Vision of the future

CHAPTER

22

The conversation—or at least the part Karoly had been able to hear through the half-open door—had been short, sharp, and unpleasant.

And very enlightening. The Cavrilhu Pirates, allied with the Empire?

On one level, she supposed, it wasn't that much of a revelation, particularly not after that overheard conversation between Solo and Calrissian. Imperials had been doing under-the-board business with the dregs of the fringe for years, after all, from that accursed murderer Palpatine's cozy relationship with Prince Xizor on down. Now that the vast, star-spanning Empire had been reduced to a pitiful handful of sectors, all the more reason they would have to hire out some of their dirty work. But on another level, this was indeed something new. Zothip hadn't been talking to Moff Disra as a hireling would to his master, but as a full equal. A very unhappy equal, moreover, if the pirate chief's tone and streams of invective were any indication.

Even more interesting, given Zothip's veiled threats to go public, it would also appear that this arrangement was neither sanctioned by nor even known to the rest of the Imperial leadership. Karoly had originally followed Zothip with the idea of exacting revenge against the pirates for their part in the Lorardian slaughter three years ago. Now, she had stumbled on something far more interesting.

"You think he'll come?" one of the pirates' voices intruded on Karoly's musings.

" 'Course he will," Zothip grunted. "You think he wants us announcing our deal on the all-Bastion comm broadcast frequency?"

"He won't be coming alone," Control's voice warned. "He'll have guards with him."

"Not many of 'em," Zothip said. "There aren't a lot of people that slug trusts."

"A hidden backup might still be a good idea," Control said, and Karoly could hear the verbal nudging in his tone. "Just in case."

"Oh, all right," Zothip conceded with ill grace. "Crans, Portin—go get back in the passageway. If I whistle, come out and kill everything that's not us."

There was a pair of acknowledgments and the sound of approaching footsteps. Moving with considerably less noise, Karoly retreated around the slight bend in the passageway. The dim light increased as the pirates pulled open the door, decreased again as they partially closed it down. And she now had a decision to make. Back here, four meters behind the two hidden pirates and their mutterings, she wouldn't be able to hear the upcoming conversation between Zothip and Disra the way she'd like to. Moreover, the thought of even an Imperial Moff getting ambushed by the likes of the Cavrilhu Pirates did not sit well with her.

She smiled tightly in the darkness at the irony of the situation. It was precisely the same thing Shada had objected to back on that windswept rooftop on Borcorash five weeks ago, and the reason Karoly was even here.

But the deep philosophical considerations could wait till another day. In the meantime, the Cavrilhu Pirates owed a death debt to the Mistryl... and the first installment would be collected right here and now. Putting her blaster away, Karoly drew a pair of slender knives and moved silently forward.

Crans and Portin, crouched side by side behind the partially open door, whispering and chuckling to each other in grim anticipation of the carnage to come, never even heard her coming. It was another minute's work to quietly drag the bodies a few meters back in the passageway where they'd be out from underfoot. Then, returning to the partially open door, she crouched down and eased the tip of one of her knives along the thick carpet into the room. The image reflected in the metal was small and somewhat distorted, but Karoly had done this a thousand times before and knew how to read it. As she'd expected, Zothip and his three remaining men were all facing the ornate door set into the right-hand wall. Zothip was seated rather arrogantly at the Moff's computer desk, the others slouched against walls or pieces of furniture at various other places around the room. All were fingering blaster butts or rubbing gun hands in preparation; all were well clear of her line of fire and the ambush they still thought was set up. She was just working through her likely attack plan, should it come to that, when there was the soft click of a lock from across the room. Instantly, the pirates' muttered conversation ceased. The door swung open, and two men stepped inside.

The one on the right was Moff Disra; that much was obvious from his age and his robe of office and the arrogant hauteur with which he strode into the room. The second man, on Disra's right, dressed in an Imperial uniform—

Karoly felt her breath catch in her throat, an unpleasant tingling on the back of her neck. The second man was a warrior.

Not a soldier: a warrior. She could see it in his stance, in his walk, in the way he held his hands, in the way his eyes took in the situation in front of him.

Control had warned that Disra would bring guards with him. Dimly, Karoly wondered if any of the pirates was capable of recognizing the warrior beneath the uniform.

Zothip himself, apparently, could not. "Took your own sweet time getting here," he growled as the warrior swung the door closed. "Who's the nerf?"

"Get out of my chair," Disra growled back, ignoring the question and gesturing irritably at the lounging pirate chief.

"I'm doing the talking here, Disra," Zothip said, making no move to vacate the chair. "Wait a minute—I know you," he added, leveling a finger at the warrior. "Yeah—you're the snotter who pulled all my advisers out on me. You rotten, rark-eating sovler."

Karoly winced, half expecting sudden death to be the warrior's response to the insult. But he wasn't so easily provoked. "That's right," he said, his voice glacially calm. "I'm Major Tierce. And as I explained at the time, the Empire had a more pressing need for their services."

"So you just upped and pulled them, huh?" Zothip countered, his voice darkening. "Well, maybe that's how you Imperial dreg-sifters do things. But that's not how it's done in the fringe. You make a deal, you stick with it." He leveled his finger again. "Or you get to spend your last couple of minutes of life regretting it."

"I thought that in the fringe you also didn't lose your nerve," Disra put in disdainfully. "Did Pellaeon scare you that badly?"

"Never mind Pellaeon," Zothip bit out. "I'll deal with him later. Right now you're the one in the hot circle. Starting with full compensation for my battlecruiser and the eight hundred men who died with it."

"Apparently, he has lost his nerve, Your Excellency," Tierce said. "The sabacc pot's grown too big for his taste, and he wants out."

Zothip snorted. "Words. That's all it is with you, Disra. Words and promises, and we end up doing all the work and all the dying. But not anymore. I figure twenty million ought to cover it—"

"Suppose we can show you we have more than words," Tierce interrupted, an edge of challenge to his voice. "Suppose we can give you proof that the Empire is once again on the rise, and that this time there will be no stopping us. Would you still want to quit?"

Zothip laughed, a thoroughly humorless sound. "Proof, huh? If you think anything you've got can—"

He broke off as behind Disra and Tierce the door again swung open. One of the pirates half drew his blaster—

"Good afternoon, Captain Zothip," the white-uniformed figure said calmly as he stepped into the room. "Permit me to introduce myself. I'm Grand Admiral Thrawn."

* * *

It took Commander Dreyf less than a minute to locate the secret drawer hidden away beneath the ivrooy desk's writing surface. It took only two minutes longer, with the help of some rather illegal tools, for him to force it open.

Inside were eight datacards. Three of them carried the labels of official governmental briefings: one from the Ubiqtorate, the other two from Fleet Intelligence.

But the other five...

"Make copies of them," Pellaeon ordered as Dreyf slid one of the unlabeled datacards into his datapad. "All of them, even the official ones. We'll see what the Chimaera's decrypt section can do with them."

"Let me try something first, if I may, sir," Dreyf said, pulling a datacard from his pocket and inserting it into his datapad's auxiliary slot. "One of the little extras that fell out of my backcheck of Lord Graemon's finances was the encrypt he was using to communicate back to Bastion. Let's see if Disra was careless or overconfident enough to use the same one here... Well, well. Our clever little Moff seems to have missed a bet."

He smiled tightly at Pellaeon. "It's here, Admiral. It's all here." Pellaeon stepped to his side and looked over his shoulder. It was there, all right: names, dates, amounts, details of the various transactions. Everything. "You'll be able to link this with Graemon's end of the operation?" he asked.

"Easily," Dreyf assured him, still scrolling through the files. "Disra was even kind enough to supply dates on everything. All I really need to do—"

"Wait," Pellaeon cut him off, slapping fingertips at the other's arm. Something had caught his eye as it went past. "Back up a few files. No, try one more. One more." And there it was: the name Pellaeon had spotted going past. The name, current location, imprisonment order—

"Colonel Meizh Vermel," Dreyf read, frowning. "Isn't he one of your aides, Admiral?"

"He is indeed," Pellaeon said, his satisfaction with the catch they'd just made vanishing suddenly into the haze of dark fury. "He vanished while on a special mission for me."

"Did he, now," Dreyf said, his own voice darkening. "So Disra's branched out into kidnapping now, has he?"

"Only on special occasions," Pellaeon said, looking at the hidden drawer. Dreyf had done an efficient job of forcing the lock, but there was no way the damage could be covered up. The minute Disra opened the drawer again he would know someone had been in there.

And Pellaeon came to a decision. "Never mind copying them," he said, gathering up the datacards. "We'll take the originals."

Dreyf blinked. "Sir? But—"

"And we're leaving," Pellaeon added, looking over at one of the troopers guarding the door.

"Signal the Chimaera," he ordered. "Captain Ardiff is to prepare for departure as soon as I'm aboard. Then call Lieutenant Marshian at the shuttle and tell him we're on our way."

"Yes, sir." The trooper pulled out his comlink.

"What about Disra?" Dreyf asked. "We haven't settled with him yet."

"Disra will keep," Pellaeon said grimly. "Right now, my main concern is to get Vermel free before Disra decides he's a liability."

"You'll be going yourself?"

"Yes," Pellaeon said, sliding the hidden drawer closed. "Depending on how Disra's set up the imprisonment order, it may take my personal authority as Supreme Commander to get him out. Besides, at this point I don't trust anyone off the Chimaera not to be in Disra's pocket."

"Or in Thrawn's?" Dreyf murmured.

Pellaeon grimaced. "If Thrawn is indeed alive," he said. "Regardless, I'm going."

"It could be tricky," Dreyf warned, dropping into step beside Pellaeon as they headed for the double doors. "Rimcee Station is a couple days' flight away. Disra's certainly going to miss these datacards before then."

"Don't worry, I have a few tricks of my own available," Pellaeon said. "Trooper?"

"Lieutenant Marshian reports the shuttle will be ready to fly when we arrive, sir," the trooper reported. "Captain Ardiff reports likewise for the Chimaera."

"Good," Pellaeon said, motioning the troopers to open the doors. "Then let's not keep them waiting."

* * *

For a few seconds the room was utterly quiet. The silence of a cave, or a forest, or a tomb. Disra let the stillness linger, thoroughly enjoying the look of stunned disbelief on Zothip's face. It was high time the cocky, slime-eating pirate ran face-first into something his noise and bluster couldn't handle. He would have liked to see the consternation last a little longer. But for reasons known only to himself, the con man chose to break the spell. "You seem surprised by my presence here," he said, his smooth Thrawn voice as absolutely perfect as the silence had been. "I can only conclude you haven't been paying attention to the news coming out of Coruscant."

For a moment Zothip's mouth worked silently, the movement amplified grotesquely by the bushy beard, before he finally found his voice. "No, I heard you were back," he said at last, the words coming out with some difficulty. The sound of his voice seemed to embolden him. "I just didn't believe it, that's all," he added, straightening his shoulders.

"Why not?"

Zothip's eyes darted to one of his men, as if reassuring him that he was the one in control here.

"Because I figured anyone who'd gotten away from this slime-hole of an Empire wouldn't be stupid enough to come back," he said, his voice suddenly aggressive again. On Thrawn's other side, Tierce stirred. But Thrawn merely smiled. "Not bad," he said. "A bit slow, but otherwise not bad at all."

Zothip's eyebrows pressed together. "What are you talking about?"

"The Empire is poised to rise again," Thrawn said, crossing in front of Disra as he gave each of the other three pirates a brief, measuring look. "And while we certainly do not need allies, we are also not averse to having them."

One of the pirates, standing behind Zothip and a little ways toward the right-hand wall, snorted in a refined sort of way. "Is that how you think of us?" he demanded, folding his arms across his chest.

"As allies?"

"Control's right," Zothip seconded, jerking a thumb back at the other. "You give the orders and pull the profits while we do the dirty work. What kind of ally is that?"

"The kind of ally who stands to gain position beyond his wildest dreams," Thrawn said, his voice cooling noticeably. "Position, power, and the wealth to buy and sell whole systems."

"And when is all this supposed to happen?" Control put in. He was, Disra noted with a touch of uneasiness, drifting slowly away from Zothip toward the wall. As if distancing himself from his boss in preparation for some kind of action...

Tierce saw it, too. Out of the corner of his eye Disra saw the Guardsman take a quiet step that same direction, maintaining his same distance from Control as he simultaneously moved closer to the other pirate leaning against the wall to Zothip's left.

Which left only the pirate standing at Zothip's right out of the Guardsman's quick reach. Disra glanced furtively that direction, hoping Tierce hadn't forgotten about him.

"Quite soon," Thrawn assured him. "Most of the pieces are already prepared and in position. Those which aren't will be soon."

"Those pieces being your other allies?" Control suggested. "Is that how you see us? As pieces in a game?"

"I don't like being called anyone's game piece," Zothip growled before Thrawn could reply.

"We're the Cavrilhu Pirates. We don't play any games but our own." He broke off at a twitter from the computer desk. "You expecting a call?" he asked sarcastically. Disra ignored the comment, stepping forward and keying the comm as he swiveled the display around to face him. "Yes?"

It was the lieutenant in the situation room... and from the look on his face Disra could tell it wasn't good news. "Your Excellency, we have a problem," the other said tautly. "The spies appear to have slipped out of the net."

Disra bit back a curse. "How?"

"They used droids from a shop to blanket the Verpine biocomm frequencies," the lieutenant said, sounding disgusted. "By the time we located the shop and shut off the transmissions, they'd made it out of range of our echo detectors. Is Grand Admiral Thrawn there with you?"

"Yes," Thrawn said, stepping to Disra's side. "I'll be there shortly. In the meantime, disperse your echo detectors into a grid pattern to both sides of their last location and see if you can pick them up again."

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said.

Disra blanked the display, throwing a quick glare at Tierce. He should never, ever have let himself be talked into this confrontation with Zothip while Solo and Calrissian were still on the loose. "We'd better get back," he said, looking at Thrawn.

"So what, you're just going to leave us here?" Control asked. He had backed away another step from Zothip, his arms still folded across his chest.

"Don't be absurd," Disra snapped, suddenly very tired of Zothip and his pirates. "You don't want to be on the winning side? Fine—there are plenty who do. Major Tierce, call for an escort to show our visitors out."

"You hold it right there," Zothip rumbled, heaving his bulk out of the chair and dropping his hand to his blaster. "We'll leave when I've got my twenty million. Now fork it over or else."

"Or else what?" Disra demanded. "You ungrateful, slimy—"

"That's it," Zothip snarled. Lifting a finger to his mouth, he blew a piercing whistle. The two pirates on either side of him grabbed for their blasters—

And Tierce moved.

The pirate nearest to the Guardsman never even got his blaster clear of its holster before Tierce was on him. A short jab—a blurred movement of hands—a muffled snap of bone—and the pirate crumpled to the carpet like an empty sack. There was a startled curse from his compatriot across at Zothip's right; but even as Disra turned his head to look, there was a whisper of movement from Tierce's direction and the hilt of a knife sprouted suddenly in the man's chest. A knife that joined the one already sticking out of his neck.

Disra caught his breath, his eyes darting away from the pirate to the tall, slender woman who had suddenly appeared in the room by the hidden doorway. Her hand twitched, there was a flicker of reflected light—

And Zothip gasped with pain, lurching forward directly into the devastating kick Tierce had thrown at his stomach. Another agonized gasp as the kick connected, and the pirate chief sprawled with a thud over the computer desk, his blaster flying out of a suddenly limp hand to land on the floor. And Disra found himself staring at the knife hilt that had appeared in the center of Zothip's back. A gift, obviously, from the woman.

He looked up at her as she walked quietly to the desk, ignoring the three Imperials. Gripping Zothip's beard, she turned his dulled eyes up to face her. "That was for Lorardian," she said, her voice quiet but bitter.

Zothip's mouth moved once, but no sound came out. The dull eyes became duller, and closed, and as the woman let go of his beard he sagged once more and lay still.

Again a silence descended on the room. And once again, Thrawn was the one who broke it.

"Nicely done," he said. "Thank you for your assistance."

"Not that I needed it," Tierce put in tautly. Disra glanced at him, noting with some surprise that the Guardsman had produced a small blaster from somewhere and had it trained on the woman. "Who are you?"

She looked up from Zothip's body, her eyes dark and slightly contemptuous as she looked Tierce up and down. "Apparently, not all your people are as appreciative as you are, Admiral Thrawn," she said, ignoring the Guardsman's question.

"You'll have to forgive Major Tierce," Thrawn said soothingly. "My safety is one of his primary concerns, a responsibility he takes very seriously. But he doesn't understand you the way I do." He waved toward Tierce's blaster. "You may put the weapon away, Major. The Mistryl shadow guards do not kill casually or without cause."

Disra suddenly felt cold. A Mistryl shadow guard? Here in his palace?

The woman blinked, obviously taken aback by Thrawn's revelation of her identity. "How did you know who I was?" she demanded, her eyes narrowing.

"Come now," Thrawn said, mildly reproving as he waved a languid hand around at the carnage.

"After that demonstration of your combat skills, who else could you be but a Mistryl? And of course, there was your reference to Lorardian," he added, his voice softening. "My condolences on that."

"Thank you," she said, almost reluctantly tilting her head in acknowledgment. "I didn't think anyone else knew or cared what happened there."

"Information is part of my job," Thrawn said.

"I suppose so." The woman nodded to her left. "What are you planning to do with the leftovers?"

"I don't know yet," Thrawn said. "Tell me, Control: what shall we do with you?" Disra shifted his gaze away from the woman, suddenly and belatedly realizing that the last pirate had indeed not been accounted for.

And with good reason. Control was standing perfectly still in the spot where he'd been when the fight began, his hands held open and empty in front of him, his blaster still in its holster. Yet on his face was not fear or anger, but cool contemplation of the scene. "My congratulations to you, Admiral," he said, nodding at Thrawn and then at Tierce. "And to you, Major. I was expecting stormtroopers in hidden wall niches. Your way was much more subtle and equally effective." He turned his head to look at the woman. "Your appearance, on the other hand, was completely unexpected. I gather you sneaked in behind us. I'd give a great deal to know how you did that."

"The only thing the Mistryl have to offer the Cavrilhu Pirates is death," she countered coldly. "Give me a reason why I shouldn't start with you."

Control shrugged; but Disra could tell he wasn't quite as calm as he was trying to let on. "Because you've already avenged the Mistryl deaths at Lorardian," he said. "Zothip was the one who forced the issue there. There was nothing any of the rest of us could do about it." He turned his eyes back to Disra. "Just as he was also the one demanding revenge on you and Admiral Pellaeon for the fiasco at Pesitiin, Your Excellency," he added. "I'd like to suggest that all such unpleasantries can and should be put behind us."

Tierce snorted something under his breath. "Certainly the courageous one, isn't he?"

"You miss the point, Major," Disra said, smiling at Control. Suddenly, it was all making sense.

"Control here isn't scrabbling around desperately trying to save his skin. He had this whole confrontation mapped out right from the start."

The Mistryl frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that he decided he was tired of being second in line," Disra told her, watching Control closely. The slight, knowing smile on the other's lips was all the proof he needed that he had hit it precisely. "All of it was pure politics."

"It was more than just politics, Your Excellency," Control said. "Zothip had mouth and bluster; but he didn't have the brains to run an organization as large as ours. For years now I've been the one who's been holding it all together. It's high time I took over the perks as well as the work."

"How convenient that we've cleared the path for you," Thrawn said. "Is there anything more you want from us?"

"For starters, I'd like to leave here alive," Control said, giving each of the Imperials a smile that managed to be smug and ingratiating at the same time. "Other than that—" He hesitated. "Zothip was right about our arrangement with Moff Disra," he said, turning his attention to Thrawn. "We made out pretty good, but we were also taking too many of the risks. Besides that, the New Republic seems to be on to us now. I think it's time we bowed out."

"Then you forfeit your chance to share in the division of the galaxy at the Empire's victory," Disra warned, wondering why he was even bothering to try to talk Control into this. Certainly he didn't really care if the Cavrilhu Pirates walked or not.

