Dark Force Rising pt2

"You really want to know?"

"I guess not. Get ready; it's show time."

They were in luck. Aside from the bartender and a couple of deactivated serving droids behind the bar, the place was deserted. "Welcome back, gentlemen," the bartender greeted them. "What can I get you?"

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

"I think we do," the bartender said, peering back at his selection. "Yes-there it is."

"What's the vintage?" Han asked.

"Ah-" The bartender brought the bottle over. "It's a `49."

Han made a face. "Don't have any `46, do you? Maybe stashed in the back room somewhere?"

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

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

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

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

He didn't know how long it would take Lando to get the repeater display off the wall, check it out, and then put it back up. On the theory it was better to play it safe, he managed to drag out the search for a `46 Vistulo for a full five minutes. Eventually, with cheerful good grace, he settled for a `48 Kibsbae instead. The bartender led the way out of the room; mentally crossing his fingers, Han followed.

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

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

The innocent look was wasted. "Not all that funny," Irenez said tartly. "Sena assigned me to keep an eye on you. You get what you came for?"

Han looked at Lando, saw the fractional nod. "I think so, yeah," he said.

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

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

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

Han and Lando obeyed. There, sitting with uncharacteristic stiffless in one of the passenger seats, Sena Leikvold Midanyl was waiting. "Gentlemen," she said gravely as they entered. "Sit down, please."

Han chose one of the seats, swiveled it to face her. "Time for dinner already?"

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

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

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

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

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

Sena studied his face a moment. "I came to ask you a favor."

It was about the last thing Han would have expected her to say, and it took him a second to find his voice again. "What sort of favor?"

"I want you to talk to Mon Mothma for me. To ask her and the Council to invite Senator Bel Iblis to join the New Republic."

Han shrugged. Was that why they'd brought him and Lando all the way over here? "You don't need a special invitation to join up. All you have to do is contact someone on the Council and offer your services."

A muscle in Sena's cheek twitched. "I'm afraid that in the Senator's case it's not going to be quite that easy," she said. "It's not so much a matter of joining the New Republic as of rejoining it."

Han threw a frown at Lando. "Oh?" he said carefully.

Sena sighed, half turning to gaze out the side window. "It happened a long time ago," she said. "Before the various resistance groups fighting the Empire were formally consolidated into the Rebel Alliance. You know anything about that period of history?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Han looked at Sena, a sudden thought striking him.

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

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

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

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

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

"The Senator had nothing to do with this," Sena cut him off sharply. "He doesn't even know I'm talking to you. This is on my responsibility alone."

Han drew back a little. "Sure," he said. "Okay."

Sena shook her head. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "I didn't mean to snap at you.

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

"Han," Lando said quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Especially if Ackbar isn't around to oppose him?" Han asked.

Sena nodded. "Yes, that's unfortunately another typical Bothan move. A Bothan leader who stumbles is invariably jumped on by all those who want to take over his position. In the distant past the attacks were literal-fought with knives and usually death. Now, it's been modified to more of a verbal assassination. Progress, I suppose."

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

"The technique is easily adapted to other races.

Han grunted. "What a great group to have as allies. So do they just stab, or do they also help with the tripping?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's his name?" Han asked.

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

"The Coral Vanda?" Han asked.

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

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

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

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

"I suppose you're right," she said with a reluctant nod. "Irenez, take us to their ship. I'll make the arrangements from there."

It turned out there was no need to make arrangements from the Lady Luck. Standing outside the ship's ramp as they arrived, clearly waiting for them, was Senator Bel Iblis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Especially with a Grand Admiral in charge of the Empire," Han pointed out. "If he catches you here alone, you'll have had it."

Bel Iblis smiled tightly. "That thought has occurred to me, Solo. Several times a day." He straightened up.

"The Harrier is leaving in half an hour to take Breil'lya back to New Cov. I'll instruct them to take you and the Lady Luck along."

Han and Lando exchanged glances. "You think it'll be safe to go back to New Cov, sir?" Han asked. "There might still be Imperials hanging around."

"There won't be." Bel Iblis was positive. "I've studied the Imperials and their tactics a long time. Aside from not expecting us to show up again so soon, they really can't afford to hang around any one place for long. Besides, we have to go there-Breil'lya will need to pick up his ship."

Han nodded, wondering what kind of report Breil'lya would be giving to his boss when he got back to Coruscant. "All right. Well : I guess we'd better get the ship prepped."

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

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

The Senator nodded to Lando. "Calrissian," he said. Releasing Han's hand, he turned and walked away across the landing field.

Han watched him go, trying to figure out whether he admired the Senator more than he pitied him or vice versa. It was a useless exercise. "Our luggage is still back at our quarters," he told Sena.

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

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

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

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

"You're worried about Leia, aren't you?" Lando asked into the silence.

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

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

Han shook his head. "He made his mistake at Sluis Van, Lando. He won't make another one. Bet you the Falcon he won't."

Lando clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on, buddy, brooding about it won't help. We've got two days to kill. Let's go break out a sabacc deck."

The Grand Admiral read the dispatch twice before turning his glowing eyes on Pellaeon. "You vouch for the reliability of this report, Captain?"

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

Thrawn looked back at the reader. "Endor," he murmured, half to himself. "Why Endor?"

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

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

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

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

Pellaeon frowned. "I don't follow you, sir."

Thrawn smiled thinly. "What I think, Captain, is that we re seeing a new degree of subtlety among our enemies. They knew that the return of a survivor from the failed Kashyyyk operation would catch my attention. They therefore arranged his release to coincide with their own missions, in the hope I would be too preoccupied to notice them. Doubtless when we break Khabarakh, we'll learn a great many things from him that will cost us countless man-hours to finally prove wrong." Thrawn snorted again. "No, leave him where he is. You may inform the dynasts that I have decided to permit them the full seven days of public shame, after which they may perform the rites of discovery as they choose. No matter how useless his information, Khabarakh may still serve the Empire by dying painfully. As an object lesson to his race."

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

"I agree," Thrawn said grimly. "Which implies all the more strongly that whatever Organa Solo is looking for on Endor, it's considerably mote vital to the Rebellion's war effort than mere sanctuary."

Pellaeon frowned, trying to think of what might be on Endor that anyone could possibly want. "Some of the materiel left over from the Death Star project?" he hazarded.

"More valuable than that," the Grand Admiral shook his head. "Information, perhaps, that the Emperor might have had with him when he died. Information they may think they can still retrieve."

And then Pellaeon got it. "The location of the Mount Tantiss storehouse."

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

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

"At your convenience, Captain."

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

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

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

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

Chapter 17

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

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

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

A petty totalitarian regime, and a populace desperate to escape it. Just the sort of place where anyone would betray anyone else for the price of a ticket off planet. Which meant that if any of the locals had tumbled to the fact that there was a smuggling ship sitting here under Security's nose, Mara had about ten steps to go before the whole place came down on top of her.

Walking toward a faded door with the equally faded sign "Landing Pit 21" over it, she hoped sardonically that it wasn't a trap. She would really hate to die in a place like this.

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

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

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

"It's a Harkners-Balix Nine-Oh-Three," the other sniffed with a second-rate attempt at wounded pride. "Flying hatbox, indeed."

Not much of an actor, but he was clearly getting a kick out of all this cloak-and-blade stuff. Setting her teeth firmly together, Mara sent a silent curse down on Torve's head for setting up such a ridiculous identification procedure in the first place. "Looks like a Nine-Seventeen to me," she said dutifully. "Or even a Nine-Twenty-Two."

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

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

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

"That could still happen if you don't shut up," Mara growled back. "Keep your voice down, will you?"

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

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

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

"Nice to meet you," Mara said. "Solo couldn't make it himself?"

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

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

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

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

"Right. Oh, one other thing," Antilles added as she started past him. "Han also wanted me to ask you if your people might be interested in selling information on our friend with the eyes."

Mara sent him a sharp look. "Our friend with the eyes?"

Antilles shrugged. "That's what he said. He said you'd understand."

Mara felt her lip twist. "I understand just fine. Tell him I'll pass on the message."

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

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

He shrugged again. "Okay-just doing my job. Have a good trip." With a friendly nod, he headed back down the ramp. Still half expecting a trap, Mara got the hatchway sealed for flight and went up to the bridge.

It took a quarter hour to run the ship through its preflight sequence, almost exactly the amount of time it took the spaceport controllers to confirm her for takeoff. Easing in the repulsorlifts, she lifted clear of the landing pit and made for space.

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

"Uh-oh," she muttered aloud, giving the displays a quick scan. Nothing was visible; but this close to a planetary mass, that meant less than nothing. Anything could be lurking just over the horizon, from a single flight of TIE fighters all the way up to an Imperial Star Destroyer.

But maybe they weren't quite ready yet:

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

He had. The calculation for the jump out of here had already been computed and loaded, just waiting to be initiated. She got the computer started making the minor adjustments that would correct for a couple of months of general galactic drift, and looked back out the forward viewport.

There, emerging over the horizon directly ahead, was the massive bulk of a Victory-class Star Destroyer.

Bearing toward her.

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

"Freighter Etherway," a cold voice boomed over her comm speaker. "This is the Star Destroyer Adamant. You are ordered to shut down your engines and prepare to be brought aboard."

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

Unless :

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

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

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

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

"On second thought, put the captain on now," Mara cut him off. She had the initiative now, and was determined to keep it as long as possible. "There's no one around who can tap into this communication."

There was a moment of silence. Mara continued on her intercept course, a trickle of doubt beginning to worm its way through her resolve. It's the only way, she told herself sternly.

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

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

But the captain wasn't as easily bullied as his junior officers. "Really," he said dryly. "According to our sources, you're a member of Talon Karrde's smuggling gang."

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

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

Mara squeezed her left hand into a fist. At all costs she had to avoid the kind of complete mind-sifting the captain was obviously hinting at. "I wouldn't advise that," she told him, throwing every bit of the half-remembered dignity and power of the old Imperial court into her voice. "The Grand Admiral would be extremely displeased with you. Extremely displeased."

There was a short pause. Clearly, the captain was starting to recognize that he had more here than he'd bargained for. Just as clearly, he wasn't ready yet to back down. "I have my orders," he said flatly. "I'll need more than vague hints before I can make you an exception to them."

Mara braced herself. This was it. After all these years of hiding from the Empire, as well as from everyone else, this was finally it. "Then send a message to the Grand Admiral," she said. "Tell him the recognition code is Hapspir, Barrini, Corbolan, Triaxis."

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

Beneath her, the Etherway jolted slightly as the Adanant's tractor beam locked on. She was committed now. The only way out was to see it all through. "Tell him," she said, "that he knew me as the Emperor's Hand."

They brought her and the Etherway aboard, settled her with uncertain deference into one of the senior officers' quarters : and then headed away from Abregado like a mynock with its tail on fire.

She was left alone in the cabin for the rest of the day and into the night, seeing no one, speaking with no one. Meals were delivered by an SE4 servant droid; at all other times the door was kept locked. Whether the enforced privacy was on the captain's orders or whether it came from above was impossible to tell, but at least it gave her time to do such limited planning as she could.

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

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

Endor.

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

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

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

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

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

The other seemed to consider that. "Come closer, Mara Jade."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And what was that private ceremony?"

"Your secret promotion to the rank of Grand Admiral."

Thrawn pursed his lips, his eyes never leaving her face. "You wore a white dress to both ceremonies," he said. "Aside from the sash, the dress had only one decoration. Do you recall what that decoration was?"

Mara had to think back. "It was a small shouldersculp," she said slowly. "Left shoulder. A Xyquine design, as I remember."

"It was indeed." Thrawn reached to his control board, touched a switch; and abruptly, the room was filled with holos of shouldersculps on ornate pillars. "The one you wore is somewhere in this room. Find it."

Mara swallowed, turning slowly as she looked around. She'd had literally hundreds of fancy dresses for her cover role as a member of the Emperor's entourage. To remember one particular shouldersculp out of all that:

She shook her head, trying to clear away the unpleasant buzzing sensation that hovered deep in her mind. She'd had an excellent memory once, one which the Emperor's training had made even better. Focusing her thoughts, fighting upstream against the disquieting aura of this place, she concentrated : "That's it," she said, pointing to a delicate filigree of gold and blue.

Thrawn's expression didn't change, but he seemed to relax a little in his seat. "Welcome back, Emperor's Hand." He touched the switch a second time, and the art gallery vanished. "You've been a long time in returning."

