by rights be wide-eyed with pumping adrenaline by now.

Maybe he was just faking it, hoping she would lower her guard. It was probably something she would try, under reversed circumstances.

But then, maybe there was more to him than met the eye. More than just a family name, a political position, and a bag of Jedi tricks.

Her mouth tightened, and she ran her fingers along the side of the lightsaber hanging from her belt. Yes, of course there was more there. Whatever had happened at the end—at that terrible, confused, life-destroying end—it hadn’t been his Jedi tricks that had saved him. It had been something else. Something she would make sure to find out from him before his own end came.

She thumbed a stimpill from the tube and swallowed it, a fresh determination surging through her as she did so. No, the vornskrs weren’t going to get Luke Skywalker. And neither were the Imperials. When the time came, she would kill him herself. It was her right, and her privilege, and her duty.

Shifting to a more comfortable position against her tree, she settled in to wait out the night.

The nighttime sounds of the forest came faintly from the distance, mixed in with the faint sounds of civilization from the building at his back. Karrde sipped at his cup, gazing into the darkness, feeling fatigue tugging at him as he’d seldom felt it before.

In a single day, his whole life had just been turned over.

Beside him, Drang raised his head and turned it to the right. “Company?” Karrde asked him, looking in that direction. A shadowy figure, hardly visible in the starlight, was moving toward him. “Karrde?” Aves’s voice called softly.

“Over here,” Karrde told him. “Go get a chair and join me.”

“This is okay,” Aves said, coming over beside him and sitting down cross-legged on the ground. “I’ve got to get back to Central pretty soon, anyway.”

“The mystery message?”

“Yeah. What in the worlds was Mara thinking of?”

“I don’t know,” Karrde admitted. “Something clever, though.”

“Probably,” Aves conceded. “I just hope we’re going to be clever enough to decrypt it.”

Karrde nodded. “Did Solo and Calrissian get bedded down all right?”

“They went back to their ship,” Aves said, his voice scowling. “I don’t think they trust us.”

“Under the circumstances, you can hardly blame them.” Karrde reached down to scratch Drang’s head. “Maybe pulling Skywalker’s computer logs tomorrow morning will help convince them we’re on their side.”

“Yeah. Are we?”

Karrde pursed his lips. “We don’t really have a choice anymore, Aves. They’re our guests.”

Aves umphed. “The Grand Admiral isn’t going to be happy.”

Karrde shrugged. “They’re our guests,” he repeated.

In the darkness, he sensed Aves shrug back. He understood, Aves did—understood the requirements and duties of a host. Unlike Mara, who’d wanted him to send the Millennium Falcon away.

He wished now that he’d listened to her. Wished it very much indeed.

“I’ll want you to organize a search party for tomorrow morning,” he told Aves. “Probably futile, all things considered, but it has to be tried.”

“Right. Do we defer to the Imperials in that regard?”

Karrde grimaced to himself. “I doubt if they’ll be doing any more searching. That ship that sneaked out from the Star Destroyer an hour ago looked suspiciously like a stripped-down assault shuttle. My guess is that they’ll set up in Hyllyard City and wait for Mara and Skywalker to come to them.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Aves said. “What if we don’t get to them first?”

“We’ll just have to take them away from the stormtroopers, I suppose. Think you can put a team together for the purpose?”

Aves snorted gently. “Easier done than said. I’ve sat in on a couple of conversations since you made the announcement, and I can tell you that feelings in camp are running pretty strong. Hero of the Rebellion and all that aside, a bunch of our people figure they owe Skywalker big for getting them out of permanent hock to Jabba the Hutt.”²

“I know,” Karrde said grimly. “And all that warm enthusiasm could be a problem. Because if we can’t get Skywalker free from the Imperials … well, we can’t let them have him alive.”

There was a long silence from the shadow beside him. “I see,” Aves said at last, very quietly. “It probably won’t make any difference, you know, in what Thrawn suspects.”

“Suspicion is better than unequivocal proof,” Karrde reminded him. “And if we can’t intercept them while they’re still in the forest, it may be the best we’re going to get.”

Aves shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I. But we need to be prepared for every eventuality.”

“Understood.” For another moment Aves sat there in silence. Then, with a grunted sigh, he stood up. “I’d better get back, see if Ghent’s made any progress on Mara’s message.”

“And after that you’d better hit the sack,” Karrde told him. “Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.”

“Right. Good night.”

Aves left, and once again the soft mixture of forest sounds filled the night air. Sounds that meant a great deal to the creatures who made them but nothing at all to him.

Meaningless sounds …

He shook his head tiredly. What had Mara been trying to do with that opaque message of hers? Was it something simple—something that he or someone else here ought to be able to decrypt with ease?

Or had the lady who always played the sabacc cards close to her chest finally outsmarted herself?

In the distance, a vornskr emitted its distinctive cackle/purr. Beside his chair, Drang lifted his head. “Friend of yours?” Karrde inquired mildly, listening as another vornskr echoed the first’s cry. Sturm and Drang had been wild like that once, before they’d been domesticated.

Just like Mara had been, when he’d first taken her in. He wondered if she would ever be similarly tamed.

Wondered if she would solve this whole problem by killing Skywalker first.

The cackle/purr came again, closer this time. “Come on, Drang,” he told the vornskr, getting to his feet. “Time to go inside.”

He paused at the door to take one last look at the forest, a shiver of melancholy and something that felt disturbingly like fear running through him. No, the Grand Admiral wasn’t going to be happy about this. Wasn’t going to be happy at all.

And one way or the other, Karrde knew that his life here was at an end.