He needn't have worried. "We'll take our chances," Control said. "You may be a genius, Admiral, but frankly I don't think even you can pull it off."

"As you wish," Thrawn said. "You will, of course, still keep the Preybird production line operating."

"We'll keep it running," Control promised. "In fact, I'll give you our interest in the whole operation as a welcome-back present."

He smirked, but in Disra's eyes the expression rang just a little bit hollow. "And as a token of our past association with the Empire, and of our friendly parting of the ways."

"Of course," Thrawn said, giving him a knowing smile in return. "And just in case you're wrong about the extent of my genius?"

The smirk twitched and vanished. "A lot of fringe groups got caught in the middle the last time you went up against the New Republic, Admiral," he said. "I'd rather the Cavrilhu Pirates not wind up in that position."

"I think that can be avoided," Thrawn agreed. "Certainly as long as the Preybirds continue to be delivered."

"You've got a deal," Control said, his eyes flicking to the Mistryl as he cautiously lowered his arms. "If that's all, then, I have an organization to restructure. Good luck to you, Admiral."

"And to you, Captain Control," Thrawn replied, inclining his head slightly. "I don't expect to see you or any of your pirates in Imperial space again."

Control swallowed visibly. "No, sir," he said as he backed toward the door to the secret passageway. "You won't."

He slipped into the doorway and vanished. "I hope letting him go was the right thing to do," Disra muttered. Pellaeon was at the other end of that passageway, and they only had Control's word that he wasn't interested in revenge.

"Don't worry," Thrawn assured him. "As you already pointed out, he put a great deal of time and thought into maneuvering Zothip here this way. No, he'll head directly back to his ship with his tale of woe, and that will be that."

"What about her?" Tierce asked, nodding at the woman. He had lowered his blaster as ordered, but was still holding it ready at his side. "She did come in with them."

"I came in behind them," the woman corrected. "I overheard a comment about clones and pirate arrangements with the Empire and—"

"Clones?" Disra cut her off. "Who was talking about clones?" She regarded him coolly. "A couple of New Republic agents named Han Solo and Lando Calrissian," she said. "You may have heard of them."

"I believe we have, yes," Thrawn said with an easy smile. "Actually, we're trying to make contact with them at the moment."

Her lip twitched. "I'll bet you are."

"But more interesting to me," Thrawn continued, "would be to hear your response to the offer I made to you a few minutes ago."

She frowned. "What offer?"

"Don't you remember?" Thrawn asked. "I pointed out that your recovery to my appearance had been a bit slow, but otherwise not bad. I then spoke of the Empire's wish to acquire allies." Her forehead furrowed. "What are you talking about?" she demanded. "You made that offer to Zothip, not me. You didn't even know I was there."

"On the contrary," Thrawn said quietly. "I knew full well you were there. And if you'll think back to my offer, you may notice that I never mentioned either Zothip or his pirates." She stared at him, her face struggling as she obviously tried to sort out whether he was being truthful or feeding her a load of lies. Flim weaving yet another of his spells... and even with the audience prejudiced against him, it appeared to be working.

But right now Disra didn't have time to enjoy the show. "I'm sure you and the lady have a great deal to discuss, Admiral," he murmured, taking a step back toward the door. "If you'll excuse me, though, I need to get back to Admiral Pellaeon."

"Certainly, Your Excellency," Thrawn said, dismissing him with a wave of his hand. "Perhaps we'll move to another room to continue our discussion." He lifted an eyebrow at the woman. "Assuming, that is, you're interested in what my new Empire has to offer the Mistryl."

"We've never worked for the Empire before," the woman said cautiously as Disra stepped to the door and pulled it open.

"That was Palpatine's Empire," Thrawn reminded her. "The Empire I propose to rebuild—" The rest of the sales pitch was lost as Disra closed the door behind him and hurried down the corridors. The secret passageway would have been faster; but Pellaeon didn't know about that, and Disra would just as soon it be kept secret. Switching corridors, rounding the last corner, he headed down the main hallway toward the door guards. "Has Admiral Pellaeon asked about me?" he asked as the guards saluted and stepped aside.

"No, Your Excellency," one of them said as the double doors began to swing open. "Actually, he's already left."

Disra came to an abrupt stop. "What do you mean, he's left?" he echoed, peering in through the opening doors. The office was indeed empty. "Where did he go?"

"He didn't say, Your Excellency," the guard said.

Disra stepped into the office, frowning around the room as the doors closed behind him. This made no sense. Why would Pellaeon and that slinker Dreyf just leave? Surely they hadn't simply decided to let him off the hook.

His eyes fell on his desk...

He was around the side of the desk in five quick strides, swearing the whole way, feeling a clammy sweat breaking out on his face. No. They couldn't have.

But they had. The hidden desk drawer had been forced open.

And the datacards were gone.

CHAPTER

23

Disra's groping hand found the comm switch. "Tierce, get in here," he managed, his voice sounding odd through the pounding of his heart in his ears. "Now." He switched the comm to the guards outside. "When did Pellaeon leave?" he demanded.

"Five or six minutes ago, Your Excellency," the voice came back. Which meant he would be out of the palace by now and headed for the spaceport, with the Capital Security forces who could have intercepted him dispersed uselessly around the city in their hunt for Solo and Calrissian. Disra ground his teeth together, a vision of the grand scheme he'd worked so hard to create collapsing in front of his eyes. Everything was on those datacards—

everything. Encrypted, of course; but if Pellaeon was able to decrypt them... And then another, even more awful thought jabbed up under his heart. Colonel Vermel, hidden away in a quiet little detention cell on Rimcee Station...

It took nearly a minute to get the long-range comm keyed through the various relays to the Rimcee system. And when he did...

Across the room, the secret door opened and Tierce stepped into the office. "We have them," he announced with grim satisfaction. "Their ship's in Docking Bay 155—"

"Pellaeon's got the datacards," Disra cut him off viciously.

"What?" Tierce demanded, picking up his pace.

"The datacards, fool," Disra snarled. "The Vengeance scheme, our arrangement with Zothip's pirates, names and details of the industrial/financial web I've been using—everything." Tierce hissed between his teeth, throwing a look at the empty drawer. "Incredible," he said, almost as if talking to himself. "He actually broke into your private records. I would never have thought him capable of doing that. It must have been Dreyf's idea."

"We can get the details at the trial," Disra snapped. "Forget whose idea it was. What are we going to do?"

"What do we have to do?" Tierce said with a shrug. "They're encrypted, aren't they? By the time Pellaeon decrypts them—"

"He already has," Disra cut him off. "At least well enough. He knows Vermel's at Rimcee Station." Tierce's face hardened. "How do you know?"

"Because I just tried to get through to them," Disra gritted. "Pellaeon's had all transmissions to the entire system blocked off."

Tierce threw a dark look at the blank comm display. "Fast work," he murmured. "Very good, Admiral."

"Never mind that," Disra snapped, almost shaking with fear and rage and frustration. Didn't Tierce understand the whole plan was about to collapse on top of them? "We've got to stop him. We've got to pull Vermel out before Pellaeon gets there—"

"No," Tierce said, his voice suddenly decisive. "What we have to do is catch Solo and Calrissian before they get to their ship and have our Grand Admiral put on a show for them."

"Are you insane?" Disra snarled. "To Kessel with Solo—this is my neck we're talking about!"

"Calm down, Disra," Tierce said, his voice like a slap of cold water in the Moff's face. "Whatever Pellaeon's got doesn't matter. You understand? It doesn't matter. We have the ultimate clear-card: Grand Admiral Thrawn. All he has to do is take command and declare everything we've done to have been at his direction. Now snap out of it."

Disra took a shuddering breath, glaring at Tierce in silent, impotent fury. Silent fury that the Guardsman was dismissing so casually all the years Disra had put into this project. Impotent fury because he was right. "Fine," he choked out. "So we forget Pellaeon. What do we do instead?"

"You weren't listening," Tierce said, his eyes still narrowed as he watched Disra's face. "We've got their landing bay number—that Mistryl woman D'ulin rode in with them as a stowaway. The admiral and I have to get there before they get back. You understand?"

"Yes, I understand," Disra growled, his brain only now starting to unfreeze from the shock and panic. "I'm not a child, you know."

"Glad to hear it," Tierce said coldly. "Because while we're out there, you're going to go talk to D'ulin. Find out what she wants and what it'll take to bring the Mistryl onto our side." Disra felt his mouth drop open a centimeter. The reports he'd heard about the Mistryl— "You want to try to make allies of them? Have you lost your mind? They hate the Empire!"

"We need a new fringe group to replace the Cavrilhu Pirates," Tierce said, his voice one of exaggerated patience. "And we do not have time to argue about it. Thrawn and D'ulin are in the library across from your quarters. Go take over so that he and I can get to the spaceport. Understand? Now move."

The snapped command made Disra jump. "Don't ever talk to me that way again, Major," he warned, his voice quietly deadly. "Ever."

"Then don't ever fall apart on me again, Your Excellency," Tierce countered. If he was either impressed or intimidated by Disra's warning, he didn't show it. "Now get moving."

* * *

The legion of Imperial troops Han had feared would be ringing the spaceport wasn't there. Neither were the hard-eyed guards he'd expected at the entrypoint, the monitor droids along the access street, or the stormtroopers at the door to their docking bay. In fact, from all appearances it looked like they'd gotten completely away with it.

And that all by itself was enough to worry him. A lot.

Lando felt it, too. "I don't like this, Han," he muttered, glancing around the street behind them as Han unlocked the bay door. "This is way too easy."

"Yeah, I know," Han agreed, taking one last look around as he took Lobot's arm and guided him through the doorway. Lando's on-the-fly changes to his implant's programming over the past hour may have thrown the Imperials off the scent, but they'd also left Lobot rather dazed. If it came to a fight at the Lady Luck's ramp, he was going to be no help at all. The dark passageway through the docking bay's service and supply area was also deserted.

"Soon as we're aboard you get the engines fired up," Han told Lando as they stepped out onto the permacrete beneath the open sky. The Lady Luck was still there, looking just the way they'd left her.

"I'll handle the weapons. Maybe Moegid can get into the spaceport computer and get us a quick exit slot—"

"That won't be necessary," a quiet voice came from behind them. Han spun around, yanking out his appropriated blaster. Behind them on the permacrete had appeared the flickering full-sized holo of a man. A man with blue skin, wearing a white Imperial uniform...

Lando made a strange sound in the back of his throat. "It's him," he murmured. Han nodded, feeling numb. It was indeed.

Grand Admiral Thrawn.

"Please lay your weapons on the ground," Thrawn directed. "I'd prefer to speak with you face-to-face, but understandably have no desire to be shot."

"Understandably," Han agreed, keeping a firm grip on his blaster, his eyes darting around the landing bay. There must be some actual troops in here somewhere...

The holo smiled. "Come now, Captain Solo," he said soothingly. "Surely you don't think you'll be able to simply blast your way out of Bastion as you have from so many other systems during your checkered career. Don't you wish to see your wife and children again?" Han adjusted his grip on his blaster, feeling sweat gathering on his forehead. "Yeah, that's kind of the point, isn't it?" he said.

The holo shook his head. "You misunderstand, Captain," Thrawn said. "You have nothing to fear from me. All I want is a few words with you, and then you and your companions will be free to go your way." He nodded toward Lando. "Ask Captain Calrissian. I allowed him to leave my Star Destroyer."

"This isn't exactly the same," Lando said tightly. "This is your hidden capital. You aren't going to want anyone knowing where it is."

"Come now, Captain," Thrawn said, rather scornfully. "Do you really think I would expect knowledge of Bastion's current location to die with you? The seat of Imperial authority has been moved before, many times. It can certainly be moved again. Still, you apparently need more persuasion."

A movement at the corner of his eye caught Han's attention. He looked up—

To see a row of stormtroopers lined up along the rim of the landing bay's storage area roof, blaster rifles trained on them.

He sighed. They should have made a dash for the Lady Luck when the holo first appeared instead of letting Thrawn stall them this way. Too late now. "How'd you find us?" he asked, setting the blaster's safety and laying the weapon on the ground in front of him.

"It wasn't difficult," the holo said as Lando reluctantly followed suit with his slugthrower. "I knew none of you had the slicing expertise needed to invade the Special Files. I suspected you were using a Verpine for that, and so instructed my men to run a scan on those comm frequencies."

"Looking for an echo," Han said, nodding. "I would have sworn we cut that off before you could get a fix."

"You misunderstand, Captain. I wasn't looking for an echo." Abruptly, the holo vanished—

And from around a stack of storage crates to their right Thrawn himself appeared, his white uniform dazzlingly bright in the afternoon sunlight.

But no more dazzling than the gleaming armor of the six stormtroopers flanking him in guard position. On second thought, Han decided, a mad dash for the Lady Luck wouldn't have been such a clever plan after all.

"I was merely seeking confirmation that your slicer was a Verpine," Thrawn continued as he walked up to them. "Once you supplied that confirmation by blanketing those biocomm frequencies, all I had to do was search the spaceport records for a ship that had supposedly landed here eight, twelve, or seventeen days before the drone probe you followed in from the Parshoone Ubiqtorate contact station."

"Wait a minute, you've lost me," Han said, frowning. "Eight, twelve, or seventeen days?" Thrawn smiled. "Those are important numbers to the Verpines," he said. "Not consciously, perhaps, but nevertheless anchored deeply within them. It was obvious that your Verpine was the master slicer of your group; therefore, he would have been the one to make any alterations in the spaceport records to hide your ship's location. Need I go on?"

"No," Han said, a cold chill running through him. Back at his and Leia's Orowood Tower retreat Lando had claimed to have seen Thrawn; had claimed it, had argued it, had maintained it despite all the evidence and arguments to the contrary. Han had wondered then how his friend could have been so easily spooked.

Now, finally, he understood.

"Good," Thrawn said, peering at him with a depth of understanding Han didn't care for at all.

"Then let us get down to business." He raised his voice slightly. "Major?" From behind another stack of boxes to the left a youngish man wearing major's insignia appeared, his eyes wary on the prisoners. In his right hand he held a blaster; in his left, a datacard.

"As you may recall our last conversation, Captain Calrissian," Thrawn went on as the major walked toward them, "you suggested that if I wanted to save the New Republic from its current crisis I should simply give you a complete copy of the Caamas Document."

"Yes, I remember," Lando said as the major came to a stop a meter in front of him. "You told me that would take too much time."

"Less time than I thought, as it turned out," Thrawn agreed. "There it is." The major held out the datacard. "What do you mean, there it is?" Lando asked, looking at the datacard like he expected it to explode in his face.

"The Caamas Document," Thrawn said simply. "It's yours. Take it." Slowly, hesitantly, Lando took the card. "What's the catch?" he asked as the major took a step back.

"There's no catch," Thrawn assured him. "As I told you before, I merely wish to help."

"Sure you do," Han put in, his words sounding harsh in his ears after the Grand Admiral's more urbane tones. "Like you helped wreck the Combined Clans Building on Bothawui?" The glowing red eyes focused on him. "Explain."

"There was an Imperial team behind that riot," Han said stiffly. Beside him, Lando was making shushing noises, and he had to admit that accusing Thrawn to his face like this was probably not the most politic thing he could have done. But it had been his neck on the line there, his and Leia's, and he was not going to just stand here and let Thrawn get away with making conciliatory noises. Not after all the death and destruction that riot had caused. "We found the redirection crystal they used with their Xerrol Nightstinger sniper blaster."

He had hoped for a flicker of guilt, or at least a twinge of recognition. But instead Thrawn merely gave him a brittle smile. "Yes, a Xerrol Nightstinger," he said, his voice tinged with bitterness.

"Apparently still a favored tool of assassins and saboteurs. But in this case, you're looking the wrong direction. The Empire's last five Xerrols were stolen six months ago from a Ubiqtorate cache on Marquarra."

His eyes glittered. "If you want to find them, I suggest you search the private estate of High Councilor Borsk Fey'lya."

Han exchanged startled glances with Lando. "Fey'lya?"

"Yes," Thrawn said. "It was his private army who stole them."

"No," Han said, the word coming automatically. "That's ridiculous." And yet...

Fey'lya had known he and Leia were going to the Combined Clans Building to check out the true state of Bothan finances, a job they'd somehow never gotten around to finishing after the riot. And it was just the sort of back-blading stunt the Bothans were famous for. Thrawn shrugged. "I'm not going to try to convince you. The truth is there for you to find if you care to. In the meantime—" He nodded toward the datacard in Lando's hand. "Good day, gentlemen. Have a good voyage."

Without waiting for an answer he turned and headed for the exit, half of his stormtrooper guard falling into formation around him. The remaining three stormtroopers and the major waited until he was out of sight before turning and following. As they too vanished through the doorway the row of stormtroopers above them turned and headed away across the roof.

And a moment later Han, Lando, and Lobot were alone.

Han turned to Lando, found the other staring at him from under hooded eyelids. "Well, Lando," he said, trying to keep his voice calm. It wasn't one of his better efforts. "I guess I owe you an apology."

"Never mind the apologies," Lando said, stooping to retrieve their weapons as he ran a quick glance around the empty rooftop. "Let's just get out of here, okay?"

"Yeah," Han said, taking Lobot's arm and turning him toward the Lady Luck's ramp. "Let's."

* * *

"You should have seen their faces," Flim said, swirling his drink around in his glass, his moody voice in odd contrast with what should have been gloating words. "They were so petrified, and trying so hard not to show it. It was really rather funny."

"I'm sure you could hardly keep from breaking out laughing," Disra said sourly. "The question is, did they buy it?"

"They bought it," Tierce assured him, sliding a datacard out of his datapad and picking up the next one from his stack. Alone among the three of them, he seemed to have no doubts about Flim's performance. "Our Grand Admiral was as smooth as polished transparisteel. He didn't even flinch when Solo threw the Bothawui commando team in his face."

"The Bothawui team?" Disra demanded sharply. "Our Bothawui team? Navett's group?"

"Relax—he was talking about them in conjunction with the Combined Clans Building riot," Tierce said. "There was no indication they know Navett's back there now."

"I hope not," Disra growled. On the other hand, that whole scheme was listed on the datacards that Pellaeon had stolen from him. Still, it was unlikely Pellaeon would run straight to Coruscant to warn them, even if he stopped sifting through the financial data long enough to notice it was even there. "How did they find out we staged the riot?"

Tierce shrugged. "Who knows? It doesn't matter, though—the Admiral deflected them nicely." He looked over at Flim. "What was all that about a weapons cache being stolen from Marquarra? I don't remember hearing about that."

Flim sipped at his drink. "You don't remember," he said, "because I made the whole thing up. I figured it would—"

"You made it up?" Disra cut him off. "What kind of fool stunt was that?"

"One that got Solo off my back," Flim said stiffly. "Why? You disapprove?"

"Yes, I disapprove," Disra bit out. "It's out of character. Thrawn didn't go around making things up—if he didn't know something, he said so."

"Calm down, Your Excellency," Tierce said. But he didn't look all that happy, either, as he gazed at Flim. "He had to say something—we can't be offering Coruscant the Caamas Document with one hand and helping foment riots with the other. At least he's bought us the time it'll take them to check up on it."

Disra snorted. "However little that is."

"However little it is will be enough," Tierce said firmly. "In seven days the New Republic's civil war is set to begin. At that point, no one's going to care about a few riots and a handful of Xerrol Nightstingers."

He nodded back toward the secret door. "And speaking of buying things, how did your talk go with our guest? Are we going to be able to buy their services?"

"I don't know," Disra said, his mouth tightening briefly. "Mistryl don't work for Imperials—she must have told me that fifteen times. On the other hand, she did agree to call one of their leaders to come talk to us. And there is something they very much want, but I wasn't quite able to get her to tell me what that is."

"What they want is revenge," Flim said soberly. "Like everyone else these days."

"Revenge against whom?" Disra asked.

Flim shrugged. "The story around the fringe is that their world was devastated in a war with person or persons unknown some number of decades ago. The money the Mistryl earn hiring out their services still supposedly goes to support the survivors."

"What's the name of the world?" Disra asked.

"I don't know," Flim said. "They keep it very quiet. Probably afraid whoever did it will come back and finish the job."