The glowing eyes bored into her face, the question unspoken but obvious. "What was here for me before?" she countered. "Who but a Grand Admiral would have accepted me as legitimate?"

"Was that the only reason?"

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

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

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.

Mara jerked, unsure for that first frozen heartbeat whether the voice had been real or just in her mind. The strange buzzing intensified, and for a moment she could almost see the Emperor's wizened face glaring at her. The image grew clearer, the rest of the room beginning to swim before her eyes :

She took a deep breath, forcing calmness. She would not fall apart. Not here; not in front of the Grand Admiral. "It wasn't my idea to let Skywalker escape," she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The amused smile vanished. "The Katana fleet?"

Thrawn repeated quietly, his eyes glittering.

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

"I have indeed. Where is it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A dark shadow had settled across Thrawn's face. "Do not presume to dictate to me, Mara Jade," he said quietly. "Not even in private."

A small shiver ran up Mara's back. Yes; she was remembering indeed why Thrawn had been made a Grand Admiral. "I was the Emperor's Hand," she reminded him, matching the steel in his tone as best she could. Even to her own ears it came out a poor second. "I spoke for him : and even Grand Admirals were obliged to listen."

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

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

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

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

She broke off. The look on Thrawn's face : and abruptly, all her rising anger drained away. "No," she breathed. "No. You're wrong."

He shrugged. "Believe what you wish. But don't attempt to blind others with exaggerated memories of your own importance." Reaching to his control board, he tapped a key. "Captain? What report from the boarding party?"

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

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

"No, there's no point to that," Thrawn said. He looked up at Mara. "You don't happen to have any idea why Leia Organa Solo might have come to Endor, do you?"

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

"The Millennium Falcon is, at any rate," he said grimly. "Left in orbit, which unfortunately leaves us no way of knowing where she might be. If she's there at all." He turned back to his board. "Very well, Captain. Have the ship brought aboard. Perhaps a closer examination will tell us something."

He got an acknowledgment and keyed off the circuit. "Very well, Emperor's Hand," he said, looking up at Mara again. "We have an agreement. The Dark Force for the lifting of our death mark against Karrde. How long will it take you to return to Karrde's current base?"

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

"I suggest you do so," Thrawn said. "Since you have exactly eight days to obtain the location and bring it back here to me."

Mara stared at him. "Eight days? But that-"

"Eight days. Or I find him and get the location my way.

A dozen possible retorts rushed through Mar'a's mind. Another look at those glowing red eyes silenced all of them. "I'll do what I can," she managed. Turning, she headed back across the room.

"I'm sure you will," he said after her. "And afterward, we'll sit down and have a long talk together. About your years away from Imperial service : and why you've been so long in returning."

Pellaeon stared rigidly at his commander, heart thudding audibly in his chest. "The Katana fleet?" he repeated carefully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Certainly it's improbable." Thrawn raised glowing eyes to Pellaeon. "But it's also true." He tapped, a switch, and part of the art gallery vanished. "Observe.

Pellaeon turned to look. It was the same scene Thrawn had showed him a few days earlier: the three renegade Dreadnaughts providing cover fire off New Cov so that the Lady Luck and that unidentified freighter could escape-

He inhaled sharply, a sudden suspicion flooding into him. "Those ships?"

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

Pellaeon frowned at the holo, trying hard to fit all of it together. "Your permission, Admiral, but it doesn't make sense for Karrde to be supplying this renegade Corellian with ships."

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

"Do we have any leads?"

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

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

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

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

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

The comm pinged. "Yes?" Thrawn asked.

"Sir, the target has made the jump to lightspeed," a voice reported. "We've got a strong signal from the beacon; we're doing a probability extrapolation now.

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

"Yes, sir."

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

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

Thrawn's expression hardened. "She's not part of the Empire anymore, Captain," he said. "She may want us to believe that she's coming back-she may even believe it herself. But she isn't. No matter. She's leading us to Karrde, and that's the important thing. Between him and our Corellian renegade we have two leads to the Katana fleet. One way or the other, we'll find it."

Pellaeon nodded, feeling the stirrings of excitement again despite his best efforts to remain unemotional about this. The Katana fleet. Two hundred Dreadnaughts, just sitting there waiting for the Empire to take possession:

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

Thrawn smiled. "I believe, Captain, that you may be right."

Chapter 18

They had been sitting around the table in the maitrakh's house since early morning, studying maps and floor plans and diagrams, searching for a plan of action that would be more than simply a complicated way of surrendering. Finally, just here noon, Leia called a halt. "I can't look at this anymore," she told Chewbacca, closing her eyes briefly and rubbing her thumbs against throbbing temples. "Let's go outside for a while."

Chewbacca growled an objection. "Yes, of course there are risks," she agreed wearily. "But the whole village knows we're here, and no one's told the authorities yet. Come on; it'll be okay." Stepping to the door, she opened it and went out. Chewbacca grumbled under his breath, hut followed after her.

The late morning sunshine was blazing brightly down, with only a scattering of high clouds to interfere. Leia glanced upward at the clear sky, shivering involuntarily at the sudden sensation of nakedness that flooded in on her. A clear sky, all the way up to space:but it was all right. A little before midnight the maitrakh had brought the news of the Star Destroyer's imminent departure, a departure which she and Chewbacca had been able to watch with the macrobinoculars from the Wookiee's kit. It had been their first break since Khabarakh's arrest: just as it had begun to look like she and Chewbacca would be pinned down here until it was too late, the Grand Admiral had abruptly left.

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

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

But he was a Grand Admiral, with all the cunning and subtlety and tactical genius that the title implied. This whole thing could be a convoluted, carefully orchestrated trap:and if it was, chances were she would never even see it until it had been sprung around her.

Stop it! she ordered herself firmly. Letting herself get caught up in the mythos of infallibility that had been built up around the Grand Admirals would gain her nothing but mental paralysis. Even Grand Admirals could make mistakes, and there were any number of reasons why he might have had to leave Honoghr. Perhaps some part of the campaign against the New Republic had gone sour, requiring his attention elsewhere. Or perhaps he'd simply gone off on some short errand, intending to be back in a day or two.

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

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

The Wookiee snarled impatiently.

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

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

"Lady Vader," a gravelly voice mewed from just behind her.

Leia jumped. "Good morning, maitrakh," she said, turning and giving the Noghri a solemn nod. "I trust you are well this morning?"

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

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

"Your plans," the maitrakh said. "How do they go?"

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

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

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

"The Grand Admiral has taught us well."

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

The maitrakh was silent a moment. "Yes," she conceded reluctantly.

Leia felt a chill run up her back. The first step in a betrayal would be to put emotional distance between the Noghri and their former lord.

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

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

"It will help. But not enough."

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

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

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

He did. Eight years.

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

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

"I know he's deceiving you," Leia retorted. "I just can't prove it."

The maitrakh was silent for a minute. "What then will you do?"

Leia took a deep breath, exhaled it quietly. "We have to leave Honoghr. That means breaking into the spaceport at Nystao and stealing a ship."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Our lord the Grand Admiral would not deal so harshly with us."

Leia turned to look the maitrakh straight in the eye. "The Empire once destroyed an entire world because of me," she said quietly. "I don't ever want that to happen again."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leia nodded, her heart aching. "Perhaps we will."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is he in trouble?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"All right. Be careful."

"You bet."

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

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

"And if it wasn't?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Friend of yours?" Han murmured.

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

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

"One of the key players, actually."

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

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

Han grunted. "Watch him anyway.

"You bet."

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

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

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

"Where's Luke?" Han demanded.

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

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

"I want to cut a deal with the New Republic," Ferrier said, lowering his voice. "A deal for some new warships. You interested?"

Han felt a tingle at the back of his neck. "We might be," he said, trying to sound casual. "What kind of ships are we talking about?"

Ferrier gestured to the ramp. "How about we talk in the ship?"

"How about we talk out here?" Lando retorted.

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

"What kind of ships?" Han repeated.

Ferrier looked at him for a moment, then made a show of glancing around the area. "Big ones," he said, lowering his voice. "Dreadnaught class." He lowered his voice still (further. "The Katana fleet."

With an effort, Han kept his sabacc face in place. "The Katana fleet. Right."

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

"Yeah?" Han said. Something in Ferrier's face-

He turned around quickly, half expecting to see someone trying to sneak up over the edge of the ramp into the Lady Luck. But aside from the usual mix of shadows from the spaceport lights, there was nothing there. "Something?" Lando demanded.

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

Ferrier smiled slyly. "Free information, Solo? Come on-you know better than that."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We have a lead," Lando said. "What are you offering?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll prep for lift," Lando said as they headed back to the cockpit. "You talk to Control, get us an exit slot."

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

"I don't trust him," Lando cut him off, running his hand over the start-up switches. "He was smiling too much. And he gave up too easily."

It was a hard comment to argue against. And as Han had noted earlier, it was Lando's ship. Shrugging to himself he keyed for spaceport control.

They were out in ten minutes, once again leaving an unhappy group of controllers behind them. "I hope this is the last time we have to come here," Han said, scowling across the cockpit at Lando. "I get the feeling we've worn out our welcome."

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

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

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

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

"What do you want to do with it?"

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

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

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

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

"And might get you killed in the process," Lando retorted. "And then I'd have to go back and explain it to Leia. Forget it."

Han gritted his teeth. Leia. "Yeah," he said with a sigh.

Lando looked at him again. "Come on, buddy, relax. Ferrier hasn't got a hope of beating us. Trust me-we re going to win this one."

Han nodded. He hadn't been thinking about Ferrier, actually. Or about the Katana fleet. "I know," he said.

The Lady Luck disappeared smoothly through one of the ducts in the transparisteel dome, and Ferrier shifted his cigarra to the other side of his mouth. "You're sure they won't find the second beacon?" he asked.

Beside him, the oddly shaped shadow between a pile of shipping crates stirred. "They will not," it said in a voice like cold running water.

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 19

The Etherway was clearly visible now, dropping like a misshapen rock out of the sky toward its assigned landing pit. Standing in the protective shadow of the exit tunnel, Karrde watched its approach, stroking the grip of his blaster gently with his fingertips and trying to ignore the uneasiness still tickling the back of his mind. Mara was over three days late in bringing the freighter back from Abregado-not a particularly significant delay under normal conditions, but this trip had hardly qualified as normal. But there had been no other ships on her tail as she entered orbit, and she'd transmitted all the proper "all clear" code signals to him as she dropped into the approach pattern. And aside from the incompetence of the controllers, who'd taken an inordinate amount of time to decide which pit she was actually being assigned to, the landing itself had so far been completely routine.

Karrde smiled wryly as he watched the ship come down. There had been times in the past three days when he'd thought about Mara's hatred of Luke Skywalker, and had wondered if she had decided to drop out of his life as mysteriously as she'd dropped into it. But it seemed now that his original reading of her had been correct. Mara Jade wasn't the sort of person who gave her loyalty easily, but once she'd made a decision she stuck with it. If she ever ran out on him, she wouldn't do so in a stolen ship. Not stolen from him, anyway.

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

But the uneasiness was still there.

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

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

Karrde nodded. "All right. Keep out of sight, but stay alert."

He replaced the comlink in his belt. The Etherway's landing ramp began to swing down, and he shifted his hand to a grip on his blaster. If this was a trap, now would be the likely time to spring it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She was standing over him, her face so pinched with emotion he could hardly recognize it, her lips moving with words he couldn't hear.

But he didn't really need any explanation. Strangely, he felt no anger at her; not for concealing her Imperial past from him all this time, nor for now returning to her origins. Only chagrin that he'd been fooled so easily and so thoroughly : and a strange regret that he had lost such a skilled associate.

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

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

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

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

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

"And it got us what we wanted," the red-eyed freak said smoothly. "That's all that matters."

Deep within Mara, something snapped. Ignoring the armed stormtroopers standing just behind her, she threw herself at Thrawn, fingers hooking like a hunting bird's talons for his throat-

And came to an abrupt bone-wrenching stop as Thrawn's Noghri bodyguard sidled in from two meters away, threw his arm across her neck and shoulder, and spun her around and halfway to the deck.

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

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

Mara glared at him and lashed out again, this time with the Force. Thrawn frowned slightly, fingers moving across his neck as if trying to brush away an intangible cobweb. Mara leaned into her tenuous grip on his throat; and he brushed again at his neck before understanding came. "All right, that's enough," he said, his voice noticeably altered, his tone starting to get angry. "Stop it, or Rukh will have to hurt you."