"She said something about revenge for Lorardian," Tierce mused. "Could that be the system?"

"I have no idea." Flim shrugged. "I don't even know who or what Lorardian is."

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Disra said, frowning. "You sounded like you knew all about it back there."

"I also sounded like I knew she was hiding behind the door the whole time," Flim countered patiently. "The whole trick behind being a good con man is convincing the target you know more than you really do."

Disra grimaced. Con men. "Of course. I forgot."

"Don't go all high and nobly indignant on me, Disra," Flim warned, his face darkening. "Your Cavrilhu Pirate raids on New Republic shipping were as much a con as this is. So is your precious little Vengeance movement, for that matter," he added, shifting his glare to Tierce. "A few Imperial agitators pretending to be a huge group of civilian malcontents. Not to mention this whole Thrawn charade. You don't like cons? Well, too bad. You're up to your necks in them, both of you. Not that you've got any choice. Not with the shape the Empire's in."

He dropped his feet back onto the floor with a muffled thud and stood up. "And I'll tell you something else," he added. "If and when you ever get to the point where you've got all the military strength you want, you're still going to need me."

He slapped at his chest. "I'm the only one of this group who knows the fringe. Who the pirates and mercs are, where to find a good bounty hunter on short notice—you want to hire more privateers, you'll have to come to me. I'm the one who could finger D'ulin as a Mistryl just by the way she fought."

"We're not arguing," Disra said, a little taken aback by the fire of the con man's tirade. "So what are you trying to say?"

"I'm saying that if and when this Hand of Thrawn of yours shows up, you might not need my Thrawn masquerade anymore," Flim shot back. "But you'll still need me." For a long moment the room was silent. Flim glared back and forth between the two of them, breathing a little heavily.

Tierce broke the silence first. "You finished?" he asked mildly. Flim studied his face, and some of the stiffness seemed to leave his back. "Yes," he muttered. "I just... this is going to stir the pot, Tierce, from Coruscant to the Outer Rim. Unless the Hand of Thrawn is living under a rock, there's no way he's going to miss this."

"I told you before that we could protect you from him," Tierce said. "And we will. Don't worry about it."

"Yeah." Flim took a long drink from his glass. "Yeah. Sure."

* * *

Lando pulled back the hyperdrive lever, and in front of them the stars of Bastion's sky stretched into starlines. "Well," he said. He'd meant the word to come out sounding casual, but all it sounded was hoarse. "I guess he really meant it. About letting us go." Beside him, Han didn't answer. For that matter, he probably hadn't said ten words since Thrawn had walked out of the docking bay. Lando looked sideways at his friend, wondering if it was time he started worrying about him.

Han must have felt the other's gaze. "It was really him, wasn't it?" he said quietly, his own gaze still on the swirling patterns of hyperspace.

Lando nodded, his throat feeling tight. "Perfectly calm, perfectly in control, three steps ahead of us the whole way," he said. "No one else but Thrawn."

"I wouldn't have believed it." Han looked at Lando, his mouth twitching. "I guess I didn't believe it," he amended. "Whatever I said to you back at the Orowood Tower—"

"Forget it," Lando said, waving the apology away. "I was right there that first time, and I didn't even believe it. At least, I didn't want to."

Han shook his head. "We're in trouble, Lando," he said. "From now on, we can't trust anything we see. Anything we see, anything we hear, anything we think we ought to do. Not with Thrawn back on the scene."

"I don't know," Lando said doubtfully. "Thrawn or no Thrawn, the Empire is still down to eight sectors. Maybe this is really all he's going for, hoping to confuse Coruscant so badly it just freezes up."

"Who knows?" Han growled, some heat starting to seep into his voice. At least he didn't sound dazed and demoralized anymore. About time, Lando thought. "That's what drives you so crazy about him. You try to do something, and odds are it's exactly what he wanted you to do. You stand still and don't do anything, and he runs a smartrope around you."

"So what do you suppose he expects us to do with this?" Lando asked, holding up the datacard.

"I don't know what he expects," Han said, reaching over and taking it. "But I'll tell you what we're going to do. First, we're going to read it and see if it gives those names everyone's so hot to get hold of. Second, we're going to call Leia as soon as we're in range of the HoloNet and let her know we've got it. And third—"

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "We're going to turn Moegid loose on the thing and have him check it sixteen ways from center. See if he can find whatever surprises Thrawn has tucked away."

Lando eyed the datacard warily. "You think there are surprises?"

"It's Thrawn," Han said simply.

Lando nodded. "Right."

Getting out of his seat, Han gave the instruments one final check. "Come on—I don't trust this thing anywhere near the ship's computer," he said, heading for the cockpit door. "Let's get a datapad and find out what it says."

CHAPTER

24

The first navigational stop the Wild Karrde had made after leaving Dayark had showed nothing ahead. Nothing but the twisting glow of the Kathol Rift and the fiery frozen wisps of ionized gas streamers and miniature nebulae that looked as if they'd been torn from it by violence. So had the second stop, and the third, until Shada had begun to wonder if the legendary lost world of Exocron was truly nothing but a myth.

On the fifth stop, they found it.

"It looks quite pleasant," Threepio commented somewhat doubtfully from Shada's side as they gazed out the Wild Karrde's bridge viewport at the small planet rapidly approaching. "I do hope they will be friendly."

"I wouldn't count on it," Shada warned him, feeling an unfamiliar and unpleasant dryness in her mouth. Down there somewhere, if Jade and Calrissian were right, Jorj Car'das would be waiting for them.

At the helm, Odonnl half turned in his seat. "Shouldn't we have the turbolasers ready?" he asked Karrde. "Just in case they're not happy at having their privacy infringed on?" Shada looked at Karrde. He was hiding his nervousness well, but she herself had no trouble seeing it. "We're here to talk, not fight," he reminded Odonnl, his voice steady. "I don't want anyone down there getting the wrong impression."

"Yes, but after Dayark—"

"We're here to talk," Karrde repeated, his tone leaving no room for argument. "H'sishi, are we picking up any sensor probes? Or transmissions, Chin?"

[No probes yet, Chieftain,] the Togorian said. Her fur, Shada noted, had fluffed out just noticeably. Apparently, she'd picked up on Karrde's mood, too.

"Nothing of transmissions either, Cap't," Chin added. "Perhaps they not see us come in."

"Oh, they see us, all right," Karrde said, a hint of grimness creeping into his tone. "The only question—"

He broke off at a beep from the comm. "Incoming starship, this is Admiral Trey David, second-in-command to Supreme Admiral Horzao Darr of the Exocron Combined Air-Space Fleet," a courteous but firm voice said. "Please identify yourselves." Chin reached for his board— "No, I'll do it," Karrde told him, visibly bracing himself as he touched his comm switch. "This is Talon Karrde aboard the freighter Wild Karrde, Admiral David. Our intentions are totally peaceful. We'd like permission to land." There was a long pause. A very long pause, in fact. Shada rubbed her knuckles gently, visualizing a heated argument going on in the Exocron Combined Fleet office...

"Wild Karrde, this is Admiral David," the voice came back. "I'm told you're here to see Jorj Car'das. Can you confirm that?"

Shada watched Karrde closely. But aside from a brief twitch at the corner of his mouth there was no reaction. "Yes, I can," he said, his voice a little hollow but under control. "There's a vital matter I urgently need to discuss with him."

"I see." There was another pause, shorter this time. "Is he expecting you?" Another twitch of the lip. "I don't know if expecting is the proper word. I do believe he knows I'm coming."

"Do you," David said, his voice suddenly sounding a little odd. "Very well, Wild Karrde, you're cleared for Circle 15 at the Rintatta City military landing field. Coordinates are being sent to you now."

"Thank you," Karrde said.

"Got it," Odonnl muttered, studying his nav display. "Looks pretty straightforward."

"We have an escort on the way," David continued. "I trust I don't have to tell you to cooperate with them."

"I understand completely," Karrde said. "Will I be seeing you there?"

"I doubt it," David said; and this time there was definitely a darkness in his voice. "But perhaps we'll all be lucky. You never know. David out."

For a moment the bridge was quiet. Shada looked around at the others, at their tight faces and tense shoulders and grim expressions. If they hadn't known before what they were getting into, she decided, they knew now.

And yet, she saw no indication that any of them were even thinking of trying to back out. A truly loyal, close-knit crew, completely dedicated to their chief.

Much as Shada herself had once been dedicated to the ideals of the Mistryl. Even when the Mistryl themselves had all but forgotten those ideals.

Even in the face of the looming danger ahead, the memory of that loss still hurt.

"Instructions, Captain?" Odonnl asked quietly.

Karrde didn't hesitate. "Take us down," he said.

* * *

Rintatta City was a middling-sized cluster of military-style buildings interspersed with about fifty landing pads of varying sizes, many with ships already settled down onto them. The military areas were in turn surrounded by a wide ring of civilian-style homes and businesses and community buildings. The whole thing was nestled up against the base of a short but rough-sided ridge of mountains, the city giving way to a grassy plain on its other sides.

There was no shakedown like there had been at Pembric 2. Nor was there any sort of customs or entrance inquiry at all as the Wild Karrde headed in to the surface. The two aging system patrol ships that Admiral David had sent escorted the freighter to its assigned landing circle, watched as it set down, then headed off again into the sky without comment. Around the other ships, hundreds of men and women and dozens of small vehicles were hurrying about various tasks of their own, completely ignoring the offworld ship that had set down in their midst. From all appearances, Karrde thought as he and the others started down the ramp, all of Exocron might be trying to pretend the visitors didn't exist.

With one notable exception.

"Good day, Captain Karrde," Entoo Nee beamed from the foot of the Wild Karrde's landing ramp. "Welcome to Exocron. I see that even without my help you were able to find us. Hello, Shada; hello, Threepio."

"Hello, Master Entoo Nee," Threepio replied, sounding distinctly relieved to see a familiar face. "I confess I had not expected to find you here."

"There was some question about you, as well," Entoo Nee said cheerfully. "When I last saw you on Dayark, you seemed to be having pirate trouble." He took a step closer to the ramp and peered up into the ship. "Will your charming Togorian be joining us?"

"No, H'sishi will be staying with the ship," Karrde told him, eyeing the little man with some bemusement. H'sishi was an increasingly valued member of his crew, but charming was not a descriptive term that would have automatically sprung to mind.

"Too bad," Entoo Nee said, looking at Shada and Threepio again. "Is this it, then? You don't want to bring any others along?"

Karrde felt his muscles tense up again, despite all his efforts to relax them. Certainly he wanted to bring more people along. The Wild Karrde's entire crew, for starters, plus the crews of the Starry Ice and the Etherway, General Bel Iblis's complete New Republic task force, Rogue Squadron, and about four clans' worth of Noghri warriors.

But even if he had had such resources, it would be a futile gesture. Car'das was waiting for him, and bringing more people would only mean putting more people at risk. That wasn't why he was here.

"Yes," he told Entoo Nee. "This is it. Do I assume you're here to take us to Jorj Car'das?"

"If you wish to see him," the little man said, his eyes thoughtful on Karrde's face. Once again, as on Dayark, glimpses of the true Entoo Nee were peeking through the carefully crafted facade of harmlessness. "Well. Shall we go?"

He led the way to an open-topped landspeeder at the edge of the landing circle—a landspeeder, Karrde noted, that despite Entoo Nee's apparent surprise at the small size of the party was only a four-seater. Weaving his way expertly in and out of the rest of the traffic, the little man headed off toward the mountains. "What's going on here?" Shada asked, gesturing around them as Entoo Nee dodged around a particularly slow-moving fuel truck.

"They're preparing for some sort of maneuvers, I expect," the other said. "Military people are always maneuvering one direction or another."

"How far is it to where we're meeting Car'das?" Karrde asked, not particularly interested in what the Exocron Combined Air-Space Fleet had on its agenda for the day.

"Not far," Entoo Nee assured him. "Do you see that light blue building straight ahead, the one just a bit up the slope of the mountain? That's where he is."

Karrde shaded his eyes from the sunlight. From this distance, at least, it was not a very impressive place. Not a fortress; not even a mansion.

In fact, as Entoo Nee cleared the military area and started across the more sparsely trafficked civilian section of the city, the light blue building ahead began to look more and more like a simple, unassuming house.

Shada was apparently thinking along the same lines. "Is that where Car'das lives, or just where we're meeting him?" she asked.

Entoo Nee threw her a quick smile. "It's always questions with you, isn't it? Such a good, thoughtful mind."

"Asking questions is part of my job," Shada countered. "And you haven't answered me."

"Answering questions isn't part of my job," Entoo Nee said. "Come now, there's no need for impatience—it's only a little farther. Just relax and enjoy the trip." The blue house continued to look smaller and less impressive the closer they got. Smaller, less impressive, older, and considerably shabbier. "As you can see, it was built right up against the cliff face," Entoo Nee commented as they drove past the last cluster of other houses and started across a grassy field with a rapid creek running through the middle of it. "I believe the original owner thought that would provide extra stability during the winter winds."

"What happened to the left side?" Shada asked, pointing. "Did a wing get torn down?"

"No, it was never built," Entoo Nee told her. "Car'das once began to add on to the house, but—well, you'll see."

An unpleasant tingle ran down Karrde's back. "What do you mean, we'll see? What stopped him?"

Entoo Nee didn't answer. Karrde glanced over at Shada, found her looking at him with an odd expression on her face.

A minute later they were there. Entoo Nee brought the landspeeder to a smooth halt in front of a once-white door whose paint had chipped and faded with age and neglect. "You lead the way," Shada said to Entoo Nee, sliding herself deftly between Karrde and the house. "I'll be behind you; Karrde will be behind me."

"Oh, no, that won't do at all," Entoo Nee said. He shook his head, a quick, nervous-looking movement. "Only Captain Karrde and I will be able to go in."

Shada's eyes narrowed. "Let me put it another way—"

"No, that's all right, Shada," Karrde said, moving around her and taking a step toward the door. Away from the center of the group, with nothing between him and the blank and empty windows, he felt painfully exposed. "If Car'das only wants to see me, then that's the way it has to be."

"Forget it," Shada said flatly, catching hold of Karrde's arm and hauling him bodily to a stop.

"Entoo Nee, either I go in with him or he doesn't go in at all."

"Shada, this isn't helping," Karrde growled, glaring at her. Did she want all of them to be summarily shot down before he even had a chance to plead the New Republic's case? "If he wanted me dead, he could have done it at any of a hundred points along the way. He could certainly do it right here."

"I know that," Shada shot back. "And it doesn't matter. I came along as your bodyguard. And that's what I'm going to do."

Karrde stared at her, a sudden strange sensation running through him. Back at that Orowood Tower meeting with Solo, Organa Solo, and Calrissian, Shada had merely agreed to come along on this trip to help out. When during the two and a half weeks since then had that grudging agreement transmuted into the far deeper commitment of bodyguard? "Shada, I appreciate your concern," he said, quietly but firmly, reaching up to where she still gripped his arm and putting his hand gently on top of hers. "But you need to remember the big picture. My life, and what happens to it, isn't the most important thing at stake here."

"I'm your bodyguard," Shada said, just as quietly and just as firmly. "It's the most important thing to me."

"Please," Entoo Nee spoke up. "Please. I think you misunderstand. Captain Karrde and I must go in first, but you may certainly come in right behind us. It's simply that—well, you'll see." Shada still didn't look happy, but she gave a reluctant nod. "All right, fine," she said. "Just remember that if anything happens, you personally will be directly in my line of fire. You two first, then me, then Threepio."

"Really, Mistress Shada, I'm sure it's not necessary for me to come in with you," the droid hastened to assure her, taking a shuffling step back toward the landspeeder. "Perhaps I should remain here and guard the landspeeder—"

"Actually, he may be useful," Entoo Nee said, smiling reassuringly. "Come, Threepio, it'll be all right."

"Yes, Master Entoo Nee," Threepio said in a resigned tone. Moaning almost inaudibly to himself, he shuffled to a spot half a meter behind Shada. "But I must say, I have a bad feeli—"

"Good," Entoo Nee said cheerfully. The solemn moment past, he was radiating his usual harmlessness again. "Shall we go?"

The door was unlocked. Karrde followed the little man in, feeling more vulnerable than ever as they stepped out of the sunlight into a dank, gloomy room.

A room that, to his surprise, had apparently not been used for some time. The few pieces of furniture scattered about were old and dusty, with the same signs of long neglect that they'd seen in the exterior of the house itself. The three windows, which from the outside had seemed so dark and threatening, could now be seen from this side to be merely incredibly dirty, with the slight frosting effect that came from years of wind-driven dust or sand slashing across them. In the shafts of dim sunlight that managed to penetrate the grime, long strands of cobweb could be seen stretching from some of the chairs to the ceiling.

"This way," Entoo Nee said quietly, his voice an intrusion in the eerie atmosphere as he led them across the room to a closed door. "He is here, Captain Karrde. Please prepare yourself." Karrde took a deep breath. Behind him, he heard the faint scraping sound as Shada's blaster came free of its holster. "I'm ready," he said. "Let's get it over with."

"Indeed." Reaching past him, Entoo Nee touched the door control. With a faint squeak, it slid open.

It was the smell that hit Karrde first. An odor of age, and distant memories, and lost hopes. An odor of sickness and tiredness.

An odor of death.

The room itself was small, much smaller than Karrde would have expected. To both sides built-in shelves covered each of the side walls, on which were stacked a strange assortment of small art objects, useless-looking knickknacks, and medical vials and equipment. A large bed took up most of the rest of the space, the foot coming to within a meter of the doorway and leaving barely enough room left over for two people to stand.

And lying in the bed beneath a stack of blankets, humming softly to himself as he stared at the ceiling, was an old man.

"Jorj?" Entoo Nee called softly as he stepped through the doorway. The humming stopped, but the man's gaze remained on the ceiling. "Jorj? There's someone here to see you." Karrde stepped in beside him, squeezing into the remaining space, his mind spinning. No. Surely this couldn't be Jorj Car'das. Not the vigorous, hot-tempered, ambitious man who'd almost single-handedly created one of the greatest smuggling organizations ever known. "Jorj?" he called carefully.

The wrinkled face frowned, and the head lifted up. "Mertan?" a quavering voice asked. "Mertan?

Is that you?"

Karrde let his breath out in a tired sigh. The voice, and the eyes. Yes, it was indeed him. "No, Jorj," he said gently. "Not Mertan. It's Karrde. Talon Karrde. You remember?" The old man's eyes blinked a couple of times. "Karrde?" he said in the same uncertain voice. "Is that you?"

"Yes, Jorj, it's me," Karrde assured him. "Do you remember me?" A tentative smile started on the old man's face, fading as if the muscles were too old or too tired to hold on to it. "Yes," he said. "No. Who are you again?"

"Talon Karrde," Karrde repeated, the bitter taste of defeat and disappointment and utter fatigue in his mouth. All this way. They'd come all this way to see Car'das and plead for his help. All of Karrde's fears about this meeting—his fears, his regrets, his guilt—all of it for nothing. The Jorj Car'das he had lived in quiet terror of for so many years was long gone. In his place was an empty shell.

Dimly, through the darkness swirling through his mind, he felt a hand on his shoulder. "Come on, Karrde," Shada said quietly. "There's nothing here anymore."

"It was Karrde, right?" the old man asked. A thin arm came up from beneath the blankets, flailing a bit before the hand was able to tuck the pillows tighter behind his neck. "Tarron Karrde?"

"It's Talon Karrde, Jorj," Entoo Nee corrected, his voice that of a patient parent to a very young child. "Is there anything I can get for you?"

Car'das frowned, his head settling back onto the pillow, his eyes again drifting to whatever it was he saw on the ceiling. "Shem-mebal ostorran se'mmitas Mertan anial?" he muttered, his voice almost inaudible. "Karmida David shumidas krree?"

"Old Tarmidian," Entoo Nee murmured. "The language of his childhood. He's been slipping into that more and more lately."

"Threepio?" Shada prompted.

"He's asking if Mertan has been by here today," the droid translated. For once, there was no mention of how many types of communication he was fluent in. "Or that nice Admiral David person."

"No, neither of them," Entoo Nee said to the figure in the bed, motioning Karrde to back out of the room. "I'll be back later, Jorj. Try to get some sleep, all right?" He followed Karrde out of the room and reached for the door control. "Sleep?" The old man snorted weakly, giving a cackling laugh. "Can't sleep now, Mertan. Too much to do. Far too much to—"

The door slid shut, mercifully cutting off the rest. "You see, now, how it is," Entoo Nee said quietly.

Karrde nodded, the taste of ashes in his mouth. All those years... "How long has he been this way?"

"And why did you even bother bringing us here in the first place?" Shada demanded.

"What can I say?" Entoo Nee said. "He's old—very old—with the many and varied afflictions that so often come of long age." His bright eyes shifted to Shada. "And as for bringing you here, you were the ones who wanted to come."

"We wanted to see Jorj Car'das," Shada bit out. "What's in there is not what we had in mind."

"It's all right, Shada," Karrde said. All those years... "It's my fault, not Entoo Nee's. I should have come here years ago."

He blinked sudden tears from his eyes. "I suppose there's only one more question to be asked. Entoo Nee, Car'das once had a huge datacard library. Do you have any idea where it might be?" Entoo Nee shrugged. "Whatever he did with it, he did it long before I came to be in his service." Karrde nodded. So much for even their last hope of finding a copy of the Caamas Document here. Wasted fears, and now a wasted trip. Suddenly, he was feeling very old. "Thank you," he said, pulling out his comlink and keying it on. "Dankin?"

"Right here, Chief," Dankin's voice came promptly, an edge of tautness to it. "How are things?"

"Running quite smoothly, thank you," Karrde said, giving the all-clear code response. "The mission is over. Get the ship ready; we'll be leaving as soon as we get back."

"Yeah, well, that might be a bit tricky," Dankin said, his voice turning grim. "There's something about to happen here, Chief, something big. Every ship on the field's getting tooled up for combat." Karrde frowned. "Are you sure?"

"I'm positive," Dankin said. "There are racks of missiles being taken aboard, gunner-type flak-vac suits—the works. And they seem to be arming a lot of civilian ships, too."

"It's Rei'Kas and his pirates," Entoo Nee murmured quietly at Karrde's side. "It would appear one of them followed you in."

Karrde grimaced, yet another piece of his carefully built up mental picture crumbling to dust. He'd been so sure that Rei'Kas had been hired and brought here by Car'das. "No one should have been able to follow us," he told Entoo Nee. "We always watch our backtrail very closely." Entoo Nee shrugged again. "I don't know how they did it. I only know that they did. According to Admiral David, their entire fleet has now left its hidden base and is on its way to Exocron."

"You knew about this before we even landed?" Shada demanded. "Why didn't you say something?"

"What should I have said?" Entoo Nee countered. "The damage had already been done. They had found Exocron." He gestured upward. "In fact, that was why I wanted to bring you here myself from Dayark, Captain Karrde. They wouldn't have been able to track my ship." Karrde grimaced. As if his guilt burden hadn't been heavy enough, now this. "How long before they reach the planet?"

"Excuse me," Threepio spoke up before Entoo Nee could answer. "But if pirates are on their way, shouldn't we be planning our departure?"

"He's right," Entoo Nee agreed. "Still, there's no particular hurry for you. They won't be here for at least another eight hours. Possibly more."

"What about you?" Shada asked.

Entoo Nee's mouth puckered. "I'm sure we'll be all right. I'm told the Combined Air-Space Fleet is quite good."

"Maybe against the occasional smuggler or rock-dodger," Shada said darkly. "But this is Rei'Kas we're talking about."

"It's our trouble, not yours," Entoo Nee said firmly. "You'd best make preparations to go." The comlink, Karrde suddenly realized, was still on. "Dankin?" he called. "You get all that?"

"We got it, Chief," Dankin confirmed. "You still want me to get the ship ready?" Karrde looked past Entoo Nee at the room's darkened windows. Beyond those windows were people his actions, however unintended, had put in deadly danger.

Which meant there really wasn't any decision here to be made. "Yes, get it ready," he told Dankin. "But get it ready for full combat."

He looked back at Entoo Nee. "We're going to stay and fight."

CHAPTER

25

It was, Booster Terrik thought, about as chaotic aboard the Errant Venture as he'd ever seen it. And considering this was the Errant Venture he was talking about, that was really saying something. They were all over the place: New Republic techs and workers and officer types, thousands of them, crawling around every corner of his Star Destroyer. Fixing things, adding things, taking things out, upgrading things, and occasionally changing things around just for the fun of it. His own people had been overridden, nudged aside, superseded, or flat out run over as this oversized rancor of a restoration crew lumbered through his ship.

And moving around the center of it, like the single calm spot in the middle of a circlestorm, was General Bel Iblis.

"Five more warships arrived in the system last night," a harried-looking aide was saying, hurrying to keep up with Bel Iblis as the general strode briskly along the Starboard-16 weapons emplacement corridor. Booster, with his longer legs, had less of a problem in that department. Still, in his opinion, Bel Iblis had a lot more energy than anyone had any business having this early in the morning. "The Freedom's Fury, Spirit of Mindor, Starline Warrior, Stellar Sentinel, and Welling's Revenge."

"Good," Bel Iblis said, stopping beside a turbolaser monitor panel. "What about the Garfin and Beledeen II?"

"No word on them yet," the aide said, checking his datapad. "I've also heard rumors that the Webley's here, but so far they haven't checked in."

"They're here," Booster spoke up. "Captain Winger is, anyway—those mechanical fingers of hers leave pretty distinctive marks on metal ale tubes."

The aide's eyes darkened. "All incoming ships are supposed to check in immediately—"

"It's all right," Bel Iblis calmed him. "Don't worry, they'll surface in plenty of time. Alex probably just wanted her crew to get some rest before the orders started flying."

"They're not the only ones who could use some rest," Booster muttered under his breath. Bel Iblis frowned slightly, as if only now noticing the big man's presence. "Was there something you wanted, Terrik?" he asked.

"Just wondering when the work on my ship will be finished," Booster said.

"We're almost there," Bel Iblis said. "Lieutenant?"

"Looks like the major refitting will be completed inside of twelve hours," the younger man confirmed, studying his datapad. "There may be a few odds and ends left, but they can be finished on the way to Yaga Minor."

Bel Iblis looked at Booster. "Was there anything else?" he asked.

"Yeah, there was," Booster said. He stopped, looking significantly at the aide. Bel Iblis took the hint. "Lieutenant, go check on the Number 7 tractor beam emplacement," he said. "Make sure the balance adjustments are being made properly."

"Yes, sir," the aide said. Throwing a speculative look at Booster, he headed at a quick walk down the corridor.

"Why don't we step in here out of the way," Bel Iblis suggested, crossing to a door with the bright red markings of an emergency med station.

They went inside. "Up to now, you've been pretty quiet about what your plan is for this little raid," Booster said when the door was sealed again behind them. "I think it's about time I heard some details."

"There's not much to tell," Bel Iblis said. "We'll be taking the Errant Venture in past their sentry line and, hopefully, through their main defense perimeter. Once we're inside, the rest of the task force will come in behind us from hyperspace and attack the perimeter. If we're lucky, the Imperials will be so busy with them they won't give us a second look."

"That assumes their first look doesn't pin us to the wall, of course," Booster pointed out darkly.

"Assuming that, what then?"

"Yaga Minor has a peculiarity that as far as I know is unique among Imperial installations," Bel Iblis said. "There are a pair of outrider computer stations set up at the end of a corridor/walkway tube that extends about a hundred meters out from the main orbiting Ubiqtorate station." Booster frowned. "Odd design."

"The idea was to give high-ranking civilian researchers access to the computer records system without having to let them into the Ubiqtorate base proper," Bel Iblis told him. "Grand Moff Tarkin ran a lot of his more private stuff through Yaga Minor, and he didn't want his political enemies getting even a glimpse of what he was up to."

"Okay, so there's a convenient remote connection to the computer," Booster said. "I don't suppose it happens to have an equally convenient access hatchway where we can get to it."

"There are hatchways, but unfortunately they're not at all convenient," Bel Iblis said, his voice turning grim. "We'll probably have to blast a hole in the side of the walkway tube and send in our slicers in vac suits."

Booster snorted. "Right—blow a hole in the side of the station. That'll sure go unnoticed."

"It could," Bel Iblis said. "The main force will be firing barrages of proton torpedoes at the time. The Imperials may assume that was one that got through."

"And if they don't?"

Bel Iblis shrugged. "Then you and I and the rest of the Errant Venture's crew start earning our pay the hard way. We'll have to hold them off long enough for the slicers to pull up a copy of the Caamas Document and transmit it out to the attacking ships."

Booster snorted again. "No offense, General, but that has to be the worst plan I've ever heard in my life. What happens to us once we've got the document?"

Bel Iblis looked him straight in the eye. "What happens to us doesn't matter," he said bluntly. "If they accept our surrender, fine. If not... they turn the Errant Venture into scrap around us."

"Hold it a second," Booster said, frowning. Buried in among all that breathtakingly lousy strategy he'd suddenly noticed a highly important word. "What do you mean us? I thought you were going to be out there with the main fleet."

Bel Iblis shook his head. "This ship is the key to the operation," he said quietly. "This is the ship that has to survive long enough to first get the Caamas Document and then punch it out through whatever jamming the Imperials have going. This is where I'm needed the most. So this is where I'll be."

"Now, wait just one mradhe mucking minute," Booster growled, pulling himself up to his full one-meter-nine height. "This is my ship. You told me I would still be her captain."

"You're still the captain," Bel Iblis agreed. "I'm simply the admiral." Booster let out a long, hissing breath. He should have known Bel Iblis hadn't really given in on anything. He should have known it. "And if I refuse to give you command?" Bel Iblis lifted his eyebrows slightly. Booster nodded, a sour taste in his mouth. With the Errant Venture crawling with Bel Iblis's people, the question wasn't even worth answering. "Right," he muttered. "I knew I'd regret this."

"You can stay here if you want," Bel Iblis offered. "I'm sure Coruscant would compensate you for—"

"Forget it," Booster bit out. "This is my ship, and you're not taking it into combat without me. Period."

Bel Iblis smiled faintly. "I understand," he said. "Believe me, I understand. Was there anything else?"

"No, that ought to about do it for now," Booster said glumly. "You might want to see if you can come up with a better plan in the next three days."

"I'll try," Bel Iblis promised. Turning, he headed for the door—

"Wait a second," Booster said as a new thought struck him. "You say we're going to blow a hole in that outrider computer station. What happens if someone's in there at the time?"

"I'm not expecting anyone to be there," Bel Iblis told him. "I doubt it's used much anymore. Besides, I can't see any other way to do this."

"But what if there is someone?" Booster persisted. "You said yourself the place was only used by civilians. You blow a hole in the wall and you're going to kill them." A shadow seemed to cross Bel Iblis's face. "Yes," he said quietly. "I know."

* * *

"Well," Klif said, consulting his chrono. "It's been four hours. What do you think—another two before the panic call comes?"

Navett shrugged, running through a quick mental calculation of his own. He and Klif had been conspicuously elsewhere at the time, just in case backchecks were made, but according to Pensin the subtle transfer of their little organic time bombs to the Bothan techs' clothing had gone as smooth as spun gemweb. Four hours now since those techs had vanished into the Drev'starn shield generator building; give them another hour to make their presence known, two more after that for the Bothans to become fully aware of the magnitude of the problem and to exhaust all other possibilities for dealing with it... "I'm guessing at least three," he told Klif. "They aren't going to be in a hurry to call in offworlders."

"Well, the stuff's ready whenever they do," Klif said with a shrug. Across the shop, the annoyingly cheery chime rang out as the door swung open. Settling his face into what Klif had dubbed their earnest-but-stupid expression, he looked up. And felt the expression freeze across his face. There, walking into the shop, were their two New Rep military types.

Beside him, Klif made a faint choking sound in the back of his throat. "Quiet," Navett murmured, adding a slightly dopey smile to his expression and bounding eagerly around the end of the counter toward their visitors. "A day of fun and profit to you, or however that goes," he said, keying his voice to the pleasant yet vaguely pushy tone of a merchant determined to make a sale. "Can I help you?"

"Just looking, thanks," one of the men said as they wandered down the row of cages. They were two of a kind, Navett noted: both somewhat short, both with slightly graying brown hair, the speaker with brown eyes while his companion had green.

And seen up close, Brown Eyes especially looked familiar.

"Sure, sure," Navett said, hovering nearby in traditional shopkeeper style. "Anything special you're lookin' for?"

"Not really," Green Eyes put in, gazing down into the polpian cage. "What are these? Polpians?"

"Sure are," Navett said. Both of them had faint Corellian accents, too. "You know your petstock."

"I know a little," Green Eyes said, gazing at him with a glint in his eye that Navett didn't care for at all. "I thought Bothans are allergic to polpians."

"Yeah, some of 'em are, I suppose," Navett said with a shrug.

"And yet you brought them to Bothawui?"

Navett put on a bewildered expression. "Well, sure," he said, trying to sound slightly wounded.

"Just 'cause some people are allergic to something doesn't mean someone else won't wanna buy it. Not all Bothans are allergic to 'em, either, and anyway there are lots more people here than just Bothans—"

He broke off as Brown Eyes sneezed. "There—see?" he said, jabbing a finger toward the other as if the sneeze was a sort of vindication. "Probably something in here he's allergic to, too. But you still came in, right? And I'll bet I can find something that'd make a really great pet for you." The door chime sounded again, and Navett turned to see a thin old woman come in. The fringe companion Klif had mentioned? "Hi, there," he said, nodding to her. "A day of fun and profit to you. Can I help you?"

"I hope so," she said. "You have any ratter thists?" Navett felt his throat tighten. What in blazes was a ratter thist? "Don't think I've ever heard of

'em," he said carefully, knowing better than to pretend knowledge he didn't have. "I can check the lists, though, see if we can get 'em from somewhere. What kind of critter are they?"

"They're not all that popular, really," the woman said. Her voice was casual, but she was watching him as closely as Green Eyes was. "They're small and agile, with tan-striped fur and retractable claws. They're sometimes used as livestock border guards in mountainous terrain."

"Oh, sure," Klif called from the far side of the counter. Leaning casually on it, there was no sign of the datapad he undoubtedly had going out of sight under the flat surface. "You're talking about Kordulian krisses."

"Oh—Kordulian krisses," Navett said with a knowing nod. He'd never heard of those, either, but Klif's cue was obvious. "Sure. I just never heard of 'em by that other name before. Klif, can we get

'em in?"

"Let me check," Klif said, making a show of pulling the datapad up onto the counter and pretending to turn it on.

"What are these?" Brown Eyes called. He was standing over the mawkren tank, looking in with a somewhat leery expression.

"Baby mawkrens," Navett told him, stepping to his side and looking fondly down through the clear plastic at the tiny lizards scrabbling restlessly around on top of each other. "Just whelped this morning. Cute, huh?"

"Adorable," Brown Eyes said, not sounding like he meant it.

"Here it is," Klif called. "Kordulian krisses. Let's see..." There was a beep from Navett's comlink. " 'Scuse me," he said, pulling out the instrument, a sudden feeling of dread coming over him. If this was the call they were expecting... "Hello?"

"Is this Proprietor Navett of the Exoticalia Pet Emporium?" a stiff but harried-sounding Bothan voice asked.

"Sure is," Navett said, striving for earnest-but-stupid cheerfulness. It was the call, all right; and with all the rotten luck it had come with a pair of New Rep agents standing right there listening. "What can I do for you?"

"We have a small but troublesome insect infestation problem," the Bothan said. "Our attempts to eliminate them have so far proved futile. As a dealer in exotic animals, it was thought you might have some suggestions."

"Probably," Navett said. "Klif and I did some bug-squash work before we got into the pet business. What kind are they?"

"They're unfamiliar to our experts," the other said, sounding disgusted. "All we know is that they're very small, do not respond to any of our extermination methods, and at random intervals all begin making a loud humming noise."

"Could be skronkies," Navett suggested doubtfully. "They make a pretty annoying noise. Or aphrens, or—wait a minute. I'll bet they're metalmites. You got any electronics or heavy machinery in the area?"

There was a sort of strangled sound from the comlink. "A considerable amount of it, yes," the Bothan said. "What do metalmites do?"

"Chew through metal," Navett said. " 'Course, they don't actually chew through the stuff—they've got enzymes that—"

"I don't need the physiological details," the Bothan cut him off. "How do we eliminate them?"

"Well, let's see," Navett said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully for the benefit of the New Rep agents. Green Eyes had that glint in his eyes again... "First thing you gotta do is some spraying. You got any—let's see—any CorTrehan around? That's cordioline trehansicol, if you need the whole name."

"I don't know," the Bothan said. "But I'm sure we can get some made up."

"Before you do, make sure you got someone who knows what they're doing," Navett warned.

"Won't do you a bit of good to just slather the stuff around." There was a brief pause. "What do you mean?"

"I mean you can't just slather the stuff around, that's what," Navett said, letting a little impatience creep into his voice. "You gotta get all the spots where they're going to feed, but also leave 'em enough bare spots—" He sighed. "Look, this isn't something for amateurs to mess around with. We've got the equipment to spray with—we use 'em to disinfect our cages and stock. You get us the CorTrehan, and Klif and me can do the job for you."

"Impossible," the Bothan said sharply. "Offworlders cannot be permitted in that area."

"Oh. Okay." Navett shrugged. He'd expected the automatic rejection of his first offer. "Just trying to help. You'll have plenty of time to get rid of a single brood before it does much damage." He frowned, as if something had suddenly occurred to him. "It is just a single brood, isn't it?

When they hum, do they all make one note, or are there a couple of different pitches?" There was a short pause. "There are several different notes," the Bothan said. "Five, perhaps six." Navett let out a low whistle. "Five of 'em? Ho, boy. Hey, Klif—they got five different broods in there. Well, good luck to you. I sure hope you can get someone on 'em before the brood war starts." He keyed off the comlink. "Five broods," he murmured, shaking his head. "Wow."

"Shocking," Green Eyes agreed, the glint still in his eyes. "Pretty exotic pests, metalmites."

"They come in on ships sometimes," Navett said, wishing he could read that face. Green Eyes was suspicious, all right. But was he suspicious of Navett personally, or just the general metalmite situation? "I've heard of 'em riding mynocks, too. Sort of scavenging along behind as they—" There was another beep from his comlink. " 'Scuse me again," he said, pulling it out. "Hello?"

"This is Field Controller Tri'byia again," the same Bothan voice came, sounding disgusted. "I spoke with you a few moments ago."

"Yeah, sure," Navett said. "What can I do for you?"

"I've been instructed to ask how much you would charge for getting rid of the metalmites," Tri'byia said.

"Oh, not much," Navett said, carefully suppressing a smile. From the tone of Tri'byia's voice, it was clear the sudden official change of heart wasn't his idea. "Matter of fact, as long as you spring for the CorTrehan—well, look. The guy at Customs said we're gonna need a special merchant's license to sell our pets outside Drev'starn. You get us that license, and we'll do it for free."

"For free?" Tri'byia repeated, the pitch of his voice dropping a few steps. "Why so generous?"

"Listen, I've seen what metalmites can do," Navett said stiffly. "If you think I want to run a business in a town where they've gotten a foothold, you can think again. And the faster we get started, the easier it'll be to get rid of them. You get us a merchant's license and the juice, and we'll call it even."

"I believe that can be arranged," Tri'byia said reluctantly. "You and your equipment will have to submit to a full scan before you can be allowed into the facility."

"No problem," Navett said. "Actually, this'll be kind of fun—just like old times. When do you want us?"

"A landspeeder will pick you up in thirty minutes," the Bothan said. He still didn't sound happy, but there was a cautious note of relief in his voice. "Be ready to go."

"We will," Navett promised.

The Bothan clicked off without bothering to say good-bye. "Man, you just never know, do you?" Navett said philosophically, sliding the comlink away. "Sorry, folks. Did you want us to order some of those krisses for you, ma'am? Klif, you find anything on the lists?"