Mara ignored the order, digging in as hard as she could. Thrawn gazed unblinkingly back at her, his throat muscles moving as he fought against the grip. Mara clenched her teeth, waiting for the order or hand movement that would signal permission for the Noghri to choke her, or for the stormtroopers to burn her down.

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

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

"He taught me a great many tricks," Mara bit out, ignoring the throbbing in her temples. "How to deal with traitors was one of them."

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

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

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

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

Mara took a deep breath. "I understand," she said, forcing out the words. "You've made your point. It won't happen again."

He eyed her a moment, then nodded. "Apology accepted," he said. "Release her, Rukh. Now. Do I take it you wish to rejoin the Empire?"

The Noghri let go of her neck-reluctantly, Mara thought-and took a short step away. "What about the rest of Karrde's people?" she asked.

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

"And Karrde himself?"

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

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

"Why?"

"I might be able to persuade him to cooperate."

Thrawn smiled slightly. "Or could at least assure him that you did not, in fact, betray him?"

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

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

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

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

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

"I understand your feelings," Thrawn said, his face hardening again. "But they have no place here. Mixed loyalties are a luxury no officer of the Imperial Fleet can afford. Certainly not if she wishes someday to be given a command of her own."

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

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

It was clearly a dismissal. "Yes, Admiral," Mara said. Stepping past him, she headed toward the door he'd indicated. For a moment she could feel his eyes on her, then heard the faint sound of his footsteps as he turned away toward the lift cluster beyond the starboard blast doors.

Yes; the Grand Admiral had made his point. But it wasn't exactly the one he'd intended to make. With that single casual act of betrayal, he had finally destroyed her last wistful hope that the new Empire might someday measure up to the one that Luke Skywalker had destroyed out from under her.

The Empire she'd once been proud to serve was gone. Forever.

It was a painful revelation, and a costly one. It could erase in one stroke everything she'd worked so hard to build up for herself over the last year.

It could also cost Karrde his life. And if it did, he would die believing that she had deliberately betrayed him to Thrawn.

The thought twisted in her stomach like a heated knife, mixing with her bitter anger toward Thrawn for lying to her and her shame at her own gullibility in trusting him in the first place. No matter how she looked at it, this mess was her fault.

It was up to her to fix it.

Beside the door to the deck officer's office was the huge archway that led from the hangar bay proper into the service and prep areas behind it. Mara threw a glance over her shoulder as she walked, and spotted Thrawn stepping into one of the turbolifts, his tame Noghri at his side. Her stormtrooper escort, too, had disappeared, its members probably returning to their private section aft for debriefing over the mission they'd just completed. There were twenty or thirty other people in the bay, but none of them seemed to be paying any particular attention to her.

It was probably the only chance she would ever get. With her ear cocked for the shout-or the blaster shot-that would mean she'd been noticed, she bypassed the deck officer's office and stepped past the retracted blast doors into the prep area.

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

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

The code clicked, and she was in.

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

No stormtroopers had appeared by the time the directory came up. She keyed for the detention section and flicked her eye down the listing, wishing fleetingly that she had an R2 astromech droid like Skywalker's to help cut through all of it. Even if Thrawn had missed the backdoor code, he would certainly have alerted the deck officer to expect her. If someone in the control tower noticed she was overdue and sent someone out to look for her :

There it was: an updated prisoner list. She keyed for it, pulling up a diagram of the entire detention block while she was at it. A duty roster was next, with attention paid to the shift changes, then back to the daily orders and a listing of the Chimaera's projected course and destinations for the next six days. Thrawn had implied he would be waiting a few days before beginning a formal interrogation, letting boredom and tension and Karrde's own imagination wear down his resistance. Mara could only hope she could get back before that softening-up period was over.

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

She couldn't rescue Karrde alone. She couldn't expect any help from his organization. Which left only one person in the galaxy she might be able to enlist. Only one person who might possibly feel he owed Karrde something.

Clenching her teeth, she keyed for the current location of a Jedi Master named Joruus C'baoth.

It seemed to take the computer an inordinate amount of time to dig out the information, and the skin on Mara's back was starting to crawl by the time the machine finally spat it out. She caught the planet's name-Jomark-and keyed off, doing what she could to bury the fact that this interaction had ever taken place. Already she'd pushed her timing way too close to the wire; and if they caught her here on a computer she shouldn't have been able to access at all, she was likely to find herself in the cell next to Karrde's.

She barely made it. She'd just finished her cleanup and started back toward the archway when a young officer and three troopers came striding through from the hangar bay, their eyes and weapons clearly ready for trouble. One of the troopers spotted her, muttered something to the officer-

"Excuse me," Mara called as all four turned to her. "Can you tell me where I can find the deck officer?"

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

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

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

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

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

"I know," she nodded. "I'm ready."

The shuttle lifted and turned and headed off into the sky. Standing by the Etherway's ramp, the stink of burned paving still thick in the air, Mara watched the Imperial craft disappear over the top of the landing pit. "Aves?" she called. "Come on, Aves, you've got to be here somewhere."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Maybe you needed to get something from the Etherway," he countered harshly. "Or maybe it's just a trick to try to round up the rest of us."

Mara braced herself. "If you really believe that," she said quietly, "you might as well go ahead and shoot. I can't get Karrde out of there without your help."

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

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

"You got any way to prove that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His eyes narrowed. "That's it?"

"That's it. How soon can you get them to me?"

Aves pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Let's say an hour," he said. "That big swamp about fifty kilometers north of the city-you know it?"

Mara nodded. "There's a soggy sort of island near the eastern edge."

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

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

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

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

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

She nodded, feeling a hard lump settle into her throat. "Thanks."

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

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

Chapter 20

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

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

Now it was Luke's turn to do so.

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

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

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

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

So what was he doing here?

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

"As to the fence, I'll examine it tomorrow morning," he continued. "I want to see how badly it was damaged before I make my decision.

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

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

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

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

Luke swallowed. "Yes, Master C'baoth," he said. "But reading another person's thoughts that way seems wrong-"

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

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

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

Luke felt his cheeks flush, thinking back to Lando's use of that illegal slicer code to get his X-wing repaired at the Sluis Van shipyards. "Yes, I've done that on occasion," he admitted. "But this is different, somehow. It feels : I don't know. Like I'm taking more responsibility for these people's lives than I should."

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

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

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

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

His mouth twisted. "And in return, the galaxy destroyed us."

Luke frowned. "I thought it was just the Emperor and a few Dark Jedi who exterminated the Jedi."

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

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

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

"I think so," Luke said, rubbing at the corner of his eye. His mind felt so sluggish in the fatigue dragging at him. And yet, even as he tried to think about C'baoth's words, images flowed unbidden from his memory. Images of Master Yoda, gruff but unafraid, with no trace of bitterness or anger toward anyone at the destruction of his fellow Jedi. Images of Ben Kenobi in the Mos Eisley cantina, treated with a sort of aloof respect, but respect nonetheless, after he'd been forced to cut down those two troublemakers.

And clearest of all, images of his encounter at the New Cov tapcafe. Of the Barabel, asking for the mediation of a stranger, and accepting without question even those parts of Luke's judgment that had gone against him. Of the rest of the crowd, watching with hope and expectation and relief that a Jedi was there to keep things from getting out of hand. "I haven't experienced any such hatred."

C'baoth gazed at him from under bushy eyebrows. "You will," he said darkly. "As will your sister. And her children."

Luke's chest tightened. "I can protect them."

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

"I think so, yes.

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

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

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

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

"Do you doubt that I can protect her?"

"I:no, I don't doubt you," Luke said, choosing his words carefully. "It's just that-"

He paused. C'baoth had gone abruptly stiff, his eyes gazing outward at nothing. "Master C'baoth?" he asked. "Are you all right?"

There was no reply. Luke stepped to his side, reaching out with the Force and wondering uneasily if the other was ill. But as always the Jedi Master's mind was closed to him. "Come, Master C'baoth," he said, taking the other's arm. "I'll help you to your chambers."

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

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

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

"Because if you need my help-"

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

Luke found himself two paces back from C'baoth without any recollection of having taken the steps. "I'm sorry, Master C'baoth," he said. "I didn't mean any disrespect.

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

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

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

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

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

Mara heard herself cry out as she struggled to rush to her master's aid. But the distance was too great, her body too sluggish. She screamed a challenge, trying to at least distract them. But neither Vader nor Skywalker seemed to hear her. They moved outward to flank the Emperor : and as they lifted their lightsabers high, she saw that the Emperor was gazing at her.

She looked back at him, wanting desperately to turn away from the coming disaster but unable to move. A thousand thoughts and emotions flooded in through that gaze, a glittering kaleidoscope of pain and fear and rage that spun far too fast for her to really absorb. The Emperor raised his hands, sending cascades of jagged blue-white lightning at his enemies. Both men staggered under the counterattack, and Mara watched with the sudden agonized hope that this time it might end differently. But no. Vader and Skywalker straightened; and with another roar of rage, they lifted their lightsabers high-

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER!

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

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

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

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

She looked out at the mottling of hyperspace spinning around the Skipray's canopy, some last bit of her mind coming fully awake. No, that was wrong. She wasn't going to kill Skywalker at all. She was-

She was going to ask him for help.

The sour taste of bile rose into her throat; with an effort, she forced it down. No argument, she told herself sternly. If she wanted to rescue Karrde, she was going to have to go through with it.

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

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

She had arrived at Jomark.

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

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

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

Or would there?

She leveled the ship off confirmed that there were no mountains in her path, and keyed in the autopilot. The ysalamir and portable nutrient framework that Aves had given her were back near the aft hatchway, secured to the engine access panel. Unstrapping from her seat, Mara made her way back toward it-

It was as if someone had snapped on a light switch. One second she felt as if she had just finished a four-day battle; half a step later, a meter or so from the ysalamir, the fatigue abruptly vanished.

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 21

Mara swore under her breath, throwing the Skipray's control surfaces into glide mode and keying for a contour scan of the cliff face beneath the rim building. A landing up on the rim was out of the question now; putting down on the limited area up there without her repulsorlifts might be possible, but not with a Jedi Master fighting her the whole way. alternately, she could go for the dark island beneath her, which would give her more room to operate but leave her with the problem of getting back up to the rim. Ditto if she tried to find a big enough landing area somewhere else down the mountains.

Or she could admit defeat, fire up the main drive and pull for space, and go after Karrde alone.

Gritting her teeth, she studied the contour scan. The rock storm had stopped after the fourth hit-the Jedi Master, no doubt, waiting to see if she'd crash without further encouragement on his part. With a little luck, maybe she could convince him that she was done for without actually wrecking the ship in the process. If she could just find the proper formation in that cliff face :

There it was, perhaps a third of the way down: a roughly hemispherical concavity where erosion had eaten away a layer of softer rock from the harder material surrounding it. The ledge that had been left beneath the indentation was relatively flat, and the whole thing was large enough to hold the Skipray comfortably.

Now all she had to do was get the ship there. Mentally crossing her fingers, she flipped the ship nose up and eased in the main sublight drive.

The glare of the drive trail lit up the near side of the rim mountains, throwing them into a dancing mosaic of light and shadow. The Skipray jerked up and forward, stabilized a little as Mara brought the nose a bit farther back off vertical. It threatened to overbalance, eased back as she tapped the control surfaces, twitched almost too far in the other direction, then steadied. Balancing on the drive like this was an inherently unstable operation, and Mara could feel the sweat breaking out on her forehead as she fought to keep the suddenly unwieldy craft under control. If C'baoth suspected what she was trying, it wouldn't take much effort on his part to finish her off.

Setting her teeth together, splitting her attention between the approach scope, the airspeed indicator, and the throttle, she brought the ship in.

She nearly didn't make it. The Skipray was still ten meters short of the ledge when its drive trail hit the cliff face below it with enough heat to ignite the rock, and an instant later the ship was sheathed in brilliantly colored fire. Mara held her course, trying to ignore the warbling of the hull warning sirens as she strained to see through the flames between her and her target. There was no time to waste with second thoughts-if she hesitated even a few seconds, the drive could easily burn away too much of the ledge for her to safely put down. Five meters away now, and the temperature inside the cabin was beginning to rise. Then three, then one-

There was a horrible screech of metal on rock as the Skipray's ventral fin scraped against the edge of the ledge. Mara cut the drive and braced herself, and with a stomach-churning drop, the ship dropped a meter to land tailfirst on the ledge. For a second it almost seemed it would remain balanced there. Then, with ponderous grace, it toppled slowly forward and slammed down hard onto its landing skids.

Wiping the sweat out of her eyes, Mara keyed for a status readout. The airs tilting maneuver had been taught to her as an absolute last-ditch alternative to crashing. Now, she knew why.

But she'd been lucky. The landing skids and ventral fin were a mess, but the engines, hyperdrive, life-support, and hull integrity were still all right. Shutting the systems back to standby, she hoisted the ysalamir frame up onto her shoulders and headed aft.

The main portside hatchway was unusable, opening as it did out over empty space. There was, however, a secondary hatch set behind the dorsal laser cannon turret. Getting up the access ladder and through it with the ysalamir on her back was something of a trick, but after a couple of false starts she made it. The metal of the upper hull was uncomfortably hot to her touch as she climbed out onto it, but the cold winds coming off the lake below were a welcome relief after the superheated air inside. She propped the hatchway open to help cool the ship and looked upward.

And to her chagrin discovered that she'd miscalculated. Instead of being ten to fifteen meters beneath the top of the crater, as she'd estimated, she was in fact nearly fifty meters down. The vast scale of the crater, combined with the mad rush of the landing itself, had skewed her perception.

"Nothing like a little exercise after a long trip," she muttered to herself, pulling the glow rod from her beltpack and playing it across her line of ascent. The climb wasn't going to be fun, especially with the top-heavy weight of the ysalamir frame, but it looked possible. Attaching the glow rod to the shoulder of her jumpsuit, she picked out her first set of handholds and started up.

She'd made maybe two meters when, without warning, the rock in front of her suddenly blazed with light.

The shock of it sent her sliding back down the cliff face to a bumpy landing atop the Skipray; but she landed in a crouch with her blaster ready in her hand. Squinting against the twin lights glaring down on her, she snapped off a quick shot that took out the leftmost of them. The other promptly shut off; and then, even as she tried to blink away the purple blobs obscuring her vision, she heard a faint but unmistakable sound.

The warbling of an R2 droid.

"Hey!" she called softly. "You-droid. Are are you Skywalker's astromech unit? If you are you know who I am. We met on Myrkr-remember?"

The droid remembered, all ,right. But from the indignant tone of the reply, it wasn't a memory the R2 was especially fond of. "Yes, well, skip all that," she told it tartly. "Your master is in trouble. I came to warn him."

Another electronic warble, this one fairly dripping with sarcasm. "It's true," Mara insisted. Her dazzled vision was starting to recover now, and she could make out the dark shape of the X-wing hovering on its repulsorlifts about five meters away, its two starboard laser cannons pointed directly at her face. "I need to talk to him right away," Mara went on. "Before that Jedi Master up there figures out I'm still alive and tries to rectify the situation."

She'd expected more sarcasm, or even out-and-out approval for such a goal. But the droid didn't say anything. Perhaps it had witnessed the brief battle between the Skipray and C'baoth's flying boulders. "Yes, that was him trying to kill me," she confirmed. "Nice and quiet, so that your master wouldn't notice anything and ask awkward questions."

The droid beeped what sounded like a question of its own. "I came here because I need Skywalker's help," Mara said, taking a guess as to the content. "Karrde's been captured by the Imperials, and I can't get him out by myself. Karrde, in case you've forgotten, was the one who helped your friends set up an ambush against those stormtroopers that got both of you off Myrkr. You owe him."

The droid snorted. "All right, then," Mara snapped. "Don't do it for Karrde, and don't do it for me. Take me up there because otherwise your precious master won't know until it's too late that his new teacher, C'baoth, is working for the Empire."

The droid thought it over. Then, slowly, the X-wing rotated to point its lasers away from her and sidled over to the damaged Skipray. Mara holstered her blaster and got ready, wondering how she was going to squeeze into the cockpit with the ysalamir framework strapped to her shoulders.

She needn't have worried. Instead of maneuvering to give her access to the cockpit, the droid instead presented her with one of the landing skids.

"You must be joking," Mara protested, eyeing the skid hovering at waist height in front of her and thinking about the long drop to the lake below. But it was clear that the droid was serious; and after a moment, she reluctantly climbed aboard. "Okay," she said when she was as secure as she could arrange. "Let's go. And watch out for flying rocks."

The X-wing eased away and began moving upward. Mara braced herself, waiting for C'baoth to pick up the attack where he'd left off. But they reached the top without incident; and as the droid settled the X-wing safely to the ground, Mara saw the shadowy figure of a cloaked man standing silently beside the fence surrounding the house.

"You must be C'baoth," Mara said to him as she slid off the landing skid and got a grip on her blaster. "You always greet your visitors this way?"

For a moment the figure didn't speak. Mara took a step toward him, feeling an eerie sense of d?v? vu as she tried to peer into the hood at the face not quite visible there. The Emperor had looked much the same way that night when he'd first chosen her from her home : "I have no visitors except lackeys from Grand Admiral Thrawn," the figure said at last. "All others are, by definition, intruders."

"What makes you think I'm not with the Empire?" Mara countered. "In case it escaped your notice, I was following the Imperial beacon on that island down there when you knocked me out of the sky."

In the dim starlight she had the impression that C'baoth was smiling inside the hood. "And what precisely does that prove?" he asked. "Merely that others can play with the Grand Admiral's little toys."

"And can others get hold of the Grand Admiral's ysalamiri, too?" she demanded, gesturing toward the frame on her back. "Enough of this. The Grand Admiral-"

"The Grand Admiral is your enemy," C'baoth snapped suddenly. "Don't insult me with childish denials, Mara Jade. I saw it all in your mind as you approached. Did you really believe you could take my Jedi away from me?"

Mara swallowed, shivering from the cold night wind and the colder feeling within her. Thrawn had said that C'baoth was insane, and she could indeed hear the unstable edge of madness in his voice. But there was far more to the man than just that. There was a hard steel behind the voice, ruthless and calculating, with a sense of both supreme power and supreme confidence underlying it all.

It was like hearing the Emperor speak again.

"I need Skywalker's help," she said, forcing her own voice to remain calm. "All I need to do is borrow him for a little while."

"And then you'll return him?" C'baoth said sardonically.

Mara clenched her teeth. "I'll have his help, C'baoth. Whether you like it or not."

There was no doubt this time that the Jedi Master had smiled. A thin, ghostly smile. "Oh, no, Mara Jade," he murmured. "You are mistaken. Do you truly believe that simply because you stand in the middle of an empty space in the Force that I am powerless against you?"

"There's also this," Mara said, pulling her blaster from its holster and aiming it at his chest.

C'baoth didn't move; but suddenly Mara could feel a surge of tension in the air around her. "No one points a weapon at me with impunity," the Jedi Master said with quiet menace. "You will pay dearly for this one day."

"I'll take my chances," Mara said, retreating a step to put her back against the X-wing's soard S-foils. Above and to her left she could hear the R2 droid chirping thoughtfully to itself. "You want to stand aside and let me pass? Or do we do this the hard way?"

C'baoth seemed to study her. "I could destroy you, you know," he said. The menace had vanished from his voice now, leaving something almost conversational in its place. "Right there where you stand, before you even knew the attack was coming. But I won't. Not now. I've felt your presence over the years, Mara Jade; the rising and falling of your power after the Emperor's death took most of your strength away. And now I've seen you in my meditations. Someday you will come to me, of your own free will."

"I'll take my chances on that one, too, Mara said.

"You don't believe me," C'baoth said with another of his ghostly smiles. "But you shall. The future is fixed, my young would-be Jedi, as is your destiny. Someday you will kneel before me. I have foreseen it."

"I wouldn't trust Jedi foreseeing all that much if I were you," Mara retorted, risking a glance past him at the darkened building and wondering what C'baoth would do if she tried shouting Skywalker's name. "The Emperor did a lot of that, too. It didn't help him much in the end."

"Perhaps I am wiser than the Emperor was," C'baoth said. His head turned slightly. "I told you to go to your chambers," he said in a louder voice.

"Yes, you did," a familiar voice acknowledged; and from the shadows at the front of the house a new figure moved across the courtyard.

Skywalker.

"Then why are you here?" C'baoth asked.

"I felt a disturbance in the Force," the younger man said as he passed through the gate and came more fully into the dim starlight. Above his black tunic his face was expressionless, his eyes fixed on Mara. "As if a battle were taking place nearby. Hello, Mara."

"Skywalker," she managed between dry lips. With all that had happened to her since her arrival in the Jomark system, it was only now just dawning on her the enormity of the task she'd set for herself. She, who'd openly told Skywalker that she would someday kill him, was now going to have to convince him that she was more trustworthy than a Jedi Master. "Look-Skywalker-"

"Aren't you aiming that at the wrong person?" he asked mildly. "I thought I was the one you were gunning for."

Mara had almost forgotten the blaster she had pointed at C'baoth. "I didn't come here to kill you," she said. Even to her own ears the words sounded thin and deceitful. "Karrde's in trouble with the Empire. I need your help to get him out."

"I see." Skywalker looked at C'baoth. "What happened here, Master C'baoth?"

"What does it matter?" the other countered. "Despite her words just now, she did indeed come here to destroy you. Would you rather I had not stopped her?"

"Skywalker-" Mara began.

He stopped her with an upraised hand, his eyes still on C'baoth. "Did she attack you?" he asked. "Or threaten you in any way?"

Mara looked at C'baoth : and felt the breath freeze in her lungs. The earlier confidence had vanished from the Jedi Master's face. In its place was something cold and deadly. Directed not at her, but at Skywalker.

And suddenly Mara understood. Skywalker wouldn't need convincing of C'baoth's treachery after all. Somehow, he already knew.

"What does it matter what her precise actions were?" C'baoth demanded, his voice colder even than his face. "What matters is that she is a living example of the danger I have been warning you of since your arrival. The danger all Jedi face from a galaxy that hates and fears us."

"No, Master C'baoth," Skywalker said, his voice almost gentle. "Surely you must understand that the means are no less important than the ends. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack."

C'baoth snorted. "A platitude for the simpleminded. Or for those with insufficient wisdom to make their own decisions. I am beyond such things, Jedi Skywalker. As you will be someday. If you choose to remain.

Skywalker shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "I can't." He turned away and walked toward Mara-

"Then you turn your back on the galaxy," C'baoth said, his voice now earnest and sincere. "Only with our guidance and strength can they ever hope to achieve real maturity. You know that as well as I do."

Skywalker stopped. "But you just said they hate us," he pointed out. "How can we teach people who don't want our guidance?"

"We can heal the galaxy, Luke," C'baoth said quietly. "Together, you and I can do it. Without us, there is no hope. None at all."

"Maybe he can do it without you," Mara put in loudly, trying to break up the verbal spell C'baoth was weaving. She'd seen the same sort of thing work for the Emperor, and Skywalker's eyelids were heavy enough as it was.

Too heavy, in fact. Like hers had been on the approach to Jomark :

Stepping away from the X-wing, she walked over to Skywalker. C'baoth made a small movement, as if he were going to stop her; she hefted her blaster, and he seemed to abandon the idea.

Even without looking at him, she could tell when the Force-empty zone around her ysalamir touched Skywalker. He inhaled sharply, shoulders straightening from a slump he probably hadn't even noticed they had, and nodded as if he finally understood a hitherto unexplained piece of a puzzle. "Is this how you would heal the galaxy, Master C'baoth?" he asked. "By coercion and deceit?"

Abruptly, C'baoth threw back his head and laughed. It was about the last reaction Mara would have expected from him, and the sheer surprise of it momentarily froze her muscles.

And in that split second, the Jedi Master struck.

It was only a small rock, as rocks went, but it came in out of nowhere to strike her gun hand with paralyzing force. The blaster went spinning off into the darkness as her hand flared with pain and then went numb. "Watch out!" she snapped to Skywalker, dropping down into a crouch and scrabbling around for her weapon as a second stone whistled past her ear.

There was a snap-hiss from beside her, and suddenly the terrain was bathed in the green-white glow of Skywalker's lightsaber. "Get behind the ship," he ordered her. "I'll hold him off."

The memory of Myrkr flashed through Mara's mind; but even as she opened her mouth to remind him of how useless he was without the Force, he took a long step forward to put himself outside the ysalamir's influence. The lightsaber flashed sideways, and she heard the double crunch as its silent blade intercepted two more incoming rocks.

Still laughing, C'baoth raised his hand and sent a flash of blue lightning toward them.

Skywalker caught the bolt on his lightsaber, and for an instant the green of the blade was surrounded by a blue-white coronal discharge. A second bolt shot past him to vanish at the edge of the empty zone around Mara; a third again wrapped itself around the lightsaber blade.