"Looks like we can get 'em from a supplier on Eislo—have 'em here in two or three days," Klif reported. "Or we can get 'em shipped in straight from Kordu itself. That'll probably be a little cheaper, but it'll take longer."

"You want to order today?" Navett asked hopefully. "You only have to put a tenth down up front."

The old woman shook her head. "I think I'll see if anyone else in town has them in stock first."

"Well, if you don't find anyone, come on back," Klif called as the three of them headed for the door. "We can get express service for a pretty reasonable fee."

"We'll keep that in mind," Brown Eyes promised. "Thanks. We may be back." They filed out, passing across the front window and out of Navett's view as the door closed behind them. "I'll just bet you will," he said softly to himself. He shook his head, dismissing them from his mind. Fringe lifters and even New Rep agents were completely unimportant right now. What was important was that their little metalmite time bombs, introduced into the shield generator techs' clothing, had done their job. And now it was time for Klif and him to do theirs.

"Let's get ready," he said, heading briskly toward the back room. "Mustn't keep the Bothans waiting."

* * *

"And here," General Hestiv said, keying a combination into the keypad, "is where you'll be working."

"Okay," Ghent said, glancing nervously down the long corridor behind them. It was a long way back to the main base, and Hestiv had assured him that hardly anyone ever came out here anymore. But there was a whole Imperial Ubiqtorate station back there, and he couldn't shake the feeling he was being watched by unfriendly eyes.

With a puff of slightly stale air the door swung open. "There we go," Hestiv said, gesturing him forward. "Go on in."

Ghent stepped into the doorway, throwing Hestiv a sideways glance as he passed. Admiral Pellaeon had vouched for him, he knew. But the man was still an Imperial officer, and Ghent was from the New Republic. If this Moff Disra person wanted to do away with him, this would be a perfect place to do it.

And then he got his first glimpse of the room itself...

"This is your new temporary home," Hestiv said from behind him. "What do you think?" Ghent hardly heard him. Could hardly believe his eyes, for that matter, as he looked around the tiny room. Crammed into it were an Everest 448 DataSifter, a pair of Fedukowski D/Square decrypt/decipherers, five Wickstrom K220 heavy-duty peripheral processors, a Merilang-1221

full-spectrum numerical analyzer—

"The equipment's probably nothing like what you're used to," Hestiv said apologetically. "But hopefully it'll do."

—and there as a centerpiece, nothing less than a brand-new Rikhous Masterline-70 OcTerminal. A Masterline-70! "No, not really," Ghent managed, still staring goggle-eyed at the shining array. And they were going to let him have this whole room? All to himself? "But it'll do just fine."

"Good," Hestiv said, crossing the room in front of him and keying open another door Ghent hadn't yet noticed. "Your living quarters are in here, so you won't have to leave this section at all. In fact, you might want to change the coding on the door lock after I leave so that no one can even accidentally walk in on you."

"Sure," Ghent said, his nervousness about this place already forgotten. "I can seal it up real tight. Okay if I get started?"

"Whenever you're ready," Hestiv said. Dimly, Ghent was aware the other was staring at him oddly. "You know how to get hold of me if you need anything. Good luck."

"Sure," Ghent said as Hestiv stepped back through the doorway. There was another puff of air, and Ghent was alone.

Dropping his carrypack to the floor, he shoved it with his foot in the general direction of the living area. Imperial Moffs, lurking danger, and even imminent civil wars all but forgotten, he pulled out the chair in front of the Masterline-70 and sat down.

This was going to be fun.

* * *

It took an entire hour of scans and examinations under the watchful eyes and ungentle hands of what seemed to Navett to be half of Drev'starn's contingent of Bothawui Security. But at last, with the obvious reluctance of a being who heartily dislikes a situation but has no better alternatives available, Field Controller Tri'byia finally led him and Klif down into the lower levels of the shield generator building.

Into the very center of the Drev'starn defense system.

"Impressive stuff," Navett commented to his glowering guards as he glanced casually around the room. "I can see why you wanna get rid of 'em fast."

He hoisted the tank of CorTrehan a little higher on his shoulder. "Okay," he said, waggling his slender sprayer loosely in his hand. "First thing is for you to show me anything really delicate or critical you don't want 'em getting into."

"We don't want them getting into any of it," Tri'byia snapped, his fur rippling.

"Yeah, sure, sure," Navett soothed. "I just meant where do you want us to start spraying? We should do the most delicate stuff first."

Tri'byia's fur rippled again. "I suppose that seems reasonable," he said unhappily. Clearly, the last thing he wanted to do was point out the most important parts of their precious shield generator to a couple of humans. "This way."

Not that it mattered, of course. Navett knew perfectly well what everything in this complex was, and neither he nor Klif needed the Bothans to point out the kill-points to them. But it was something an earnest but stupid pet shop owner might be expected to ask. Besides, he was curious to see how honest the Bothans might get in the middle of a crisis like this.

"You may start there," Tri'byia said, stopping and pointing to a completely nonvital backup comm console.

"Okay," Navett said. Apparently, not very.

They'd been spraying for fifteen minutes, laying out the elaborate curlicue chemical trails that were the only way to effectively kill metalmites, when things finally began to get interesting. "This one next," Tri'byia said, laying a hand protectively on the edge of one of the consoles responsible for maintaining the power-frequency coupling between the various poles of the planetary shield.

"Right," Navett said, his heart starting to beat faster as he stepped over to the console. This was it: the first blade thrust into the heart of the species whose actions had cost the Empire so much over the years. The Bothan techs had already removed the access panels; shifting his grip subtly on the sprayer as he crouched down, Navett eased the tip into the maze of electronics and gave it a delicate squirt. Only this time he left more than just the metalmite-killing CorTrehan to bead up on the circuit cards and drip slowly down onto the power supplies and ventilation fan casings below. This time, his new grip had allowed the slender tank built into the sprayer handle to dribble some of its own special contents into the mix.

The hour-long examination the Bothans had put their equipment through had scanned for everything those paranoid minds could have thought of: weapons, spy equipment, explosives, poisons, soporifics, acids, wire-spinners, and probably fifty other potential threats. But nowhere in all those multiple layers of precautions had anyone thought to program a check for food.

Not that anyone in the generator building would have found this particular brew even remotely appetizing, not even the metalmites. In fact, now that the rotten little vermin had played their part, it was time for them to die.

He and Klif spent the next two hours moving systematically through the complex, laying down their poison trails and, at perhaps twenty carefully selected points, adding in a squirt of their liquid nutrient. By the time they finished, the thick, sweet-sour smell of the CorTrehan was almost like a physical barrier that had to be pushed aside as they walked through it.

"Okay," Navett said cheerfully as they were finally escorted back into the security entrance area.

"First step's done. Now all you gotta do is put a loudspeaker on that's blasting out the broods'

different carrier pitches. That keeps 'em from talking back and forth inside their groups, and that keeps 'em from breeding faster so they can fight with the other broods. Gives the CorTrehan time to work. You see?"

"Yes," Tri'byia said, looking marginally less unhappy now that the offworlders were no longer in direct contact with his precious machinery. "How long will this be necessary?"

"Oh, a week ought to do it," Navett said. "Eight or nine days just to be on the safe side. Some broods are harder to kill than others. Don't worry, though—they won't be eating anything during any of that. Mostly, they'll just be dying."

"Very well," Tri'byia agreed reluctantly. "I have only one more question, then. I am told these pests are quite rare. How is it they were able to find their way in here?" Navett shrugged as casually as he could. The groundwork had been laid, but that didn't mean they were out of the snake pit yet. If the Bothans decided to be suspicious enough to go back in and clean out everything he and Klif had just laid down, this whole setup would have been for nothing. "You got me," he said. "You bring any new equipment in here in the past week or two?" The Bothan's fur rippled uncertainly. "There were two pieces of equipment that arrived seven days ago. But both were scanned thoroughly before they were brought in."

"Yeah, but I'll bet your scanners aren't programmed for heavily metal-based life like these things," Navett pointed out. It was a safe bet; certainly the Bothans' scanners hadn't spotted the little beasts riding in on their incoming techs' clothing. "Tell you the truth, I don't know if anyone really knows where they come from or how they get around. They just pop up now and then and make trouble. They probably came in with that equipment, though. You might want to catch a couple of 'em and use

'em to reprogram your scanners so they can't make any more trouble."

"Thank you," Tri'byia said, a bit huffily. Apparently, Bothans of his stature were not used to having the obvious pointed out to them.

"No problem," Navett said cheerfully. Earnest but stupid, he was the type to take everything at full face value, without noticing any undertones. "Glad we could help. And you'll get that merchant's license for us, right?"

"I will do what I can to help with it," Tri'byia said.

Which was, Navett noticed, not precisely what he'd originally promised. But that was all right. In six days, if all went according to plan, Tri'byia would cease to exist, along with the city of Drev'starn and as much of the rest of Bothawui as the Imperial Star Destroyers hidden out there could manage. And on that day, Navett planned to look down on the shattered world from one of those Star Destroyers and laugh. But for now, all he needed to do was smile. "Great," he said cheerfully.

"Thanks a lot. And if you guys ever need anything else, just give us a call." He and Klif didn't say anything to each other on the ride back to the pet shop. Nor did they speak once they were there, at least not about anything of substance, until they'd gone over each other thoroughly with the spy-mike detector hidden in the bottom of the dopplefly cage. But if Tri'byia didn't especially like them, he apparently wasn't overly suspicious of them, either. The spy scan came up clean.

"Sloppy," Klif grunted as they returned the detector back to its hiding place. "You'd think they'd at least want to hear us slapping each other on the back about getting our license so cheap."

"I'm sure they backchecked our records before they called us in," Navett said, sniffing in disgust as he slapped at his shirt. That blasted CorTrehan stuck to everything. "Did you get a chance to see where our power conduit came into the building? I never got to that side of the building."

"I saw it." Klif nodded. "They've actually got a splice going off one of the power cables, probably ready to go to the new equipment Tri'byia mentioned."

"But they hadn't opened the wall any?"

Klif shook his head. "They're not that stupid. No, the whole wall's still there."

"Fine," Navett said, shrugging. It would have been handy to have had some of that meter-thick, reinforced, heavily braced, multiple-layered, impenetrable wall out of their way. But it certainly wasn't necessary.

"I'm just worried about it taking another six days before we can spring this," Klif continued.

"Won't the stuff we left start to deteriorate?"

"Not a problem," Navett assured him. "The tricky part now is going to be digging down to the power conduit from that Ho'Din place and then cutting through it without setting off sensors from here to Odve'starn."

"You think they've wired the conduit itself?"

"I would if I were in charge," Navett said. "Horvic and Pensin can get us into the place after hours, but we won't have much time each night to work. Slow and steady is the way to go, and six days should be just about right."

"I suppose," Klif said, sobering. "Of course, that assumes we even have six more days. Or have you finally decided to do something about those New Rep agents?" Abruptly, he snapped his fingers.

"Oh, blast—I just made that face. Wedge Antilles."

"You're right," Navett said, grimacing as the name belatedly clicked with Brown Eyes's face. General Wedge Antilles, leader of that multi-cursed Rogue Squadron. A single insignificant group of X-wings that had probably caused the Empire more trouble than all the Bothans in the galaxy put together. "And that's going to make things that much more awkward. Even without New Republic celebrities involved, a triple murder would create a major fuss."

He let his eyes drift around the shop, taking in the rows of cages, the subtle mix of smells and sounds. Surely Antilles wouldn't see any threat in a harmless pet shop.

But no. They'd been standing right here when the call came through, and knew he and Klif had been invited into the shield generator building. No, they'd have the pet shop marked now for sure.

"But I don't suppose we can afford to let them poke around anymore, either," he conceded. "I guess it's time we took them out."

"Now you're talking," Klif said with dark approval. "You want me to take care of it?" Navett cocked an eyebrow. "What, all by yourself?"

"Hey, they're just X-wing jocks," Klif said. "At least Antilles is. Outside their cockpits they're babes in arms."

"Maybe," Navett said. "But they found us okay. And that old woman looks like she knows her way around, too."

"Meaning?"

Navett gave him a tight smile. "Meaning you don't take them out by yourself," he said. "We'll do it together."

* * *

Moranda sipped at her blue-green liqueur. "I don't know," she said, shaking her head. "I can't say that any of them really leaped up and waved at me."

"That's one way to put it," Wedge said sourly, massaging his aching temples with thumb and middle finger. Fifty different shops, businesses, service spots, and eating establishments. All of them set up in Drev'starn since the warships began gathering overhead; all of them visited personally by him, Corran, and Moranda in the past four days. The business turnover rate on Bothawui must be astronomical. "Another way is to just admit we've hit another dead end."

"I'm not sure I'd go quite that far," Corran said slowly, meditatively swirling his drink around in its glass. "There were a couple of places that were definitely more on edge than others. That Meshakian jewelry owner, for one."

"Stolen goods dealer," Moranda dismissed him with a flip of her hand. "And he spotted us right off as anything but casual customers, by the way. You've really got to learn how to rein in that straight-backed CorSec stance of yours, Corran."

"And that Ho'Din tapcafe," Corran continued, ignoring her as he ran a finger down their list. "It's sitting right on top of one of the power-cable conduits to the generator building."

"And has been there for ten years," Moranda reminded him.

"Except that the day manager mentioned they'd just hired a couple of humans for the late cleanup shift, remember?" Corran countered. "There's something about that that bothers me." Wedge eyed him over his cup. Corran, he knew, had never had much luck with the mind-reading aspects of the Force, not like Luke or Leia. But if he couldn't retrieve other people's thoughts, he could still pull out impressions and hints and textures. Combined with his old CorSec detective training, it meant that anything that bothered him was worth taking a hard look at.

"And then, of course," Corran added, "there are our friends at the Exoticalia Pet Emporium." Wedge looked at Moranda, waiting for her rebuttal. But it didn't come. "There's them, all right," she said instead, frowning down at the tabletop. "I don't like that one at all."

"I thought you said none of them had jumped out at you," Wedge reminded her.

"No, they didn't," Moranda agreed. "That's just the point. The pet guys acted just perfect. But how many pet shop owners do you know who also happen to be experts at getting rid of vermin?

And exotic ones like metalmites, yet?"

"We should be able to backcheck them and see if that kind of experience shows up in their records," Corran said. But he didn't look any happier than Moranda did. "I just wish we knew where exactly this metalmite invasion had taken place."

"Has to be someplace with really high security," Wedge said. "They weren't even going to let them in at first."

"And at the same time, that decision got overruled real quick," Moranda said, nodding.

"Someplace with ultra high security, but yet extremely sensitive and vital." For a moment the three of them looked at each other. Corran broke the silence first. "It's the shield generator building," he said. "There's nothing else in Drev'starn that fits."

"Agreed," Moranda said, sipping at her drink. "Question now is, was the metalmite incursion the attack or the bait? If it's the attack—"

She broke off at a muffled beep from Wedge's comlink, buried deep in a pocket of his jacket.

"Who knows you're here?" she asked.

"Our shuttle," Wedge told her, digging out the instrument. "We set up a relay for any incoming transmissions." Thumbing it on, he keyed for low volume. "Go Red Two," he gave the codeword. The message was very short. "This is father," Bel Iblis's familiar voice said. "All is forgiven; come on home."

Wedge squeezed the comlink hard. "Acknowledged," he said. "On our way." He keyed the comlink off and looked up to find Corran's gaze hard on him. "Dad?" Wedge nodded. "Dad," he confirmed. "Time to go home."

"Meaning?" Moranda asked.

"Meaning we have to leave," Wedge told her. "Right now."

"Oh, that's convenient," Moranda growled, glaring at him. "What about the shield generator?"

"From now on the Bothans are on their own," Wedge said, draining his drink and sorting out coins onto the table. "I'm sorry, but we were only on temporary loan anyway." Moranda grimaced, but nodded. "I understand," she said. "Well, it was fun while it lasted."

"You should probably give Bothan Security a call," Wedge said, standing up. "Point them to our friends at the pet shop."

"Whatever," Moranda said, waving a hand. "Happy flights."

"Thanks," Wedge said. "Come on, Corran."

"Just a second," Corran said. He hadn't moved from his chair, and there was a glint in his eyes as he looked at Moranda. "I want to know what Moranda's going to do now."

"Oh, go on," she chided him, making little shooing motions with her hands. "I'll be fine."

"In other words, you're going to stay on this," he said bluntly. She lifted her eyebrows. "That's very good. CorSec teach you how to do that?"

"You haven't answered the question," Wedge said, sitting back down again. "You are going to call Security, aren't you?"

"And tell them what?" she countered. "We don't have a scrap of proof. It's worse than that, really—they presumably already did a backcheck on Navett and his buddy, and they still let them into the generator building."

"So what are you going to do?" Wedge persisted. "Stay on this by yourself?" Moranda's mouth set itself into hard lines. "I was given an assignment, Wedge," she said quietly.

"I'm supposed to stay here and watch for Vengeance attempts against Bothawui." Corran shook his head. "That's not a good idea," he said. "If Vengeance is being driven or guided by Imperials—"

"So where are you two off to?" Moranda demanded scornfully. "A vacation on the beaches of Berchest? I'll lay you fifty-to-one it'll be a lot more dangerous wherever you're going than anything I'm likely to run into here."

"Moranda—" Wedge began.

"Besides which, you don't have time to argue about it," she cut him off. "If 'Dad' is who I think he is, he's not going to be happy if you two get home late. Now scoot, both of you. Thanks for all the drinks."

Reluctantly, Wedge stood up again. She was right, of course; and she was certainly more than old enough to make this kind of decision for herself. But that didn't mean he had to like it. "Come on, Corran. Moranda... you watch yourself, okay?"

"You, too," she said, smiling up at him. "Don't worry about me. I'll be just fine."

CHAPTER

26

There was a strange, almost unworldly aroma tugging at her senses as Mara drifted toward consciousness. Something strange, yet vaguely pleasant...

"Good morning," Luke's voice came through the haze. With a jolt, Mara came fully awake. And in that first disorienting moment wished she hadn't. Even as she opened her eyes to the dimly lit gloom around her, she suddenly became aware of a hundred sparks of pain jabbing through her muscles from her heels through her legs and back and right to the nape of her neck. "Ow," she grunted under her breath.

Luke's face appeared overhead, looking down at her with concern. "Is your shoulder still hurting?" he asked.

Mara frowned, blinking away a little more of the haze clouding her mind. Right—her badly burned shoulder. Craning her neck down, focusing eyes that still weren't entirely awake, she peered down at her charred jumpsuit.

At her charred jumpsuit, and the smooth, unmarked skin showing through the hole there.

"No," she said, not quite believing it. "The shoulder feels just fine. It's—oh, right. Your healing trance."

"Some disorientation is normal when you first come out of it," Luke assured her. "Don't worry."

"I wasn't." She eased her shoulders around, trying to ignore the extra wave of tingles the movement sent running through her back. Luke's hand was there, gripping her arm and helping her sit up. "You said it was morning?"

"Well, afternoon, actually," Luke amended. "But Han once told me that anytime you woke up was technically morning."

"That sounds like his casual slant on things," Mara said. "How long—in real time—have I been lying there?"

"About five days," Luke told her. "Easy, now."

"Oh, you bet," she agreed, wincing as muscles that had been laid on for five straight days continued to complain loudly about their mistreatment. "I'm impressed. I don't think even a bacta tank would have done the job that fast."

"You have a strong Force gift," Luke said, his hand hovering ready by her arm. "That usually helps the healing process."

"It's definitely one I'm going to have to learn," she decided, looking around. That aroma she thought she'd dreamed was still there...

"It's some kind of roast avian," Luke explained, nodding toward the back of the landing. "A wake-up gift to you from the Qom Jha."

"Really," Mara said, hoisting herself carefully to her feet and hobbling over there on unsteady legs. It was a roast avian, all right, simmering on a cooking pad. "Awfully nice of them. Where did you get the cooker?"