Mara's fumbling hand brushed something metallic: her blaster. Scooping it up, she swung it toward C'baoth-

And with a brilliant flash of laser fire, the whole scene seemed to blow up in front of her.

She had forgotten about the droid sitting up there in the X-wing. Apparently, C'baoth had forgotten about it, too.

"Skywalker?" she called, blinking at the purple haze floating in front of her eyes and wrinkling her nose at the tingling smell of ozone. "Where are you?"

"Over here by C'baoth," Skywalker's voice said. "He's still alive."

"We can fix that," Mara growled. Carefully picking her way across the steaming ruts the X-wing's laser cannon had gouged in the ground, she headed over.

C'baoth was lying on his back, unconscious but breathing evenly, with Skywalker kneeling over him. "Not even singed," she murmured. "Impressive."

"Artoo wasn't shooting to kill," Skywalker said, his fingertips moving gently across the old man's face. "It was probably the sonic shock that got him."

"That, or getting knocked off his feet by the shock wave," Mara agreed, lining her blaster up on the still figure. "Get out of the way. I'll finish it."

Skywalker looked up at her. "We're not going to kill him," he said. "Not like this."

"Would you rather wait until he's conscious again and can fight back?" she retorted.

"There's no need to kill him at all," Skywalker insisted. "We can be off Jomark long before he wakes up."

"You don't leave an enemy at your back," she told him stiffly. "Not if you like living.

"He doesn't have to be an enemy, Mara," Skywalker said with that irritating earnestness of his. "He's ill. Maybe he can be cured."

Mara felt her lip twist. "You didn't hear the way he was talking before you showed up," she said. "He's insane, all right; but that's not all he is anymore. He's a lot stronger, and a whole lot more dangerous." She hesitated. "He sounded just like the Emperor and Vader used to."

A muscle in Skywalker's cheek twitched. "Vader was deep in the dark side, too," he told her. "He was able to break that hold and come back. Maybe C'baoth can do the same.

"I wouldn't bet on it," Mara said. But she holstered her blaster. They didn't have time to debate the issue; and as long as she needed Skywalker's help, he had effective veto on decisions like this. "Just remember, it's your back that'll get the knife if you're wrong."

"I know." He looked down at C'baoth once more, then back up at her. "You said Karrde was in trouble."

"Yes," Mara nodded, glad to change the subject.

Skywalker's mention of the Emperor and Vader had reminded her all too clearly of that recurring dream. "The Grand Admiral's taken him. I need your help to get him out."

She braced herself for the inevitable argument and bargaining; but to her surprise, he simply nodded and stood up. "Okay," he said. "Let's go."

With one last mournful electronic wail Artoo signed off and with the usual flicker of pseudomotion, the X-wing was gone. "Well, he's not happy about it," Luke said, shutting down the Skipray's transmitter. "But I think I've persuaded him to go straight home."

"You'd better be more than just thinking you've persuaded him," Mara warned from the pilot's chair, her eyes on the nav computer display. "Sneaking into an Imperial supply depot is going to be hard enough without a New Republic X-wing in tow.

"Right," Luke said, throwing a sideways look at her and wondering if getting into the Skipray with her had been one of the smarter things he'd done lately. Mara had put the ysalamir away in the rear of the ship, and he could feel her hatred of him simmering beneath her consciousness like a half-burned fire. It evoked unpleasant memories of the Emperor, the man who'd been Mara's teacher and Luke briefly wondered if this could be some sort of overly elaborate trick to lure him to his death.

But her hatred seemed to be under control, and there was no deceit in her that he could detect.

But then, he hadn't seen C'baoth's deceit either, until it was almost too late.

Luke shifted in his chair, his face warming with embarrassment at how easily he'd been taken in by C'baoth's act. But it hadn't all been an act, he reminded himself. The Jedi Master's emotional instabilities were genuine-that much he was convinced of. And even if those instabilities didn't extend as far as the insanity that Mara had alluded to, they certainly extended far enough for C'baoth to qualas ill.

And if what she'd said about C'baoth working with the Empire was also true :

Luke shivered. I will teach her such power as you can't imagine, C'baoth had said about Leia. The words had been different from those Vader had spoken to Luke on Endor, but the dark sense behind them had been identical. Whatever C'baoth had once been, there was no doubt in Luke's mind that he was now moving along the path of the dark side.

And yet, Luke had been able to help Vader win his way back from that same path. Was it conceit to think he could do the same for C'baoth?

He shook the thought away. However C'baoth's destiny might yet be entwined with his, such encounters were too far in the future to begin planning for them. For now, he needed to concentrate on the immediate task at hand, and to leave the future to the guidance of the Force. "How did the Grand Admiral find Karrde?" he asked Mara.

Her lips compressed momentarily, and Luke caught a flash of self-reproach. "They put a homing beacon aboard my ship," she said. "I led them right to his hideout."

Luke nodded, thinking back to the rescue of Leia and that harrowing escape from the first Death Star aboard the Falcon. "They pulled that same trick on us, too," he said. "That's how they found the Yavin base."

"Considering what it cost them, I don't think you've got any complaints coming," Mara said sarcastically.

"I don't imagine the Emperor was pleased," Luke murmured.

"No, he wasn't," Mara said, her voice dark with memories of her own. "Vader nearly died for that blunder." Deliberately, she looked over at Luke's hands. "That was when he lost his right hand, in fact."

Luke flexed the fingers of his artificial right hand, feeling a ghostly echo of the searing pain that had lanced through it as Vader's lightsaber had sliced through skin and muscle and bone. A fragment of an old Tatooine aphortsm flickered through his mind: something about the passing of evil from one generation to the next "What's the plan?" he asked.

Mara took a deep breath, and Luke could sense the emotional effort as she put the past aside. "Karrde's being held aboard the Grand Admiral's flagship, the Chimaera," she told him. "According to their flight schedule, they're going to be taking on supplies in the Wistril system four days from now. If we push it, we should be able to get there a few hours ahead of them. We'll ditch the Skipray, take charge of one of the supply shuttles, and just go on up with the rest of the flight pattern."

Luke thought it over. It sounded tricky, but not ridiculously so. "What happens after we're aboard?"

"Standard Imperial procedure is to keep all the shuttle crews locked aboard their ships while the Chimaera's crewers handle the unloading," Mara said. "Or at least that was standard procedure five years ago. Means we'll need some kind of diversion to get out of the shuttle."

"Sounds risky," Luke shook his head. "We don't want to draw attention to ourselves."

"You got any better ideas?"

Luke shrugged. "Not yet," he said. "But we've got four days to think about it. We'll come up with something."

Chapter 22

Mara eased the repulsorlifts off; and with a faint metallic clank the cargo shuttle touched down on the main deck of the Chimaera's aft hangar bay. "Shuttle 37 down," Luke announced into the comm. "Awaiting further orders."

"Shuttle 37, acknowledged," the voice of the controller came over the speaker. "Shut down all systems and prepare for unloading."

"Got it."

Luke reached over to shut off the comm, but Mara stopped him. "Control, this is my first cargo run," she said, her voice carrying just the right touch of idle curiosity. "About how long until we'll be able to leave?"

"I suggest you make yourselves comfortable," Control said dryly. "We unload all the shuttles before any of you leave. Figure a couple of hours, at the least."

"Oh," Mara said, sounding taken aback. "Well : thanks. Maybe I'll take a nap."

She signed off. "Good," she said, unstrapping and standing up. "That ought to give us enough time to get to the detention center and back."

"Let's just hope they haven't transferred Karrde off the ship," Luke said, following her to the rear of the command deck and the spiral stairway leading down to the storage area below.

"They haven't," Mara said, heading down the stairs. "The only danger is that they might have started the full treatment already."

Luke frowned down at her. "The full treatment?"

"Their interrogation." Mara reached the center of the storage room and looked appraisingly around. "All right. Just about : there should do it." She pointed to a section of the deck in front of her. "Out of the way of prying eyes, and you shouldn't hit anything vital."

"Right." Luke ignited his lightsaber, and began carefully cutting a hole in the floor. He was most of the way through when there was a brilliant spark from the hole and the lights in the storage room abruptly went out. "It's okay," Luke told Mara as she muttered something vicious under her breath. "The lightsaber gives off enough light to see by."

"I'm more worried that the cable might have arced to the hangar deck," she countered. "They couldn't help but notice that."

Luke paused, stretching out with Jedi senses. "Nobody nearby seems to have seen anything," he told Mara.

"We'll hope." She gestured to the half-finished cut. "Get on with it."

He did so. A minute later, with the help of a magnetic winch, they had hauled the severed section of decking and hull into the storage room. A few centimeters beneath it, lit eerily by the green light from Luke's lightsaber, was the hangar bay deck. Mara got the winch's grapple attached to it; stretching out flat on his stomach, Luke extended the lightsaber down through the hole. There he paused, waiting until he could sense that the corridor beneath the hangar deck was clear.

"Don't forget to bevel it," Mara reminded him as the lightsaber bit smoothly into the hardened metal. "A gaping hole in the ceiling would be a little too obvious for even conscripts to miss."

Luke nodded and finished the cut. Mara was ready, and even as he shut down the lightsaber she had the winch pulling the thick slab of metal up into the shuttle. She brought it perhaps a meter up and then shut down the motor. "That's far enough," she said. Blaster ready in her hand, she sat gingerly on the still-warm edge of the hole and dropped lightly down to the deck below. There was a second's pause as she looked around-"All clear," she hissed.

Luke sat down on the edge and looked over at the winch control. Reaching out with the Force, he triggered the switch and followed her down.

The deck below was farther than it had looked, but his Jedi-enhanced muscles handled the impact without trouble. Recovering his balance, he looked up just as the metal plug settled neatly back down into the hole. "Looks pretty good," Mara murmured. "I don't think anyone will notice."

"Not unless they look straight up," Luke agreed. "Which way to the detention center?"

"There," Mara said, gesturing with her blaster to their left. "We're not going to get there dressed like this, though. Come on.

She led the way to the end of the passage, then down a crossway to another, wider corridor. Luke kept his senses alert, but only occasionally did he detect anyone. "Awfully quiet down here."

"It won't last," Mara said. "This is a service supply area, and most of the people who'd normally be working here are a level up helping unload the shuttles. But we need to get into some uniforms or flight suits or something before we go much farther."

Luke thought back to the first time he'd tried masquerading as an imperial. "Okay, but let's try to avoid stormtrooper armor, he said. "Those helmets are hard to see through."

"I didn't think Jedi needed to use their eyes," Mara countered sourly. "Watch it-here we are. That's a section of crew quarters over there."

Luke had already sensed the sudden jump in population level. "I don't think we can sneak through that many people," he warned.

"I wasn't planning to." Mara pointed to another corridor leading off to their right. "There should be a group of TIE pilot ready rooms down that way. Let's see if we can find an empty one that has a couple of spare flight suits lying around."

But if the Empire was lax enough to leave its service supply areas unguarded, it wasn't so careless with its pilot ready rooms. There were six of them grouped around the turbolift cluster at the end of the corridor; and from the sounds of conversation faintly audible through the doors, it was clear that all six were occupied by at least two people. "What now?" Luke whispered to Mara.

"What do you think?" she retorted, dropping her blaster back in its holster and flexing her fingers. "Just tell me which room has the fewest people in it and then get out of the way. I'll do the rest."

"Wait a minute," Luke said, thinking hard. He didn't want to kill the men behind those doors in cold blood; but neither did he want to put himself into the dangerous situation he'd faced during the Imperial raid on Lando's Nkllon mining operation a few months earlier. There, he'd successfully used the Force to confuse the attacking TIE fighters, but at the cost of skating perilously close to the edge of the dark side. It wasn't an experience he wanted to repeat.

But if he could just gently touch the Imperials' minds, instead of grabbing and twisting them:

"We'll try this one," he told Mara, nodding to a room in which he could sense only three men. But we're not going to charge in fighting. I think I can suppress their curiosity enough for me to walk in, take the flight suits, and leave.

"What if you can't?" Mara demanded. "We'll have lost whatever surprise we would have had."

"It'll work," Luke assured her. "Get ready."

"Skywalker-"

"Besides which, I doubt that even with surprise you can take out all three without any noise," he added. "Can you?"

She glared laser bolts, but gestured him to the door. Setting his mind firmly in line with the Force, he moved toward it. The heavy metal panel slid open at his approach, and he stepped in.