"I sent Keeper Of Promises back to your Defender for the rest of the survival gear," Luke explained. "I'd rather have sent them back to my X-wing—the spare kit Karrde put together was a lot more complete. But after our brush with the Threateners they're not all that eager to go roaming around outside."

"This from the species that eats fire creepers raw?" Mara pointed out as she eased back into a sitting position by the cooking pad. "Pretty selective skittishness."

"It's a little more complicated than that," Luke said, seating himself cross-legged on the floor across the cooking pad from her and gesturing toward the food. "Hence the gift, actually. They've come to the conclusion that you saved their lives in there."

"I don't know how they figure that," Mara grunted, tearing off a piece of the roast. "We were the ones being shot at, not them."

Luke's lips puckered. "Actually, there's some question about that. Splitter Of Stones thinks it was the Qom Jha who the Threateners were firing at, not us, at least until you started shooting back. And as I've gone back through my memories of the battle, I think he's right." Mara took a careful bite. The meat was a little overcooked for her taste, but not bad for all that. Anyway, as her loudly growling stomach reminded her, a person who hadn't eaten in five days couldn't afford to be too choosy. "Interesting thought," she said, "but I'm not sure where it gets us. Whoever they were shooting at, the fact is, they're still touchy about strangers."

"Maybe," Luke said, his tone odd. "But maybe not. Haven't you wondered why the Threateners never came into the cave looking for you after you knocked yourself out?"

"Are you sure they didn't come in?" Mara countered around a mouthful of food.

"The Qom Jha say they didn't," Luke told her. "There were a couple of flybys with their ships, and that was it. In fact, as far as Child Of Winds knows, they never even conducted an outside ground search of the area."

Mara chewed thoughtfully, resisting the urge to point out that Child Of Winds was not exactly the most reliable source of information around. "Okay," she said. "Let's assume the Threateners lost interest in me. Where does that get us?"

"If they simply lost interest, I don't know," Luke said. "But what if they didn't lose interest, but just decided to wait until you found your own way into the High Fortress?" Mara took another bite. That was a disturbing thought. In fact, it was an extremely disturbing thought. All the more so since that exact course of action was one she had actually considered early in her captivity. "I don't know if Karrde mentioned it to you," she said slowly, "but the way we found this system was by tracking the escape vectors from two of their ships to an intersect point. My assumption has always been that they simply didn't know we could track their vector for a few microseconds after they jumped to lightspeed. But now I'm not so sure."

"You think they wanted you to come here?"

"It would fit with them not searching all that hard for me after I landed," Mara pointed out. "Of course, if we argue that direction we then have to come up with an explanation as to why they tried to shoot you down."

"Maybe they're not interested in having more than one guest at a time," Luke suggested, gazing out into space. "Or maybe they don't want to talk to anyone from the New Republic until they've talked to you first."

Mara eyed him closely. There had been a flicker in his emotions just then... "Is that just off the top of your head?" she asked. "Or are you getting something from the Force about it?" He shook his head, still gazing at nothing. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "But I have the feeling... no, never mind."

"No never mind what?" Mara demanded suspiciously, pressing at the corners of his mind. "Come on, we don't have time for games."

A muscle in his cheek twitched. "I get the feeling it's you they want to see," he said. "You, specifically."

Mara lifted her eyebrows. "I'm flattered. My fame just continues to spread."

"Eater Of Fire Creepers did say they'd heard the Threateners talking about you," Luke reminded her. "I wish we knew the context of the conversation."

There was a flapping from the stairway, and one of the Qom Jha appeared. It spoke—"Thank you, Flyer Through Spikes," Luke said. "Go see if Keeper Of Promises has any news, if you would." The Qom Jha replied, and with a flurry of wings was gone down the stairway. "I've had some of the Qom Jha patrolling the upper areas of the stairway and listening for activity outside the doors," Luke explained. "Flyer Through Spikes tells me the upper areas of the fortress were active for a while this morning, but they seem to be quiet again."

"Ah," Mara said, tearing off another bite with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. Those blasted Qom Jha and their blasted unintelligible voices—

"Something wrong?" Luke asked.

Mara glared at him. "You know, Skywalker, it's really hard to keep any thoughts to yourself when you're around."

He gave her an innocent look that had far too much amusement in it for her taste. "Odd. I seem to remember a situation not too long ago when you couldn't wait to unload some of those choicer thoughts on me."

Mara grimaced. "Feeling a little more cheerful about our past mistakes this morning, are we?" He sobered. "Not cheerful, no," he said. "Just learning how to acknowledge them, learn from them, and then pick up and move on. I've had a lot of time for thinking during these past five days, you know."

"You reach any particular conclusions?"

He looked straight at her. "I know why you didn't turn to the dark side," he said. "And why you keep coming up against limits on what you can do through the Force." With a casualness she didn't especially feel, Mara took another bite and settled her back against the stone wall behind her. "I'm listening."

"The essence of the dark side is selfishness," Luke said. "The elevation of yourself and your own desires above everything else."

Mara nodded. "Fairly obvious so far."

"The point is that all the time you were serving the Emperor, you were never doing so out of selfish motives," Luke said. "You were serving, even if it was Palpatine and his own selfish ends. And service to others is the essence of being a Jedi."

Mara thought about that. "No," she said, shaking her head. "No, I don't like it. Service to evil is still evil. What you're saying is that doing something wrong isn't really wrong if your motives are good. That's nonsense."

"I agree," Luke said. "But that's not what I'm saying. Some of the things you did were certainly wrong; but because you weren't doing them for your own purposes, the acts themselves didn't open you to the dark side."

Mara glowered at her food. "I see the difference," she said. "But I still don't like it."

"Actually, it's not that much different from the situation with the Jensaarai that Corran and I ran into on Susevfi," Luke said. "They didn't know how to be Jedi, but were still serving the best they knew how."

"And in the process had gotten themselves so bent around that you were years untwisting them," Mara reminded him tartly. "Anyway, they at least had the memory of a role model to follow, didn't they? That what's-his-name Jedi?"

"Nikkos Tyris," Luke said, nodding. "Which brings up an even more interesting thought. Maybe you had a role model, too."

Mara shook her head. "Not a chance. There wasn't a single person in the inner court with a scrap of what I'd consider virtue or morality."

"Then maybe it was someone in your life before you were taken to Coruscant," Luke suggested.

"Your parents, or some close friend."

Mara bit off the last bite of her meal and tossed the carcass back into a corner. "This is a dead-end conversation," she declared firmly, wiping her hands on her jumpsuit legs where the oils and grime would eventually flake off. "Let's get back to the job at hand. Where did you stash my blaster?" Luke didn't move. "I know you don't remember much about your past," he said quietly. "For whatever it's worth, I understand how you feel."

"Thanks," Mara growled. "That certainly helps."

"Would you like to have that past back again?"

She frowned at him, conflicting emotions surging suddenly against each other. "What do you mean?" she asked cautiously.

"There are techniques Jedi can use to pull out buried memories," he said. "And you could be a Jedi, Mara. You could be a powerful Jedi."

"Right," Mara bit out. "All I have to do is declare I'm ready to serve the galaxy, right?" Luke's forehead creased, and she caught the flicker of puzzlement from him. "What is it about that that scares you?" he asked. "You've served and worked with people all your life—Palpatine, Karrde, Leia and Han and me. And once you've offered your loyalty, it's for keeps. You can do this—I know you can."

Mara squeezed her hand into a fist, half minded to close the subject again and this time make sure she sat on the lid. But deep inside she knew he deserved an answer on this one. "I can't just offer that kind of blank-line invitation," she said. "Sure I can be loyal; but only to the people I choose to be loyal to. I'm not ready to open myself up to anyone who walks in off the street." She grimaced. "Besides, I keep remembering stories about how the last step to becoming a Jedi is usually making some supreme and rather ugly personal sacrifice. I'm not crazy about that one, either."

"It's not always as bad as it seems," Luke said, and Mara could sense his discomfort as unpleasant memories of his own floated back to the surface. "Just before he died, Master Yoda told me that before I would truly be a Jedi I needed to face Vader again. I jumped to the conclusion that that meant I had to either kill him or let him kill me. As it turned out, it didn't happen either way."

"But you had to be willing to make that sacrifice if necessary," Mara pointed out. "Thanks, but I'm not interested."

"Then you automatically limit your capabilities," Luke said. "If you aren't willing to make a commitment—"

"Commitment?" Mara snorted. "You're the one telling me about commitment? What about Callista, or Gaeriel, or any of the other women you've brushed paths with over the past ten years?

Where's been the commitment there?"

Luke's flash of anger was so sudden and so unexpected it physically shocked her back against the stone wall. "You should talk," he snapped. "What about Lando? Huh?" For a long moment they just glared at each other. Mara held her breath, bracing herself for another outburst, stories of uncontrolled Jedi anger running ominously through her mind. But instead, she felt his anger drain away, replaced by shame and a deep embarrassment. "I'm sorry," he said, dropping his eyes away from her face. "That was uncalled for."

"No, I'm the one who should apologize," Mara said, trying to hide her own guilt feelings from him and knowing she was being only partly successful. She knew better than to fight like that. "I know how you felt about those women, and what happened to them. I'm sorry."

"That's all right," Luke murmured. "What happened to them was probably partly my fault. Maybe even mostly my fault. I'm the one who dabbled in the dark side, not them."

"You acknowledge your mistakes, and learn from them," Mara reminded him. "Then you pick up and move on. It's time to pick up and move on."

"I suppose." Still not looking at her, he climbed to his feet. "You're right—we should get moving. I had the Qom Jha make some measurements while you were sleeping, and it looks like the upper door out of here should let us out in one of the top three floors of the fortress. Let's try that approach."

"Just a second," Mara said, looking up at him. She had promised herself—rather cavalierly, she realized in retrospect—that she wasn't going to tell him this until he point-blank asked her about it. But her silence was childish. Anyway, the accusation he'd just thrown in her face was probably close enough. "You wanted to know about Lando and me. Right?"

She saw the twitch in his neck. "That's all right," he said. "It's really none of my business."

"I'm making it your business," Mara said, getting to her feet so she could look him straight in the eye. "What was between Lando and me was... absolutely nothing." His eyes flicked suspiciously to hers. "What do you mean?"

"I mean just what I said: absolutely nothing," she repeated. "Karrde had an important mission for me to carry out, and because Lando had supplied the starting point he invited himself along. The—well, personal aspects to the whole thing were nothing but window dressing to keep people from figuring out what we were up to."

She could feel Luke probing at the edges of her mind. "You could have told me," he said, not quite accusingly.

"You could have asked me," she countered. "You never seemed all that interested." He grimaced, and she could feel a fresh wave of embarrassment wash over him. "I didn't, did I?" he admitted.

"You learn, and move on," Mara reminded him. "Actually, if you want to come right down to it, you were the one who got the whole thing started in the first place. Remember that beckon call you found on Dagobah and took to Lando's place on Nkllon?"

Luke looked at her sharply. "Yes. In fact, I was just thinking about it a few days ago. I wondered why it had suddenly come to mind."

"Proddings of the Force, no doubt," Mara said. It was as good an answer as any. "It turns out that particular beckon call used to belong to someone Karrde once knew who had dropped out of sight some years back. Fellow named Jorj Car'das—ever hear of him?" Luke shook his head. "No."

"Apparently, not a lot of people have," she said. "Made things so much more challenging. Anyway, with the beckon call we had a starting point, and Karrde asked me to try to track him down. And as I said, Lando—smelling profit, no doubt—insisted on tagging along."

"Must have been a long search," Luke murmured. "The stories of you and Lando..."

"It took some years," Mara said. "Off and on work, of course." She lifted her eyebrows. "For whatever it's worth, the romance part of the cover story drove me crazy. But finding Car'das was important to Karrde, so I stuck with it. Like you said, loyalty."

She hissed gently between her teeth with the memories. "Though it did prove exceptionally embarrassing at times. There was one particular week on M'haeli where Lando was trying to sugar-talk the Vicebaron Sukarian out of some information we needed. I had to become a giddy, vacant-brained bit of decorative fluff, because Sukarian automatically put that class of woman beneath his contempt and the role gave me the freedom of movement I needed. The worst part was that Solo caught me in the act with a comm relay when I thought it was Sukarian calling. I've never quite had the nerve to ask him what he thought of that."

"I don't think it would have ruined his opinion of you," Luke said, his voice an odd mixture of support, gallantry, and lingering embarrassment. "Though I imagine Sukarian's opinion is probably beyond repair at this point."

"Oh, I don't think so," Mara assured him. "I usually wore one of Lando's shirts during Sukarian's late-night visits and comm calls, and I made sure to leave one of them hanging on the open door of his private office safe. After I'd gutted it."

Luke smiled. A tentative, still somewhat shamefaced smile, but a genuine smile nevertheless. At this point, that was enough. "His reaction must have been interesting." Mara nodded. "I like to think so."

"Yes." Luke took a deep breath, and she could sense him forcing old memories and extraneous thoughts to the back of his mind. "But as you said, we've got a job to do," he said briskly, "and it's going to be a long climb. Let's pack up the gear and get going."

* * *

It was, as Luke had estimated from the numbers the Qom Jha had gathered for him, indeed a long climb. Nearly as long as it had been from the bottom of the hidden stairway to that first door, in fact. And with Mara's muscles still recovering from five days of idleness, and Luke himself therefore handling Artoo and all the rest of their equipment, it should have been something of a strain. But to his mild astonishment, it wasn't. And it didn't take any deep Jedi insight to understand why. The barrier he had set up between him and Mara was gone.

The odd part was that he hadn't even realized there had been a barrier there. The communication they had together—their ability to sense each other's thoughts and emotions—had been so close that he'd simply assumed that was as strong as it got.

He'd been wrong. He'd been very wrong.

It was an exhilarating experience; and yet, at the same time, a somewhat intimidating one as well. He'd experienced close-mind contact with other people on occasion, but never to the same level as he was experiencing now. Mara's thoughts and emotions seemed to flow over him, their level and intensity now seemingly limited only by her personal barriers, as his own thoughts and emotions flowed the other direction back to her. There was a new rapport between them, a deepening of their old relationship that he only now realized how sorely he'd missed.

Confession, apology, and forgiveness, Aunt Beru had been fond of reminding him, were the tools friends used to break walls down into bridges. Seldom if ever in his life had he had that truth so graphically demonstrated.

With concern for Mara's physical condition and stamina foremost in his mind, he made sure the party took frequent rest breaks as they climbed, a policy that drove Mara just slightly less crazy than it did the Qom Jha. But he insisted, and as a result it took them nearly an hour to reach their target door. But when they did, at least, Mara was fully ready to go.

"All right, here's the plan," Luke told her, stretching out with the Force. As near as he could tell, the entire area outside the hidden door was clear. "We'll leave Artoo and the Qom Jha in here and do a little reconnoiter on our own."

"Sounds good." Mara pulled out her blaster and checked it, and Luke could sense her working to control her private misgivings about going back in there. Understandable, of course; she was the one who'd gotten shot. Luke had had something of the same trouble the first time he'd gone back to visit Cloud City. "How about leaving one of our comlinks here with them?"

"Good idea," Luke agreed, pulling his comlink from his belt and putting it in Artoo's light-duty grasping arm. "Don't forget and turn it off," he admonished the droid. Artoo warbled indignantly, the translation scrolling across the datapad. "Yes, I know," Luke assured him. "I was just kidding."

"What?" Mara asked.

"He said turning off comlinks at critical moments was Threepio's trick," Luke told her. "Private joke. You ready?"

He could sense her reaching out to the Force for calm. "Ready," she said. "Let's do it." The secret door, gratifyingly enough, opened as quietly as the other one had. With Luke in the lead, they stepped out, closing the door behind them.

"Now this," Mara said quietly in his ear, "is like the Hijarna fortress." Luke nodded acknowledgment, looking around. They were in a vast chamber, with short wall segments scattered around apparently at random linking the floor with the relatively low ceiling. The shiny wall coverings, elaborate flooring, and wall sconces they'd seen below were absent, leaving nothing but unadorned and unrelieved black stone. Despite that, though, the place seemed oddly airy.

"Doesn't look like our friends downstairs are using this area," he said. "I wonder why." Mara took a few steps to the side and pointed around the end of one of the wall segments.

"There's your answer," she said. "Come on—let's go see." She disappeared around the wall. Luke followed, noticing for the first time a gentle flow of air coming from that direction.

And the reason for it was quickly clear. Beyond the wall, at the far side of the room, the black stone had been gashed open to the sky.

"Collateral damage from the battle that knocked down that tower, I'll bet," Mara said, already crossing to the gash.

"Be careful," Luke warned her, hurrying to catch up.

"Yeah, yeah," Mara said. She reached the gash and cautiously looked out. "I was right," she said, pointing. "There it is. Or what's left of it."

Luke reached her side and looked out. They were looking across a vast, circular rooftop that slanted downward from their position at a reasonably steep angle. The stub of Mara's ruined tower was ahead of them and slightly to the left, eighty meters or so away. The distance and dim sunlight made it hard to tell for sure, but to Luke's eye the jagged edge looked slightly melted. "And you say this stone absorbs turbolaser fire," he said.

"Like a very dry sponge," Mara agreed grimly. "Whoever the builders of this place were, they must have had some impressive enemies."

"Let's hope they were satisfied with wrecking that one tower and then went away," Luke said, giving the rest of the rooftop a quick but careful examination. Symmetrically placed on the right side of the slanting rooftop was another tower, this one undamaged, stretching a good ninety meters into the sky and topped with a ring of ominous-looking protrusions. Weapons systems, undoubtedly. At the far end of the roof, almost two hundred meters from where he and Mara stood, he could see twin bumps that seemed to extend outward from the roof and then continue down the wall on that side. Twin guardhouses, possibly, flanking the main entrance. Beyond the roof, he could see a smooth surface stretching through the craggy mountaintop away from the fortress that could only be an access road. In the center of the fortress was a thirty-meter-long structure whose flat-topped roof extended horizontally out from the main rooftop, making the whole thing look rather like a round-cornered wedge that had been stuck on as an afterthought.

"There's a landing pad on top," Mara said, pointing to the structure. "You can just make out the markings."

Luke nodded. The markings were dim, but visible enough when you knew to look for them.

"They probably have lights they can turn on when something friendly is on its way in."

"With turbolasers ready at the top of that tower in case they're not so friendly." Easing through the gap in the wall, Mara took a few steps out onto the rooftop, peering toward the landing pad. "Looks like the area under the pad is open in front," she reported. "Probably their hangar. Might be a handy place to make for if we ever get caught too far away from our exit." She turned back around—

And her breath caught, a surge of surprise shooting through her. "Whoa," she said, her eyes tracking upward. "Come take a look at this."

Maneuvering through the crack, Luke crossed to her side and turned around. Rising from atop the room they'd just been in was yet another tower.

And it had friends. Spaced around the curve of the fortress rooftop to the left were three more, all of the same design. Even with Luke's skewed perspective, he could tell that these four rear towers were both thicker and a good twenty meters taller than the single one standing below them. And as with the one below, each of these was also crowned by a ring of weapons emplacements.

"This must have been one impressive place in its heyday," Mara commented. Her voice was steady, but Luke could tell that she was feeling the same vague uneasiness he was. "Like the one on Hijama. I wish to blazes I knew what they were built to protect."

"Or to defend against," Luke added, taking one last look around the rooftop. No lights; no movement; no signs of life at all. "Let's get back inside and find the way down." The way down was on the far side of one of the other wall segments: a smaller version of the spiral slideway they'd used in the barracks section down below. Unlike that one, though, the slideway here wasn't moving. "Either damaged or shut down for lack of use," Mara said, easing a cautious eye over the edge. "Next level down doesn't look inhabited, either."

"This whole section is probably out of use," Luke said as they started down. "The way the roof slopes toward the broken tower, each of the levels ought to have a little more floor space as we go down. They've probably set up shop on the larger levels."

"Makes sense," Mara agreed. "Let's keep going until we reach a floor with a working slideway somewhere on it. That should be either their highest working level or close to it." The floors did indeed extend farther outward as they continued down, with the pattern of random wall segments changing with each level. It wasn't until the fourth level that Luke finally caught the faint hum of working machinery. "I think we're here," he murmured, shifting his grip on his lightsaber and stretching out with the Force. There still didn't seem to be anyone nearby.

"Looks like it," Mara agreed, cupping a hand around one ear. "That sounds like one of the slideways. Shall we take a look?"

Luke nodded. "I'll go first. You stay behind me."

He headed out, moving as silently as he could across the empty space, trying to ignore Mara's annoyance from behind him. She could call it overprotectiveness if she wanted—and she undoubtedly was calling it exactly that—but after watching her do five days in a healing trance he much preferred to err on the side of caution. He reached one of the rare—at least on this level—wall segments and eased an eye around it. Beyond it, set right up against the far wall, was the spiral slideway they had heard. "All right," Luke murmured over his shoulder. "Real easy, now—" He sensed Mara's emotional call; but it wasn't coming from directly behind him. He glanced around, feeling a flash of annoyance of his own as he spotted her standing at the corner of one of the other wall segments twenty meters off to his left. She beckoned to him, a quick, impatient gesture. And there was a sudden sense of dread in her emotions...

He made it to her side in less than ten seconds. "What is it?" he hissed. She nodded toward the wall, a silent churning in her eyes and mind. "Around there," she said. Lightsaber ready in his hand, Luke slid around the end of the wall segment. Beyond it was a large open space that had been set up as a sort of command center, though it was currently as unoccupied as everywhere else they'd been today. Two circles of command consoles had been laid out, the boards and displays winking status lights toward the empty chairs in front of them. To one side, a larger and more elaborate chair ringed by its own status boards had been set up on a meter-high platform where it could overlook the entire operation. And in the center of it all was a sight that sent a shiver of memory along Luke's spine: a holographic map of the galaxy, with the sectors of the New Republic, the Empire, and the rest of the known regions marked out in a bewildering array of a dozen different colors. The whole variegated mosaic stretched across perhaps a quarter of the huge spiral, fading into neutral white where the edges of the Outer Rim Territories gave way to the vastness of the Unknown Regions beyond. It was a duplicate of the galactic holo Emperor Palpatine had had in his throne room in Mount Tantiss.

Luke swallowed, tearing his eyes away from the holo to give the surrounding equipment a closer look. Yes, the consoles were indeed Imperial issue: status and computer-access boards from a Star Destroyer or other major capital ship. The chairs, likewise, were straight from a Star Destroyer's bridge crew pits.

And the overseer chair and boards were those of an Imperial fleet admiral. Such as the one Grand Admiral Thrawn would have used.

He felt the whisper of air as Mara came up close beside him. "I think we've found our link to the Imperials," he told her. "It looks like even Palpatine may have had a hand in this place." Her hair swished against his shoulder as she shook her head. "You're missing the point, Luke," she muttered. "Look at that holo. I mean really look at it." Luke frowned, focusing on the galactic spiral again. What in space was she referring to?

And then, abruptly, he caught his breath. No. No—he was seeing things. Surely he was seeing things.

But he wasn't. At the edge of the known galaxy, where Palpatine's holo had shown only the white stars of the Unknown Regions, an entirely new area had been colored in.

A huge new area.

"Funny, isn't it," Mara said, the dread still swirling through her. "He was exiled from the Imperial court, you know. Just summarily thrown out."

"Who was?" Luke asked.

"Grand Admiral Thrawn," she said. "Picked the wrong side in one of the political battles that were always going on there and lost. Everyone else in the cabal wound up demoted or imprisoned or else reassigned to a semiprivate torture chamber like garrison duty in the Outer Rim. But not Thrawn. Oh, no. Even the Outer Rim was too good for this ungrateful alien who'd been accepted into Imperial society and paid them back for their kindness with a slap in the face. No, they had to come up with something very special for him."

"And that something was exile to the Unknown Regions?"

Mara nodded. "If the Outer Rim was a torture cell, the Unknown Regions was a fully populated rancor pit," she said. "So with some prodding—and probably a lot of deal-making—they got Palpatine to put him aboard a Star Destroyer and send him on a one-way trip past the Outer Rim." She snorted out a derisive laugh. "And just to add insult to injury, they managed to make it a mapping expedition. Imagine—one of the best strategists the Empire had ever known being reduced to mapping duty. Ruining his life and his reputation with a single stroke. I'll bet they were chuckling together about it for years afterward."

Luke shook his head. "I seem to be missing the joke."

"So did they," Mara said, her dark mood darkening even further. "The joke is that it apparently never occurred to any of them that Palpatine was always one step ahead of whatever was happening in his court. And if he was a step ahead, a strategist like Thrawn was at least two steps ahead." Luke's mouth felt dry. "Are you saying that Thrawn and Palpatine had the whole thing planned out from the beginning?"

"Of course they did." Mara gestured at the holo. "Just look at all the territory he opened up. He couldn't possibly have done that by himself, with just a single Star Destroyer, Palpatine must have been feeding him men and ships all along the way."

"But that can't all be Imperial territory," Luke said. "I mean... it can't."

"Why not?" Mara countered. "Oh, I agree there probably aren't more than a few actual colonies out there. But you can bet there are Imperial garrisons scattered all over the place, plus intel centers and listening posts and probably a few full-blown shipyards. And if I know Thrawn, probably a whole network of alliances with the natives, too."

"But if that's Imperial territory, why hasn't the Empire made any use of it?" Luke argued. "I've seen the data, Mara—they're down to practically nothing over there."

"It's obvious, isn't it?" she said quietly. "They're not using it because they don't know it's there." For a long minute neither of them spoke. Luke gazed at the holo, listening to the distant hum of the spiral slideway, the terrible implications of those gently glowing lights tumbling over each other in his mind. There had to be the equivalent of two hundred fifty sectors there—nearly thirty times the Empire's current size.

With thirty times the Empire's number of warships, garrisons, and shipyards? Very possibly. If all those resources were suddenly put at Bastion's disposal... "We need more information," he said, starting toward the console rings. "Let's see if there's a computer jack Artoo can plug into."

"Risky," Mara warned. "This is a command center, and command centers always have security flags set up to catch unauthorized access."

He stopped, grimacing. Unfortunately, she had a point. "All right, then," he said, turning again to face her. "What's your plan?"

"We go directly to the source." Mara took a deep breath. "I go downstairs and talk to them." Luke felt his mouth drop open. "And you call my plans risky?"

"You have a better suggestion?"

"That's beside the point," he growled. "Anyway, if someone's going to go down there, it ought to be me."

"Not a chance," Mara said firmly. "Point one: they shot at you on the way in, but they didn't shoot at me. Point two: you said yourself you had the feeling they wanted to see me. Point three: if the situation degenerates to the point where a rescue is called for, you and your Jedi skills are better against a crowd than mine. And point four—"

With a tight smile, she unhooked her lightsaber and stepped over to him. "Point four is that they may not know the extent of my Force skills," she said, handing him the weapon. "If shove comes to shake, that may give me the edge I'd need."

Luke fingered her lightsaber, feeling the familiar coolness in his hand. His own first lightsaber, the one Obi-Wan had given him, which he had given her in turn on the palace rooftop on Coruscant. He'd been younger than she was when he'd first taken that lightsaber into danger. Younger, less experienced, and far brasher. But still...

"And the last thing I need right now is for you to start getting all overprotective," Mara added, just the hint of a warning glare in her eyes. "I've survived just fine all these years. I can take care of myself."

Luke locked eyes with her. Odd, he thought, that he'd forgotten just how brilliant a green those eyes were. Though perhaps it was just the lighting. "No way I can talk you out of it?" he asked, trying one last time.

"Not unless you can come up with a better plan," she said, pulling out her comlink and sleeve blaster. "Here—there's no point in my keeping these. They'll just take them away from me anyway. I'll keep my BlasTech; they'd be suspicious if I came in completely unarmed." Luke took the comlink and sleeve blaster from her, his hand lingering on hers before she withdrew it, oddly unwilling to let it go. "I wish we hadn't left the other comlink with Artoo," he said. "You could have kept this one and I'd have been able to listen in on what was going on."

"If something goes sour, you might need to whistle up the Qom Jha in a hurry," she reminded him.

"Anyway, can't you follow me with the Force?"

"I can follow your presence," Luke said. "I can get your emotions and probably some images that way. But I can't get much in the way of words."

"Too bad you're not Palpatine," Mara commented, busying herself with removing her sleeve holster. "I could talk to him just fine."

Luke felt a stab of guilt and shame, her earlier indictment of his dark side dabbling flooding back. She caught the emotion, or else the expression on his face, and smiled tightly. "Hey, I was kidding," she assured him, handing him the sleeve holster. "Look, you just follow what you can. I'll give you a full report on the details when I get back."

"All right," Luke said. "Be careful, okay?"

To his surprise, she reached out and took his hand. "I'll be fine," she told him, squeezing his hand briefly before letting go. "See you."

And with that she was gone, slipping out of the command center and around the wall toward the slideway.

With a sigh, Luke stepped over to the nearby wall segment and sank down into a crouch with his back pressed against it. Closing his eyes for better concentration, he stretched out with the Force. In times past, on Dagobah and Tierfon and other places, he'd been able to use the Force to obtain glimpses of future places and events. Now, as Mara headed down the slideway, he tried to focus that same ability onto real-time observation, hoping to be able to see what was happening to her.

It worked, too, at least after a fashion. The image he got of Mara and her surroundings was faint and foggy, heavily colored by her emotions and shifting mental state, and with the same discomfiting tendency to ripple or metamorphose that seemed to be characteristic of Jedi visions in general. But with Mara's mind there to act as anchor, he was able to quickly drag the images back to something at least vaguely understandable. It was hardly ideal, but it seemed clear that it was all he was going to get.

The slideway from this level seemed to be roughly the same size as the one they had used to get down from the roof. Mara moved to the inner section and headed down, apparently making no attempt at concealment. The lack of any sudden combat twinges in her emotions as she reached the next level implied she didn't see anyone, though he had the impression that she was still hearing distant sounds.

She made no move to get off at this level, but let the slideway carry her on down. The next level was more of the same, with no one coming near the slideway. Luke could sense a definite annoyance beginning to seep through the alertness in Mara's mind, an annoyance aimed both at the aliens'

seeming disinterest in her and at their incompetence at basic internal security. She passed that level, and the next, and started down toward the next—

And suddenly there was a dizzying jolt that slammed like a ground-quake through her emotions, accompanied by a brief flash of pain.

Luke stiffened, eyes jerking open as he scrambled to his feet. But even as he did so he felt a warning flicker of reassurance from her, together with understanding of what had just happened. Without warning, the slideway section she'd been riding on had suddenly reversed direction, yanking her feet out from under her and slamming her flat on her chest on the ramp. And as the moment of dizziness from the impact faded away, her combat emotions flared to full alertness.

She was no longer alone.

Luke clenched his hands into helpless fists as he rode her emotions to try to pierce the hazy image. There were several people standing around her, of the same species as those they'd tangled with once already.

And as near as he could tell through the wavering view, one of them was calling Mara by name. For a moment he continued to talk to her, and though Luke couldn't hear any of the words he had the impression that he was asking her to accompany them farther into the fortress. She agreed. There was a flicker of inevitability as they took her BlasTech, and then the whole group was walking away from the slideway down a corridor that Mara recognized as decorated similarly to the barracks area they'd seen farther below.

Soon—all too soon—the group reached an open door. Another exchange of unheard words, a suppressed flutter of uneasiness from Mara, and she stepped alone through the door into the room beyond.

From her thoughts he could tell that there were others waiting inside for her. One of them—possibly more than one—called out to her as she moved farther inside. Mara answered, surges and flickers of emotion marking bits of information that the vagueness of their contact prevented Luke from getting himself. She continued to walk farther into the room—

And without warning, right in the middle of a step, the touch of her mind cut abruptly off, leaving Luke staring at the quiet lights of the command center. Heart pounding in his chest, he stretched out with the Force, trying to reestablish the contact. Mara? Mara!

But it was no use. There was no response, no returning contact, no sense of her presence. Nothing at all.

She was gone.

CHAPTER

27

Mara took in the room in a glance as she stepped through the doorway. It was long and narrow, stretching perhaps fifty meters back from the door but no more than five meters wide. Near the far wall was a solid-looking chair, facing away from her. Five meters beyond that, right at the room's back wall, were six more of the blue-skinned aliens, all wearing the same tight-fitting burgundy patchwork-design outfits as the ones who had escorted her here from the slideway. And like her escort, each of the aliens was wearing Imperial ranking bars on their chests beneath the high-topped black collars.

But even as her glance took in those details, her main attention was caught by the man in the center of the group, seated in a duplicate of the empty chair facing him a few meters away. His hair was gray, his skin lined with age; but his eyes were alert and shrewd, and his back was straight and proud.

And he was wearing the uniform and insignia of an Imperial admiral.

"So here you are at last, Mara Jade," he said, waving her forward with a gnarled hand. "I must say, you took your time."

"Sorry to have kept you waiting," Mara countered with an edge of sarcasm as she walked toward them. She could feel Luke's concern and nervousness at the back of her mind, and tried to send him a reassurance she didn't entirely feel. These people knew who she was and presumably what she was; and yet here they were, letting her move freely toward them. It all looked far too casual, and she didn't like it one bit. "If your people hadn't been so trigger-poppy, I'd have been here a lot sooner." The admiral bowed his head briefly. "My apologies. For whatever it's worth, it was an accident. Please, come sit down."

Mara continued forward, trying to watch all of them at once, her senses alert for trouble. If they had a trap set, it would be sprung somewhere before she got too close to them... And without warning, right in the middle of a step, Luke's presence suddenly vanished from her mind.

Her brain froze in shock, sheer momentum keeping her feet moving. Luke? Luke! Come on, where are you?

But there was no response. No emotion, no sense of mind or thought, no sense of presence at all. Incredibly, impossibly, he was gone.

Gone.

"Come sit down," the admiral said again. "I imagine you must be quite worn out after all you've been through."

"You're too kind," Mara said, the words sounding distant and mechanical through the pounding of blood in her ears as she forced her feet to keep moving her forward. What in the worlds could possibly have happened to him?

There could only be one answer. Somehow, they'd gotten past his Jedi senses, had penetrated his Jedi powers, and had launched a sudden, undetected, and unblocked attack. And Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, was unconscious.

Or dead.

The thought slashed into her mind, cutting through her heart like a jagged blade. No—it couldn't be. It couldn't. Not now.

The gray-haired man was still gazing at her, a thoughtful look on his face, and with an agonized effort Mara shoved the fear and pain away to the back of her mind. If Luke was merely unconscious, they could still get out of this. If he was dead, she would most likely soon be joining him. Either way, this was no time to let her emotions muddy her thinking.

She made it the rest of the way to the chair and sank carefully into it. "You don't need to look quite so worried," the admiral said soothingly. "We have no intention of harming you."

"Of course not," Mara said, hearing the bitterness in her voice. "Just like you had no intention of harming me on my last trip in here?"

The admiral's lip twitched. "As I said before, that was a regrettable accident," he said. "They were shooting at the vermin flying around near you—we've had some problems in the past with them getting inside. When you started shooting back, I'm afraid they jumped to the wrong conclusion. My deepest apologies."

"That makes me feel so much better," Mara growled. "Now what?" The admiral seemed mildly surprised. "We talk," he said. "Why else do you think we gave you our location in the first place? We wanted you to come see us."

"Ah," Mara said. So her guess earlier had been right—those two ships had deliberately flown off on vectors that would lead her here.

Unless, of course, he was lying after the fact to cover up his pilots' blunders. "You could have just sent me an invitation," she told him, feeling her forehead crease slightly as she stretched out toward him with the Force. Odd; for some reason, she couldn't seem to touch him. Not him, not the aliens flanking him. "Or would that have been too straightforward and easy?" The admiral smiled knowingly. "With an open invitation I doubt you would have come alone. Something more vague seemed a better arrangement. I apologize for not having an escort waiting, by the way—your landing caught us a bit by surprise."

"As did your arrival earlier inside the fortress," the alien standing at the admiral's right added, his voice smooth and cultured, his glowing red eyes steady on Mara. "If we'd known you were coming our people would have been much more careful with their charrics. May I ask how you managed to penetrate the fortress without being spotted?"

"We turned ourselves into vermin and flew in, of course," Mara told him. "It was faster than walking."

"Of course," the admiral said with a smile. "Or perhaps you scaled up the side of the fortress and came in through one of the cracks?"

Mara shook her head. "Sorry. Trade secret."

"Ah," the admiral said, still smiling. "It's not important; I was merely curious. The point is that you are here, Mara, just as we wished. May I call you Mara, by the way? Or would you prefer Captain Jade or some other title?"

"Call me anything you want," Mara told him. "And what should I call you? Or doesn't anyone in this place have a name?"

"All thinking beings have names, Mara," the man said. "Mine is Admiral Voss Parck. It's a pleasure to meet you at last."

"Likewise," Mara said, staring at him as a ripple of shock went through her. Voss Parck: the Victory Star Destroyer captain who had found Thrawn on a deserted world and brought him to the Imperial court. And who had subsequently joined him in his shame and supposed exile from the Empire.

But the man in front of her...

"I imagine I look rather older than you might have expected," Parck said offhandedly. "Assuming you had any expectations at all, of course. I may have overly flattered myself to assume the Emperor's Hand would even remember my name, let alone my face."

"I remember both," Mara said. "You were one of the people every faction in the court used as an example of what not to do in the middle of a political fight." She glanced at the aliens. "But then, those were the same people who also thought Palpatine sent Thrawn out here as a punishment. So what did they know?"

"And you think Mitth'raw'nuruodo's mission was otherwise?" the alien at Parck's right asked.

"I know otherwise," Mara assured him, looking him up and down. "Tell me, Admiral, does the whole race talk like Thrawn? Or is this some special cultural training you give your troops in case they're all invited out for High Day drinks?"

The alien's eyes narrowed—"Calm yourself, Stent," Parck said dryly, holding up a hand. "You must understand that one of Mara Jade's most subtle weapons has always been her talent for irritating people. Irritated people don't think clearly, you see."

"Or maybe I just don't like any of you very much," Mara said, feeling a touch of annoyance at Parck's quick and casual insight. Usually her enemies didn't figure that one out nearly so quickly. The slower ones never figured it out at all. "But enough about me. Let's hear about this grand push of yours out into the Unknown Regions. You gave up a lot, after all: Coruscant, the status and camaraderie of the Imperial Fleet—" Deliberately, she looked at Stent. "Civilization." Stent's eyes narrowed again, but Parck merely smiled. "You've met Thrawn," he said, his voice softening to near-reverence. "Any true warrior would have given up whatever was necessary for the chance to serve under him."

"Except those of his own people, I gather," Mara countered. "Or did I hear the story wrong of how he wound up on Coruscant?"

"No, I'm sure you heard correctly," Parck said with a shrug. "But like everything else people think they know about Thrawn, that particular story is somewhat incomplete."

"Is it, now," Mara said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs, a posture designed by its apparent helplessness to put suspicious people at ease. With the same motion she surreptitiously rocked the chair back a bit, trying to gauge its weight. Very heavy, unfortunately, which eliminated it as a grab-and-throw weapon. "I seem to have some time on my hands. Why don't you start at the beginning?"

Stent laid his hand on Parck's shoulder. "Admiral, I'm not sure—"

"It's all right, Stent," Parck calmed him, his eyes steady on Mara. "We can hardly expect her help unless she has all the facts, now, can we?"

Mara frowned. "My help in what?"

"It started better than half a century ago," Parck said, ignoring her question. "Back when the Outbound Flight project was preparing to fly, just before the Clone Wars broke out. Well before your time, of course—I don't know if you'd even have heard of it."

"I've read about the Outbound Flight," Mara said. "A group of Jedi Masters and others decided to head out to another galaxy and see what was there."

"Ultimately, their destination was indeed another galaxy." Parck nodded. "But before that particular expedition began, it was decided to send them and their ship on a, shall we say, shakedown cruise: a great circle through part of the vast Unknown Regions of our own galaxy." He waved a hand back toward Stent and the guards. "A route, as it turned out, that was to bring it across the edge of territory controlled by the Chiss."