There were indeed three men lounging around the monitor table in the center of the room: two in the Imperial brown of ordinary crewers, the other in the black uniform and flaring helmet of a Fleet trooper. All three looked up as the door opened, and Luke caught their idle interest in the newcomer. Reaching out through the Force, he gently touched their minds, shunting the curiosity away. The two crewers seemed to size him up and then ignore him; the trooper continued to watch, but only as a change from watching his companions. Trying to look as casual and unconcerned as he could, Luke went over to the rack of flight suits against the wall and selected three of them. The conversation around the monitor table continued as he draped them over his arm and walked back out of the room. The door slid shut behind him-

"Well?" Mara hissed.

Luke nodded, exhaling quietly. "Go ahead and get into it," he told her. "I want to try and hold off their curiosity for another couple of minutes. Until they've forgotten I was ever in there."

Mara nodded and started pulling the flight suit on over her jumpsuit. "Handy trick, I must say."

"It worked this time, anyway," Luke agreed. Carefully, he eased back his touch on the Imperials' minds, waiting tensely for the surge of emotion that would show the whole scheme was unraveling. But there was nothing except the lazy flow of idle conversation.

The trick had worked. This time, anyway.

Mara had a turbolift car standing by as he turned away from the ready room. "Come on, come on," she beckoned impatiently. She was already in her flight suit, with the other two slung over her shoulder. "You can change on the way."

"I hope no one comes aboard while I'm doing it," he muttered as he slipped into the car. "Be a little hard to explain."

"No one's coming aboard," she said as the turbolift door closed behind him and the car started to move. "I've keyed it for nonstop. She eyed him. "You still want to do it this way?"

"I don't think we've got any real choice," he said, getting into the flight suit. It felt uncomfortably tight over his regular outfit. "Han and I tried the frontal approach once, on the Death Star. It wasn't exactly an unqualified success.

"Yes, but you didn't have access to the main computer then," Mara pointed out. "If I can fiddle the records and transfer orders, we ought to be able to get him out before anyone realizes they've been had."

"But you'd still be leaving witnesses behind who knew he'd left," Luke reminded her. "If any of them decided to check on the order verbally, the whole thing would fall apart right there. And I don't think that suppression trick I used in the ready room will work on detention center guards-they're bound to be too alert."

"All right," Mara said, turning back to the turbolift control board. "It doesn't sound like much fun to me. But if that's what you want, I'm game."

The detention center was in the far aft section of the ship, a few decks beneath the command and systems control sections and directly above Engineering and the huge sublight drive thrust nozzles. The turbolift car shifted direction several times along the way, alternating between horizontal and vertical movement, It seemed to Luke to be altogether too complicated a route, and he found himself wondering even now if Mara might be pulling some kind of double cross. But her sense didn't indicate any such treachery; and it occurred to him that she might have deliberately tangled their path to put the Chimaera's internal security systems off the scent.

At last the car came to a halt, and the door slid open. They stepped out into a long corridor in which a handful of crewers in maintenance coveralls could be seen going about their business. "Your access door's that way," Mara murmured, nodding down the corridor. "I'll give you three minutes to get set."

Luke nodded and set off striving to look like he belonged there. His footsteps echoed on the metal deck, bringing back memories of that near-disastrous visit to the first Death Star.

But he'd been a wide-eyed kid then, dazzled by visions of glory and heroism and too naive to understand the deadly dangers that went with such things. Now, he was older and more seasoned, and knew exactly what it was he was walking into.

And yet was walking into it anyway. Dimly, he wondered if that made him less reckless than he'd been the last time, or more so.

He reached the door and paused beside it, pretending to study a data pad that had been in one of the flight suit's pockets until the corridor was deserted. Then, taking one last deep breath of clear air, he opened the door and stepped inside.

Even holding his breath, the stench hit him like a slap in the face. Whatever advancements the Empire might have made in the past few years, their shipboard garbage pits still smelled as bad as ever.

He let the door slide shut behind him, and as it did so he heard the faint sound of an internal relay closing. He'd cut things a little too close; Mara must already have activated the compression cycle. Breathing through his mouth, he waited:and a moment later, with a muffled clang of heavy hydraulics, the walls began moving slowly toward each other.

Luke swallowed, gripping his lightsaber tightly as he tried to keep on top of the tangle of garbage and discarded equipment that was now starting to buck and twist around his feet. Getting into the detention level this way had been his idea, and he'd had to talk long and hard before Mara had been convinced. But now that he was actually here, and the walls were closing in on him, it suddenly didn't seem like nearly such a good idea anymore. If Mara couldn't adequately control the walls' movement-or if she was interrupted at her task-

Or if she gave in for just a few seconds to her hatred for him :

The walls came ever closer, grinding together everything in their path. Luke struggled to keep his footing, all too aware that if Mara was planning a betrayal he wouldn't know until it was too late to save himself. The compressor walls were too thick for him to cut a gap with his lightsaber, and already the shifting mass beneath his feet had taken him too far away from the door to escape that way. Listening to the creak of tortured metal and plastic, Luke watched as the gap between the walls closed to two meters:then one and a half:then one:

And came to a shuddering halt just under a meter apart.

Luke took a deep breath, almost not noticing the rancid smell. Mara hadn't betrayed him, and she'd handled her end of the scheme perfectly. Now it was his turn. Moving to the back end of the chamber, he gathered his feet beneath him and jumped.

The footing was unstable, and the garbage compactor walls impressively tall, and even with Jedi enhancement behind the jump he made it only about halfway to the top. But even as he reached the top of his arc he drew his knees up and swung his feet out; and with a wrenching jolt to his legs and lower back, he wedged himself solidly between the walls. Taking a moment to catch his breath and get his bearings, he started up.

It wasn't as bad as he'd feared it would be. He'd done a fair amount of climbing as a boy on Tatooine and had tackled rock chimneys at least half a dozen times, though never with any real enthusiasm. The smooth walls here in the compactor offered less traction than stone would have, but the evenness of the spacing and the absence of sharp rocks to dig into his back more than made up for it. Within a couple of minutes he had reached the top of the compactor's walls and the maintenance chute that would lead-he hoped-to the detention level. If Mara's reading of the schedule had been right, he had about five minutes before the guard shift changed up there. Setting his teeth together, he forced his way through the magnetic screen at the bottom of the chute and, in clean air again, started up.

He made it in just over five minutes, to discover that Mara's reading had indeed been right. Through the grating that covered the chute opening he could hear the sounds of conversation and movement coming from the direction of the control room, punctuated by the regular hiss of opening turbolift doors. The guard was changing; and for the next couple of minutes both shifts would be in the control room. An ideal time, if he was quick, to slip a prisoner out from under their noses.

Hanging on to the grating by one hand, he got his lightsaber free and ignited it. Making sure not to let the tip of the blade show through into the corridor beyond, he sliced off a section of the grating and eased it into the shaft with him. He used a hook from his flight suit to hang the section to what was left of the grating, and climbed through the opening.

The corridor was deserted. Luke glanced at the nearest cell number to orient himself and set off toward the one Mara had named. The conversation in the control room seemed to be winding down, and soon now the new shift of guards would be moving out to take up their positions in the block corridors. Senses alert, Luke slipped down the cross corridor to the indicated cell and, mentally crossing his fingers, punched the lock release.

Talon Karrde looked up from the cot as the door slid open, that well-remembered sardonic half smile on his face. His eyes focused on the face above the flight suit, and abruptly the smile vanished. "I don't believe it," he murmured.

"Me, either," Luke told him, throwing a quick glance around the room. "You fit to travel?"

"Fit and ready," Karrde said, already up and moving toward the door. "Fortunately, they're still in the softening-up phase. Lack of food and sleep-you're familiar with the routine."

"I've heard of it." Luke looked both ways down the corridor. Still no one. "Exit's this way. Come on."

They made it to the grating without incident. "You must be joking, of course," Karrde said as Luke maneuvered his way into the hole and got his feet and back braced against the chute walls.

"The other way out has guards at the end of it," Luke reminded him.

"Point," Karrde conceded, reluctantly looking into the gap. "I suppose it'd be too much to hope for a rope."

"Sorry. The only place to tie it is this grate, and they'd spot that in no time." Luke frowned at him. "You're not afraid of heights, are you?"

"It's the falling from them that worries me," Kai'rde said dryly. But he was already climbing into the opening, though his hands were white-knuckled where he gripped the grating.

"We're going to rock-chimney it down to the garbage masher," Luke told him. "You ever done that before?"

"No, but I'm a quick study," Karrde said. Looking back over his shoulder at Luke, he eased into a similar position against the chute walls. "I presume you want this hole covered up," he added, pulling the grating section from its perch and filling it back into the opening. "Though it's not going to fool anyone who takes a close look at it."

"With luck, we'll be back at the hangar bay before that happens," Luke assured him. "Come on, now. Slow and easy; let's go."

They made it back to the garbage compactor without serious mishap. "The dark side of the Empire the tourists never see," Karrde commented dryly as Luke led him across the tangle of garbage. "How do we get out?"

"The door's right there," Luke said, pointing down below the level of the mass they were walking on. "Mara's supposed to open the walls again in a couple of minutes and let us down.

"Ah," Karrde said. "Mara's here, is she?"

"She told me on the trip here how you were captured," Luke said, trying to read Karrde's sense. If he was angry at Mara, he was hiding it well. "She said she wasn't in on that trap."

"Oh, I'm sure she wasn't," Karrde said. "If for no other reason than that my interrogators worked so hard to drop hints to the contrary." He looked thoughtfully at Luke. "What did she promise for your help in this?"

Luke shook his head. "Nothing. She just reminded me that I owed you one for not turning me over to the Imperials back on Myrkr."

A wry smile twitched Karrde's lip. "Indeed. No mention, either, of why the Grand Admiral wanted me in the first place?"

Luke frowned at him. The other was watching him closely : and now that he was paying attention, Luke could tell that Karrde was holding some secret back from him. "I assumed it was in revenge for helping me escape. Is there more to it than that?"

Karrde's gaze drifted away from him. "Let's just say that if we make it away from here the New Republic stands to gain a great deal."

His last word was cut off by a muffled clang; and with a ponderous jolt the compactor walls began slowly moving apart again. Luke helped Karrde maintain his balance as they waited for the door to be clear, stretching his senses outward into the corridor beyond. There were a fair number of crewers passing by, but he could sense no suspicion or special alertness in any of them. "Is Mara doing all this?" Karrde asked.

Luke nodded. "She has an access code for the ship's computer."

"Interesting," Karrde murmured. "I gathered from all this that she had some past connection with the Empire. Obviously, she was more highly placed than I realized."

Luke nodded, thinking back to Mara's revelation to him back in the Myrkr forest. Mara Jade, the Emperor's Hand : "Yes," he told Karrde soberly. "She was."

The walls reached their limit and shut down. A moment later there was a click of a relay. Luke waited until the corridor immediately outside was deserted, then opened it and stepped out. A couple of maintenance techs working at an open panel a dozen meters down the corridor threw a look of idle curiosity at the newcomers; throwing an equally unconcerned glance back their way, Luke pulled the data pad from his pocket and pretended to make an entry. Karrde played off the cue, standing beside him and spouting a stream of helpful jargon as Luke filled out his imaginary report. Letting the door slide closed, Luke stuffed the data pad back into his pocket and led the way down the corridor.

Mara was waiting at the turbolift cluster with the spare flight suit draped over her arm. "Car's on its way she murmured. For a second, as her eyes met Karrde's, her face seemed to tighten.

"He knows you didn't betray him," Luke told her quietly.

"I didn't ask," she growled. But Luke could sense some of her tension vanish. "Here," she added, thrusting the flight suit at Karrde. "A little camouflage."

"Thank you," Karrde said. "Where are we going?"

"We came in on a supply shuttle," Mara said. "We cut an exit hole in the lower hull, but we should have enough time to weld it airtight before they send us back to the surface."

The turbolift car arrived as Karrde was adjusting the fasteners on his borrowed flight suit. Two men with a gleaming power core relay on a float table were there before them, taking up most of the room. "Where to?" one of the techs asked with the absent politeness of a man with more important things on his mind.

"Pilot ready room 33-129-T," Mara told him, using the same tone.

The tech entered the destination on the panel and the door slid shut; and Luke took his first really relaxed breath since Mara had put the Skipray down on Wistril five hours ago. Another ten or fifteen minutes and they'd be safely back in their shuttle.

Against all odds, they'd done it.

The midpoint report from the hangar bay came in, and Pellaeon paused in his monitoring of the bridge deflector control overhaul to take a quick look at it. Excellent; the unloading was running nearly eight minutes ahead of schedule. At this rate the Chimaera would be able to make its rendezvous with the Stormhawk in plenty of time for them to set up their ambush of the Rebel convoy assembling off Corfai. He marked the report as noted and sent it back into the files; and he had turned his attention back to the deflector overhaul when he heard a quiet footstep behind him.

"Good evening, Captain," Thrawn nodded, coming up beside Pellaeon's chair and giving the bridge a leisurely scan.

"Admiral," Pellaeon nodded back, swiveling to face him. "I thought you'd retired for the night, sir.

"I've been in my command room," Thrawn said, looking past Pellaeon at the displays. "I thought I'd make one last survey of ship's status before I went to my quarters. Is that the bridge deflector overhaul?"

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, wondering which species' artwork had been favored with the Grand Admiral's scrutiny tonight. "No problems so far. The cargo unloading down in Aft Bay Two is running ahead of schedule, too."

"Good," the Grand Admiral said. "Anything further from the patrol at Endor?"

"Just an addendum to that one report, sir," Pellaeon told him. "Apparently, they've confirmed that the ship they caught coming into the system was in fact just a smuggler planning to sift again through the remains of the Imperial base there. They're continuing to back-check the crew."

"Remind them to make a thorough job of it before they let the ship go," Thrawn said grimly. "Organa Solo won't have simply abandoned the Millennium Falcon in orbit there. Sooner or later she'll return for it:and when she does, I intend to have her."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon nodded. The commander of the Endor patrol group, he was certain, didn't need any reminding of that. "Speaking of the Millennium Falcon, have you decided yet whether or not to do any further scan work on it?"

Thrawn shook his head. "I doubt that would gain us anything. The scanning team would be better employed assisting with maintenance on the Chimaera's own systems. Have the Millennium Falcon transferred up to vehicle deep storage until we can find some use for it."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, swiveling back and logging the order. "Oh, and there was one other strange report that came in a few minutes ago. A routine patrol on the supply base perimeter came across a Skipray blastboat that had made a crash landing out there."

"A crash landing?" Thrawn frowned.

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, calling up the report. "Its underside was in pretty bad shape, and the whole hull was scorched."

The picture came up on Pellaeon's display, and Thrawn leaned over his shoulder for a closer look. "Any bodies?"

"No, sir," Pellaeon said. "The only thing aboard-and this is the strange part-was an ysalamir."

He felt Thrawn stiffen. "Show me."

Pellaeon keyed for the next picture, a close-up of the ysalamir on its biosupport frame. "The frame isn't one of our designs," he pointed out. "No telling where it came from."

"Oh, there's telling, all right," Thrawn assured him. He straightened up and took a deep breath. "Sound intruder alert, Captain. We have visitors aboard."

Pellaeon stared up at him in astonishment, fumbling fingers locating and twisting the alert key. "Visitors?" he asked as the alarms began their throaty wailing.

"Yes," Thrawn said, his glowing red eyes glittering with a sudden fire. "Order an immediate check of Karrde's cell. If he's still there, he's to be moved immediately and put under direct stormtrooper guard. I want another guard ring put around the supply shuttles and an immediate ID check begun of their crews. And then"-he paused-"have the Chimaera's main computer shut down."

Pellaeon's fingers froze on his keyboard. "Shut down-?"

"Carry out your orders, Captain," Thrawn cut him off.

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said between suddenly stiff lips. In all his years of Imperial service he had never seen a warship's main computer deliberately shut down except in space dock. To do so was to blind and cripple the craft. With intruders aboard, perhaps fatally.

"It will hamper our efforts a bit, I agree," Thrawn said, as if reading Pellaeon's fears. "But it will hamper our enemies' far more. You see, the only way for them to have known the Chimaera's course and destination was for Mara Jade to have tapped into the computer when we brought her and Karrde aboard."

"That's impossible," Pellaeon insisted, wincing as his computer-driven displays began to wink out. "Any access codes she might have known were changed years ago.

"Unless there are codes permanently hard-wired into the system," Thrawn said. "Set there by the Emperor for his use and that of his agents. Jade no doubt is counting on that access in her rescue attempt; therefore, we deprive her of it."

A stormtrooper stepped up to them. "Yes, Commander?" Thrawn said.

"Comlink message from detention," the electronically filtered voice announced. "The prisoner Talon Karrde is no longer in his cell."

"Very well," the Grand Admiral said darkly. "Alert all units to begin a search of the area between detention and the aft hangar bays. Karrde is to be recaptured alive-not necessarily undamaged, but alive. As to his would-be rescuers, I want them also alive if possible. If not-" He paused. "If not, I'll understand."

Chapter 23

The wail of the alarm sounded over the overhead speaker; and a few seconds later the turbolift car came to an abrupt halt. "Blast," one of the two gunners who had replaced the service techs in the car muttered, digging a small ID card from the slot behind his belt buckle. "Don't they ever get tired of running drills up there on the bridge?"

"Talk like that might get you a face-to-face with a stormtrooper squad," the second warned, throwing a sideways glance at Luke and the others. Stepping past the first gunner, he slid his ID card into a slot on the control board and tapped in a confirmation code. "It was a lot worse before the Grand Admiral took over. Anyway, what do you want `em to do, announce snap drills in advance?"

"The whole thing's burnin' useless, if you ask me," the first growled, clearing his ID the same way. "Who they expect's gonna come aboard, anyway? Some burnin' pirate gang or something?"

Luke glanced questioningly at Karrde, wondering what they should do. But Mara was already moving toward the two gunners, the ID from her borrowed flight suit in hand. She stepped between them, reached the ID toward the slot-

And whipped the edge of her hand hard into the side of the first gunner's neck.

The man's head snapped sideways and he toppled to the floor without a sound. The second gunner had just enough time to gurgle something unintelligible before Mara sent him to join his friend.

"Come on, let's get out of here," she snapped, feeling along the line where the door fitted into the car's cylindrical wall. "Locked solid. Come on, Skywalker, get busy here."

Luke ignited his lightsaber. "How much time have we got?" he asked as he carved a narrow exit through part of the door.

"Not much," Mara said grimly. "Turbolift cars have sensors that keep track of the number of people inside. It'll give us maybe another minute to do our ID checks before reporting us to the system computer. I need to get to a terminal before the flag transfers from there to the main computer and brings the storm troopers down on top of us."

Luke finished the cut and closed down the lightsaber as Mara and Karrde lifted the section down and out of the way. Beyond was the tunnel wall, not quite in line with the hole. "Good," Mara said, easing through the gap. "We were starting to rotate when the system froze down. There's room here to get into the tunnel."

The others followed. The turbolift tunnel was roughly rectangular in cross-section, with gleaming guide rails along the walls, ceiling, and floor. Luke could feel the tingle of electric fields as he passed close beside the rails, and he made a mental note not to touch them. "Where are we going?" he whispered down the tunnel toward Mara.

"Right here," she whispered back, stopping at a red rimmed plate set in the wall between the guide rails. "Access tunnel-should lead back to a service droid storage room and computer terminal."

The lightsaber made quick work of the access panel's safety interlock. Mara darted through the opening, blaster in hand, and disappeared down the dark tunnel beyond. Luke and Karrde followed past a double row of deactivated maintenance droids, each with a bewildering array of tools fanned out from their limbs as if for inspection. Beyond the droids the tunnel widened into a small room where, as predicted, a terminal sat nestled amid the tubes and cables. Mara was already hunched over it; but as Luke stepped into the room he caught the sudden shock in her sense. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"They've shut down the main computer," she said, a stunned expression on her face. "Not just bypassed or put it on standby. Shut it down."

"The Grand Admiral must have figured out you can get into it," Karrde said, coming up behind Luke. "We'd better get moving. Do you have any idea where we are?"

"I think we're somewhere above the aft hangar bays," Mara said. "Those service techs got off just forward of the central crew section, and we hadn't gone very far down yet."

"Above the hangar bays," Karrde repeated thoughtfully. "Near the vehicle deep storage area, in other words?"

Mara frowned at him. "Are you suggesting we grab a ship from up there?"

"Why not?" Karrde countered. "They'll probably be expecting us to go directly to one of the hangar bays. They might not be watching for us to come in via vehicle lift from deep storage."

"And if they are, it'll leave us trapped like clipped mynocks when the stormtroopers come to get us," Mara retorted. "Trying to shoot our way out of deep storage-"

"Hold it," Luke cut her off, Jedi combat senses tingling a warning. "Someone's coming."

Mara muttered a curse and dropped down behind the computer terminal, blaster trained on the door. Karrde, still weaponless, faded back into the partial cover of the service tunnel and the maintenance droids lined up there. Luke flattened himself against the wall beside the door, lightsaber held ready but not ignited. He let the Force flow through him as he poised for action, listening to the dark, purposeful senses of the troopers coming up to the door and recognizing to his regret that no subtle mind touches would accomplish anything here. Gripping his lightsaber tightly, he waited :

Abruptly, with only a flicker of warning, the door slid open and two stormtroopers were in the room, blaster rifles at the ready. Luke raised his lightsaber, thumb on the activation switch-

And from the tunnel where Karrde had disappeared a floodlight suddenly winked on, accompanied by the sound of metal grinding against metal.

The stormtroopers took a long step into the room, angling to opposite sides of the door, their blaster rifles swinging reflexively toward the light and sound as two black-clad naval troopers crowded into the room behind them. The stormtroopers spotted Mara crouching beside the terminal, and the blaster rifles changed direction to track back toward her.

Mara was faster. Her blaster spat four times, two shots per stormtrooper, and both Imperials dropped to the floor, one with blaster still firing uselessly in death reflex. The naval troopers behind them dived for cover, firing wildly toward their attacker.

A single sweep of the lightsaber caught them both.

Luke closed down the weapon and ducked his head out the doorway for a quick look around. "All clear," he told Mara, coming back in.

"For now, anyway," she countered, holstering her blaster and picking up two of the blaster rifles. "Come on.""

Karrde was waiting for them at the access panel they'd come in by. "Doesn't sound like the turbolifts have been reactivated yet," he said. "It should be safe to move through the tunnels a while longer. Any trouble with the search party?"

"No," Mara said, handing him one of the blaster rifles. "Effective diversion, by the way."

"Thank you," Karrde said. "Maintenance droids are such useful things to have around. Deep storage?"

"Deep storage," Mara agreed heavily. "You just better be right about this."

"My apologies in advance if I'm not. Let's go."

Slowly, by comlink and intercom, the reports began to come in. They weren't encouraging.

"No sign of them anywhere in the detention level area," a stormtrooper commander reported to Pellaeon with the distracted air of someone trying to hold one conversation while listening to another. "One of the waste chute gratings in detention has been found cut open-that must be how they got Karrde out."

"Never mind how they got him out," Pellaeon growled. "The recriminations can wait until later. The important thing right now is to find them."

"The security teams are searching the area of that turbolift alert," the other said, his tone implying that anything a stormtrooper commander said must by, definition be important. "So far there's been no contact."

Thrawn turned from the two communications officers who had been relaying messages for him to and from the hangar bays. "How was the waste chute grating cut open?" he asked.

"I have no information on that," the commander said.

"Get it," Thrawn said, his tone icy. "Also inform your search parties that two maintenance techs have reported seeing a man in a TIE fighter flight suit in the vicinity of that waste collector. Warn your guards in the aft hangar bays, as well."

"Yes, sir," the commander said.

Pellaeon looked at Thrawn. "I don't see how it matters right now how they got Karrde out, sir," he said. "Wouldn't our resources be better spent in finding them?"

"Are you suggesting that we send all our soldiers and stormtroopers converging on the hangar bays?" Thrawn asked mildly. "That we thereby assume our quarry won't seek to cause damage elsewhere before attempting their escape?"

"No, sir," Pellaeon said, feeling his face warming. "I realize we need to protect the entire ship. It just seems to me to be a low-priority line of inquiry.

"Indulge me, Captain," Thrawn said quietly. "It's only a hunch, but-

"Admiral," the stormtrooper commander interrupted. "Report from search team 207, on deck 98 nexus 326-KK." Pellaeon's fingers automatically started for his keyboard; came up short as he remembered that there was no computer mapping available to pinpoint the location for him. "They've found team 102, all dead," the commander continued. "Two were killed by blaster fire; the other two :" He hesitated. "There seems to be some confusion about the other two."

"No confusion, Commander," Thrawn put in, his voice suddenly deadly. "Instruct them to look for near microscopic cuts across the bodies with partial cauterization."