Chiss. So that was what they called themselves. Mara ran the name through her memory, searching for any reference the Emperor might have made to them. Nothing. "And the Chiss didn't feel like being good hosts that day?"

"Actually, the ruling Chiss families never had the chance to decide one way or the other," Parck said. "Palpatine had already decided that the Jedi represented a grave threat to the Old Republic, and had sent an assault force into the region to quietly take care of Outbound Flight when they showed up."

"And there they were, busily setting up their ambush, when Thrawn found them." He shook his head. "You have to understand the situation, Mara, to truly appreciate it. On one side were handpicked units of Palpatine's own private army, equipped with fifteen top-line combat ships. On the other side were Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo of the Chiss Expansionary Defense and perhaps twelve small and insignificant border patrol ships."

"I appreciate it just fine," Mara said, suppressing a shudder. "How badly did Thrawn slaughter them?"

"Utterly," Parck said, the ghost of a smile creasing his face. "I believe only a single one of Palpatine's ships remained capable of flight, and that only because Thrawn wanted some of the invaders left alive to interrogate.

"Fortunately for that remnant, and perhaps one day for the galaxy as a whole, among the survivors was the leader of the task force, one of Palpatine's advisers. A man named Kinman Doriana." Mara swallowed. That name she most certainly did remember. He'd been Palpatine's right-hand man, supposedly one of the grand architects of his rise to power. "I've heard it, yes," she said.

"I thought you would have," Parck said, nodding. "Very much a shadow adviser—few people ever even heard his name, let alone knew his true position and power. But among those who did it was sometimes speculated that his untimely death left a gap which Palpatine ultimately tried to fill with three other people: Darth Vader, Grand Admiral Thrawn—" He smiled again. "And you."

"You're too kind," Mara said evenly, not even a whisper of pride rising within her at such a statement. So she had indeed had position and authority in Palpatine's eyes, perhaps more than even she had realized.

But it didn't matter. That part of her life had died, unmourned, a long time ago. "You're very well informed, too."

"This was Thrawn's personal base," Parck said, waving a hand around him. "And information, as you may have noticed, was one of his few obsessions. The databases in the fortress core below us are possibly the most extensive in the galaxy."

"Magnificent, I'm sure," Mara said. "Too bad all his knowledge couldn't keep him from getting killed."

She had hoped to spark some kind of reaction from them. To her surprise, though, none of them so much as blinked. Parck, in fact, actually smiled. "Never assume, Mara," he warned. "But that's getting ahead of the story. Where were we?"

"Doriana and Outbound Flight," Mara said.

"Thank you," Parck said. "At any rate, Doriana explained the entire situation to Thrawn and convinced him that Outbound Flight had to be destroyed. Two weeks later, when the ship arrived in Chiss space, Thrawn was waiting."

"Good-bye, Outbound Flight," Mara murmured.

"Yes," Parck agreed. "But though that was the end of that, it was the beginning of trouble for Thrawn himself. The Chiss military philosophy, you see, did not recognize the morality of preemptive strikes. What Thrawn did was, in their minds, equivalent to murder." Mara snorted gently. "No offense, Admiral, but it sounds to me like it's your perceptions that need an overhaul. How can the slaughter of a bunch of Jedi Masters minding their own business be anything but murder?"

Parck looked at her gravely. "You'll understand, Mara," he said, his voice almost trembling. "In time, you'll understand."

Mara frowned. The man was either a terrific actor or there was something buried in all of this that had him well and truly terrified. Again, she stretched out with the Force; again, she couldn't seem to touch him at all.

With an obvious effort, Parck pulled himself together. "But again, I'm getting ahead of myself. As I said, Thrawn's action did not sit well with the ruling Chiss families. He was able to talk his way clear and retain his position, but from that point on they watched him very carefully.

"And eventually, as he dealt with some of the Chiss's enemies, he pushed things just a little too far. He was brought up on charges, stripped of all rank, and sent into exile on an uninhabited world at the edge of Imperial space."

"Where who should show up but a Victory Star Destroyer," Mara said. "Captained by a man willing to take the risk of bringing him back to Coruscant." She raised her eyebrows. "Only it wasn't nearly as much of a risk as everyone thought, was it?"

Parck smiled. "It most certainly wasn't," he said. "In fact, I learned later that Palpatine had made at least two unsuccessful attempts over the years to contact the Chiss and offer Thrawn a position with his soon-to-be Empire. No, he was most pleased with my gift, though because of the political realities of the court he had to keep that pleasure hidden."

"So Thrawn went into private military training and eventually rose to the highest rank Palpatine could offer," Mara said. "And then, what, arranged to have himself sent back here so he could make the Chiss ruling families pay for what they'd done to him?"

Parck looked shocked. "Certainly not. The Chiss are his people, Mara—he has no interest in hurting them. Quite the opposite, in fact. He came back here to protect them."

"From what?"

Stent gave a contemptuous snort. "From what," he bit out harshly. "You soft, complacent female. You think that because you lounge around your quiet worlds behind a ring of warships that the rest of the galaxy is a safe place to live? There are a hundred different threats out there that would freeze your blood if you knew about them. The ruling families can't stop them; neither can any other power in the region. If our people are to be protected, it's up to us."

"And you are? You specifically, I mean?"

Stent drew himself up straighter. "We are Syndic Mitth'raw'nuruodo's Household Phalanx," he said, and there was no mistaking the pride in his tone. "We live only to serve him. And through him to serve the Chiss."

"Whether they want your help or not, I guess," Mara said, noting the alien's use of the present tense. There it was again: the assumption or belief that Thrawn wasn't dead. Could they be that out of touch? "Do they even know you're out here?"

"They know the forces of the Empire are out here," Parck said. "And while the ruling families pretend they don't know Stent and his unit are working with us, the average Chiss does in fact know. We have a steady flow of young Chiss arriving at our various bases and garrisons to enlist in our fight."

Mara suppressed a grimace. So they did indeed have bases out here. "Palpatine wouldn't have been very pleased to see aliens mixing with Imperial forces," she pointed out. "I doubt the current regime on Bastion would, either."

Parck's expression sobered. "Indeed," he said. "Which brings us to the problem and situation we now face. Many years ago Thrawn told us that if he was ever reported dead we should keep at our labors here and in the Unknown Regions, and to look for his return ten years afterward." Mara blinked in disbelief. They really were out of touch. "It's going to be a long wait," she said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. "He was stabbed in the chest, right through the back of his command chair. Most people have a hard time recovering from that kind of treatment."

"Thrawn is not most people," Stent reminded her.

"Was," Mara said. "Not is; was. He died at Bilbringi."

"Did he?" Parck asked. "Did you ever see a body? Or hear anything about his supposed death that didn't come from the Imperials' own news sources?"

Mara opened her mouth... paused. Parck was leaning slightly toward her, a glint of anticipation in his eye. "Was that a rhetorical question?" she asked. "Or are you expecting me to have an actual answer?"

Parck smiled, leaning back in his chair again. "I told you she was quick," he said, looking up at Stent. "As a matter of fact, yes, we thought you might. You have complete access to Talon Karrde's information network, after all. If anyone would know the truth, it would be you." A sudden jolt of understanding shot through Mara. "You weren't hunting Imperial connections when you buzzed the Cavrilhu base and Terrik's Star Destroyer, were you? You were hunting me."

"Very good, indeed," Parck said approvingly. "In fact, when Dreel spotted you near that Star Destroyer he thought you and Thrawn might already have come to an arrangement. Hence, his transmission asking Thrawn to make contact."

Mara shook her head. "Look, I know you've been out here a long time, and I realize it must have been hard for you. But it's time to face the hard, cold facts. Like it or not, Thrawn is dead."

"Really," Parck said. "Then why is the HoloNet buzzing with the news that he has returned and is making alliances?"

"And that he's been seen by many planetary and sector leaders," Stent put in. "Including the Diamalan Senator to Coruscant and former General Lando Calrissian." Mara stared at him. Lando? "No," she said. "You're wrong. Or you're bluffing."

"I assure you—" Parck broke off, his eyes shifting to a point behind Mara as a breath of air on the back of her neck announced the door behind her had opened.

She turned, tensing. But it was only a youngish middle-aged man, walking with a slight limp along the left-hand wall of the long room toward her. Despite his age he wore the uniform of an Imperial TIE fighter pilot; between his graying goatee and similarly graying shock of dark hair he wore an almost unheard-of rarity: a black patch over his right eye. "Yes, General?" Parck called to him.

"Mid-course transmission from Sorn, Admiral," the man said, his one eye trained unblinkingly on Mara as he strode past her. "His pass through the Bastion system was inconclusive. Lots of rumors and speculations, but no hard evidence." He paused. "But the rumors do say Thrawn is currently there."

"Wait a minute," Mara put in, frowning. "You know where Bastion is?"

"Oh, yes," Parck assured her. "Thrawn anticipated that the seat of government might periodically change, and he wanted us to know where it was at any given time. So he had a special homing device installed in a dummy file in the central Imperial Records Library, reasoning that where the government went the library would soon follow."

"It's a device of Chiss design," Stent added with clear pride. "Totally dormant except when in hyperspace, a time when virtually no one thinks to do scans for such things. We've followed Bastion's movement from system to system with a great deal of interest."

"Indeed." Parck looked at the pilot again. "Is Sorn on his way back?"

"He'll be here in about three hours." The pilot nodded at Mara. "Has she given you anything useful?"

"Not really," Parck said, looking at Mara as he gestured to the newcomer. "But I'm forgetting my manners. Mara Jade; this is General Baron"—he paused dramatically—"Soontir Fel." Mara kept her face expressionless. Baron Soontir Fel. Once a legendary TIE fighter pilot, later turning his back on the Empire to become a member of Rogue Squadron, he had vanished years ago into a trap set by Imperial Intelligence Director Isard and never been heard of again. The general assumption had been that Isard had had him summarily executed for treason. Yet here he was, apparently once again flying with Imperial forces. And a general, yet. "General Fel," she nodded acknowledgment. "Do I take it from the admiral's tone that I'm supposed to be impressed?"

The young Fel, she suspected, would have taken instant offense at that. But this older version merely favored her with a faint smile. "There's no time for pride out here, Jade," he said gravely.

"Once you've joined us, you'll understand."

"I'm sure," Mara said, folding her arms across her chest and squeezing her hands tightly into fists with the effort as she stretched out with all her strength. The Force was there—she could feel it flowing through her. Yet for some reason she still couldn't touch any of them, human or Chiss. It was almost like the Force-suppressing effect of those sessile Myrkr creatures called ysalamiri. But that couldn't be it, because she could still feel the Force perfectly well. Besides, there weren't any of the creatures in the room with them—

She swallowed a sudden grimace, feeling like a fool as she focused on Parck and the Chiss standing with their backs to the wall. Of course there weren't any ysalamiri in the room—they were one room over, pressed up against the other side of the wall where they could protect her interrogators from her mind probes. They'd probably put the creatures along the sides, too; probably why Fel had been so careful to hug the wall on his way across the room. Maybe even scattered some above the ceiling—

She took a deep breath, a huge part of the tension in her chest abruptly easing. Of course there were ysalamiri in the ceiling. That was how and why her link to Luke had been so abruptly cut off. Which meant he was still alive.

She took another breath, suddenly aware that Parck and Fel were both staring at her. "Such a gracious invitation," she said, trying to pick up on the threads of conversation before her silence became too blatant. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I already have a job." But too late. "I see she's figured it out," Fel said conversationally.

"Yes," Parck said. "I'm rather surprised it took her this long, actually. Particularly since she noticed the ysalamiri effect as soon as she came within the effect of their shroud. I could see the break in her step."

"At least it proves she has Jedi abilities," Fel said. "Just as well we were prepared."

"I congratulate you all on your cleverness," Mara said, putting some scorn into her voice. "You are indeed the true heirs to Thrawn's genius and military might. Let's stop dancing around, shall we?

What exactly do you want from me?"

"As General Fel has already said," Parck said. "We want you to join us." Mara felt her eyes narrow. "You are joking."

"Not at all," Parck said. "In fact—"

"Admiral?" Stent interrupted, his head tilted slightly to one side as if listening to something.

"Someone's just tried to access the Upper Command Room computer."

"Skywalker," Fel said with a nod. "Nice of him to save us the trouble of tracking him down. Have the Phalanx bring him here, Stent. Remind them that only those carrying ysalamiri are to approach him."

"Yes, sir." Stent stepped past Fel and headed along the wall at a fast walk, speaking rapidly in his own language as he headed for the door. As he passed Mara, she caught a glimpse of a small device in his ear—the Chiss version of a comlink, no doubt.

"He'll be joining us in a few minutes," Fel said, looking back at Mara. "You must rank very highly indeed in Coruscant's eyes for them to send Luke Skywalker himself to rescue you. I hope he won't resist to the point of the Chiss having to hurt him."

"I hope for the Chiss' sake they haven't bitten off more than they can swallow," Mara countered, trying to sound more confident than she felt. Luke had had to function under the handicap of ysalamiri before, but that had been a long time ago. "Speaking of getting hurt, General, what happened to your face? Or is that patch just something you wear to impress the natives?"

"I lost my eye in our final battle against one of the many would-be warlords out here," Fel said, his voice calm but with an edge to it. "Our medical replacement facilities are limited, and I opted to forgo a new eye in favor of others of my pilots who might need the operation." He smiled tightly, a glimpse of the younger, brasher Fel showing through the age and maturity. "Besides, even with one eye I'm still the best pilot around."

"I'm sure," Mara agreed. "But imagine what you'd be like with two of them again. And the way the war with the New Republic has dwindled down to basically nothing, I imagine the Empire's got a pretty good surplus of spare prosthetics. All it would take is you showing up and asking for one." She looked back at Parck. "But of course, that would mean letting Bastion in on the big secret, which is apparently something you don't want to do. Why not?"

Parck sighed. "Because everything we've done here—everything we have here—really belongs to Thrawn. And at this point, we frankly don't know which side of your conflict he's going to come down on."

Mara blinked. "Excuse me? An Imperial Grand Admiral, and you don't know which side he's going to take?"

"The Empire has been whittled down to eight sectors," Fel reminded her. "Militarily, they're no longer a power even worth considering."

"And as you've already pointed out, they still have a lingering problem with anti-alien biases," Parck added. "On the other hand, Coruscant has serious problems of its own, most notably its inability to keep its members from fighting with each other."

"Which is where you come in," Fel said. "As the Emperor's Hand, you knew a great deal about the Empire and those in power there. On the other hand, as a friend of Skywalker and his associates, you're also well acquainted with the New Republic regime on Coruscant." He smiled tightly. "And of course, as Talon Karrde's second-in-command, you know a great deal about everything else. You'd be invaluable in helping us end the conflict, unify this region, and begin preparations for the challenges ahead."

"Your expertise and knowledge are very important to us," Parck said. "Our attention has been necessarily turned outward, with the result that we're somewhat out of touch with matters in this part of space. We need someone who can fill that gap."

"And so naturally you thought of me," Mara said sardonically.

"Don't be so flippant," Fel admonished.

"I'm not being flippant; I'm being disbelieving," she countered. "I hardly think Thrawn would have approved of you hiring me as your local affairs adviser."

"On the contrary," Parck said. "Thrawn regarded you quite highly. I know for a fact that he intended to offer you a position with us once the Empire had regained its territory." One of the Chiss beside Parck stirred, tilting his head as Stent had done earlier. "Admiral?" he said softly, squatting down beside the chair and whispering something into Parck's ear. Parck replied, and for a minute they held an inaudible conversation. Mara ran her eye over Fel and the five Chiss, mentally mapping out how she might be able to take them down if it came to a fight. But the attempt was little more than a mental exercise, and she knew it. With their eyes steady on her, and their hands resting on their holstered weapons, there was no chance she could take out all of them before they got her. Not without the Force.

The conversation ended, and the Chiss stood back up and strode rapidly away along the wall.

"Please excuse the interruption," Parck apologized as the alien left the room.

"No problem," Mara said. Down to four Chiss now, plus Fel and Parck. Still rotten odds.

"Having trouble pinning Skywalker down?"

"Not really," Parck assured her.

"Glad to hear it," Mara said, wishing more than ever that she could pick up something of his thoughts. That exit hadn't looked like the departure of someone who wasn't really having trouble. If she only had some idea what Luke was up to... "So Thrawn intended to offer me a commission, did he?"

"He did indeed," Parck said. "He knew who all the best people were, both in overall skills and the kind of mental toughness he needed." He gestured toward Fel. "General Fel is a good example. His rebellion against Isard was of no consequence to Thrawn. What mattered was his feelings for the people and worlds of this region. So after Thrawn had Isard capture him—"

"Wait a minute," Mara interrupted. "Thrawn was involved with that?"

"It was entirely his plan," Fel said. "You don't think Isard could have come up with anything that clever, do you?" His mouth tightened, his remaining eye gazing away thoughtfully into the distance.

"He brought me out here," he said quietly. "Showed me what it was we faced, and what we'd have to do to stop it. Showed me that even with all the resources of the Empire and New Republic combined, and with himself at the head, there were no guarantees of victory."

"On the contrary, he's already made contingency plans for defeat," Parck added soberly. "Ten years ago he had sleeper groups of the best of his cloned warriors scattered around the Empire and New Republic, ready to form the nuclei of local resistance forces should Bastion and Coruscant fall. Men who loved their homes and their land and their worlds, and who would give their lives in their defense."

"Yes," Fel said. "Once I understood—once I really understood—I had no choice but to join him."

"As you will, too," Parck said.

Mara shook her head. "Sorry. I have other plans."

"We'll see," Parck said calmly. "Perhaps Thrawn will be able to convince you himself when he returns."

"And what if he doesn't return?" Mara asked. "What if the rumors are just that: rumors?"

"Oh, he'll return," Parck said. "He said he would, and he always kept his promises. The only question is whether or not this particular rumor is actually him."

He looked up at Fel. "And under the circumstances, I suppose the only way we're going to find out for sure will be for me to finally make a trip to Bastion. If Thrawn has indeed set up a headquarters there, that should answer the question of which side he'll be working from." Mara felt her hands tighten into fists. "You don't know what you're saying," she said. "You can't just turn all of this over to the Empire. All these resources, bases, alliances—"

"They won't misuse them," Parck said, his voice grim. "We'll make sure of that. The task ahead of us is far too serious for anyone to waste time on anything as petty as politics or personal gain."

"If you think that, you are out of touch," Mara snapped. "Try to remember back to Palpatine's court, and what the taste of power did to those people. Personal gain is all some of them ever think of."

"It's a risk we'll have to take," Parck said firmly. "We'll be careful, certainly—we'll speak with Sorn when he gets back and sift through the data he collected from his pass through the Bastion system. But unless there's something that positively quashes the rumors of Thrawn's return, it's time to make that contact."

Mara took a deep breath. "I can't let you do that," she said.

"You can't let us do it?" Fel asked pointedly.

"No," Mara said. "I can't. You give this to Bastion, and the first thing they'll do is turn it straight against Coruscant."

"Don't worry," Parck said. "We won't give anything away until we're sure Thrawn is with them."

"On the other hand, we may do well to worry about her, Admiral," Fel pointed out, eyeing her thoughtfully. "Someone as vehemently opposed as she is to our contacting Bastion could be trouble."

"I suppose you're right," Parck said reluctantly. He levered himself out of his chair, one of the Chiss stepping to his side and offering him a supporting arm as he stood up. "I'm afraid, Mara, that you and Skywalker will have to be our guests for a while."

"And if Thrawn is back, and I still don't want to join up?" Mara demanded. "What then?" Parck's lips compressed briefly. "I'm sure it won't come to that," he assured her. But his eyes didn't quite meet hers as he spoke. "We'll have it all sorted out within a few days. Certainly no more than a month at the most."

Mara snorted. "You aren't serious. You really think a couple dozen ysalamiri are going to hold Luke Skywalker and me that long?"

"She's right, Admiral," Fel agreed. "It's going to take more to keep the two of them quiet." Parck studied Mara's face. "What do you suggest?"