Pellaeon stared at him. There was a cold fire in the Grand Admiral's eyes that hadn't been there before. "Partial cauterization?" he repeated stupidly.

"And then inform them," Thrawn continued, "that one of the intruders is the Jedi Luke Skywalker."

Pellaeon felt his mouth drop open. "Skywalker?" he gasped. "That's impossible. He's on Jomark with C'baoth."

"Was, Captain," Thrawn corrected icily. "He's here now." He took a deep, controlled breath; and as he let it out, the momentary anger seemed to fade away. "Obviously, our vaunted Jedi Master failed to keep him there, as he claimed he'd be able to. And I'd say that we now have our proof that Skywalker's escape from Myrkr wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision."

"You think Karrde and the Rebellion have been working together all along?" Pellaeon asked.

"We'll find out soon enough," Thrawn told him, turning to look over his shoulder. "Rukh?"

The silent gray figure moved to Thrawn's side. "Yes, my lord?

"Get a squad of noncombat personnel together," Thrawn ordered. "Have them collect all the ysalamiri from Engineering and Systems Control and move them down to the hangar bays. There aren't nearly enough to cover the whole area, so use your hunter's instincts on their placement. The more we can hamper Skywalker's Jedi tricks, the less trouble we'll have taking him."

The Noghri nodded and headed for the bridge exit. "We could also use the ysalamiri from the bridge-" Pellaeon began.

"Quiet a moment, Captain," Thrawn cut him off, his glowing eyes gazing unseeing through the side viewport and the edge of the planet turning beneath them. "I need to think. Yes. They'll try to travel in concealment whenever possible, I think. For now, that means the turbolift tunnels." He gestured to the two communications officers still standing beside his chair. "Order turbolift control to put the system back into normal service except for the 326-KK nexus between deck 98 and the aft hangar bays," he instructed them. "All cars in that area are to be moved to the nearest cluster point and remain locked there until further notice."

One of the officers nodded and began relaying the order into his comlink. "You trying to herd them toward the hangar bays?" Pellaeon hazarded.

"I'm trying to herd them in from a specific direction, yes," Thrawn nodded. His forehead was creased with thought, his eyes still gazing at nothing in particular. "The question is what they'll do once they realize that. Presumably try to break out of the nexus; but in which direction?"

"I doubt they'll be foolish enough to return to the supply ship," Pellaeon suggested. "My guess is that they'll bypass the aft hangar bays entirely and try for one of the assault shuttles in the forward bays."

"Perhaps," Thrawn agreed slowly. "If Skywalker is directing the escape, I'd say that was likely. But if Karrde is giving the orders :" He fell silent, again deep in thought.

It was somewhere to start, anyway. "Have extra guards placed around the assault shuttles," Pellaeon ordered the stormtrooper commander. "Better put some men inside the ships, too, in case the intruders make it that far."

"No, they won't make for the shuttles if Karrde's in command," Thrawn murmured. "He's more apt to try something less obvious. Perhaps TIE fighters; or perhaps he'll return to the supply shuttles after all, assuming we won't expect that. Or else-"

Abruptly, his head snapped around to look at Pellaeon. "The Millennium Falcon," he demanded. "Where is it?"

"Ah-" Again, Pellaeon's hand reached uselessly for his command board. "I ordered it sent to deep storage, sir. I don't know whether or not the order's been carried out."

Thrawn jabbed a finger at the stormtrooper commander. "You-get someone on the hangar bay computer and find that ship. Then get a squad there."

The Grand Admiral looked at Pellaeon : and for the first time since ordering the intruder alert, he smiled. "We have them, Captain."

Karrde pulled away the section of cable duct that Luke had cut and carefully looked through the opening. "No one seems to be around," he murmured over his shoulder, his voice almost inaudible over the background rumble of machinery coming through from the room beyond. "I think we've beaten them here."

"If they're coming at all," Luke said.

"They're coming," Mara growled. "Bet on it. If there was one thing Thrawn had over all the other Grand Admirals, it was a knack for predicting his enemies' strategy."

"There are a half dozen ships out there," Karrde continued. "Unmarked Intelligence ships, from the look of them. Any would probably do."

"Any idea where we are?" Luke asked, trying to see past him through the cable duct. There was a fair amount of empty space out there surrounding the ships, plus a gaping light-rimmed opening in the deck that was presumably the shaft of a heavy vehicle lift. Unlike the one he remembered from the Death Star's hangar bay, though, this shaft had a corresponding hole in the ceiling above it to allow ships to be moved farther up toward the Star Destroyer's core.

"We're near the bottom of the deep storage section, I think," Karrde told him. "A deck or two above the aft hangar bays. The chief difficulty will be if the lift itself is a deck down, blocking us from access to the bay and entry port."

"Well, let's get in there and find out," Mara said, fingering her blaster rifle restlessly. "Waiting here won't gain us anything."

"Agreed." Karrde cocked his head to the side. "I think I hear the lift coming now. They're slow, though, and there's enough cover by the ships. Skywalker?"

Luke ignited his lightsaber again and quickly cut them a hole large enough to get through. Karrde went first, followed by Luke, with Mara bringing up the rear. "The hangar bay computer link is over there," Mara said, pointing to a freestanding console to their right as they crouched beside a battered-looking light freighter. "As soon as the lift passes I'll see if I can get us into it."

"All right, but don't take too long at it," Karrde warned. "A faked transfer order won't gain us enough surprise to be worth any further delay."

The top of a ship was becoming visible now as it was lifted from the hangar bays below. A ship that seemed remarkably familiar :

Luke felt his mouth drop open in surprise. "That's-no. No, it can't be."

"It is," Mara said. "I'd forgotten-the Grand Admiral mentioned they were taking it aboard when I talked to him at Endor."

Luke stared, a cold lump forming in his throat as the Millennium Falcon rose steadily up through the opening. Leia and Chewbacca had been aboard that ship : "Did he say anything about prisoners?"

"Not to me," Mara said. "I got the impression he'd found the ship deserted."

Which meant that wherever Leia and Chewbacca had gone, they were now stranded there. But there was no time to worry about that now. "We're taking it back," he told the others, stuffing his lightsaber into his flight suit tunic. "Cover me."

"Skywalker-" Mara hissed; but Luke was already jogging toward the shaft. The lift plate itself came into view, revealing two men riding alongside the Falcon: a naval trooper and a tech with what looked like a combined data pad/control unit. They caught sight of Luke-

"Hey!" Luke called, waving as he hurried toward them. "Hold on!"

The tech did something with his data pad and the lift stopped, and Luke could sense the sudden suspicion in the trooper's mind. "Got new orders on that one," he said as he trotted up to them. "The Grand Admiral wants it moved back down. Something about using it as bait."

The tech frowned down at his data pad. He was young, Luke saw, probably not out of his teens. "There's nothing about new orders here," he objected.

"I haven't heard anything about it, either," the trooper growled, drawing his blaster and pointing it vaguely in Luke's direction as he threw a quick look around the storage room.

"It just came through a minute ago," Luke said, nodding back toward the computer console. "Stuffs not transferring very fast today, for some reason."

"Makes a good story, anyway," the trooper retorted. His blaster was now very definitely pointed at Luke. "Let's see some ID, huh?"

Luke shrugged; and, reaching out through the Force, he yanked the blaster out of the trooper's hand.

The man didn't even pause to gape at the unexpected loss of his weapon. He threw himself forward, hands stretching toward Luke's neck -

The blaster, heading straight toward Luke, suddenly reversed direction. The trooper caught the butt end full in the stomach, coughed once in strangled agony, and fell unmoving to the deck.

"I'll take that," Luke told the tech, waving Karrde and Mara to join him. The tech, his face a rather motley gray, handed the data pad to him without a word.

"Good job," Karrde said as he came up beside Luke. "Relax, we're not going to hurt you," he added to the tech, squatting down and relieving the gasping trooper of his comlink. "Not if you behave, anyway. Take your friend to that electrical closet over there and lock yourselves in."

The tech glanced at him, looked again at Luke, and gave a quick nod. Hoisting the trooper under the armpits, he dragged him off. "Make sure they get settled all right, and then join me in the ship," Karrde told Luke. "I'm going to get the preflight started. Are there any security codes I need to know about?"

"I don't think so." Luke glanced around the room, spotted Mara already busy with the computer console. "The Falcon's hard enough to keep functional as it is."

"All right. Remind Mara not to waste too much time fiddling with that computer."

He ducked under the ship and disappeared up the ramp. Luke waited until the tech had locked himself and the trooper into the electrical closet as ordered, and then followed.

"It has a remarkably fast start-up sequence," Karrde remarked as Luke joined him in the cockpit. "Two minutes, maybe three, and we'll be ready to fly. You still have that controller?"

"Right here," Luke said, handing it to him. "I'll go get Mara." He glanced out the cockpit window-

Just as a wide door across the room slid open, to reveal a full squad of stormtroopers.

"Uh-oh," Karrde murmured as the eight white-armored Imperials marched purposefully toward the Falcon. "Do they know we're here?"

Luke stretched out his senses, trying to gauge the stormtroopers' mental state. "I don't think so," he murmured back. "They seem to be thinking more like guards than soldiers."

"Probably too noisy in here for them to hear the engines in start-up mode," Karrde said, ducking down in his seat out of their direct view. "Mara was right about the Grand Admiral; but we seem to be a step ahead of him."

A sudden thought struck hike, and he threw a look through the side of the canopy. Mara was crouching beside the computer console, temporarily hidden from the stormtroopers view.

But she wouldn't remain concealed for long : and knowing Mara, she wouldn't just sit and wait for the Imperials to notice her. If there were only some way he could warn her not to fire on them yet :

Perhaps there was. Mara, he sent silently, trying to picture her in his mind. Wait until I give the word before you attack.

There was no reply?; but he saw her throw a quick look at the Falcon in response and ease farther back into her limited cover. "I'm going back to the hatchway," he told Karrde. "I'll try to catch them in a cross fire with Mara. Stay out of sight up here."

"Right."

Keeping down, Luke hurried back down the short cockpit corridor. Barely in time; even as he came to the hatchway he could feel the vibration of battle-armored boots on the entry ramp. Four of them were coming in, he could sense, with the other four fanning out beneath the ship to watch the approaches. Another second and they would see him-a second after that and someone would notice Mara-Mara; now.

There was a flash of blaster fire from Mara's position, coming quickly enough on the tail of his command that Luke got the distinct impression Mara had planned to attack at that time whether she'd had his permission or not. Ignighting his lightsaber, Luke leaped around the corner onto the ramp, catching the stormtroopers just as they were starting to turn toward the threat behind them. His first sweep took off the barrel of the lead stormtrooper's blaster rifle; reaching out with the Force, he gave the man a hard shove, pushing him into his companions and sending the whole bunch of them tumbling helplessly down to the lift plate. Jumping off the ramp to the side, he deflected a shot from another stormtrooper and sliced the lightsaber blade across him; caught a half dozen more shots before Mara's blaster fire took the next one out. A quick look showed that she'd already dealt with the other two.

A surge in the Force spun him around, to find that the group he'd sent rolling to the bottom of the ramp had untangled themselves. With a shout he charged them, lightsaber swinging in large circles as he waited for Mara to take advantage of his distraction to fire on them. But she didn't; and with the blaster bolts beginning to flash in at him there weren't many alternatives left. The lightsaber slashed four times and it was over.

Breathing hard, he closed down the lightsaber : and with a shock discovered why Mara hadn't been firing there at the end. The lift carrying the Falcon was dropping steadily down toward the deck below, well past the point where the stormtroopers would be out of Mara's line of fire. "Mara!" he called, looking up.

"Yeah, what?" she shouted back, coming into view at the rim of the lift, already five meters above him. "What's Karrde doing?"

"I guess we're leaving," Luke said. "Jump-I'll catch you.

An expression of annoyance flickered across Mara's face; but the Falcon was receding fast and she obeyed without hesitation. Reaching out with the Force, Luke caught her in an invisible grip, slowing her descent and landing her on the Falcon's ramp. She hit the ramp running, and was inside in three steps.

She was seated beside Karrde in the cockpit by the time Luke got the hatchway sealed and made it up there himself. "Better strap in," she called over her shoulder.

Luke sat down behind her, suppressing the urge to order her out of the copilot's seat. He knew the Falcon far better than either she or Karrde did, but both of them probably had had more experience flying this general class of ship.

And from the looks of things, there was some tricky flying coming up. Through the cockpit canopy Luke could see that they were coming down, not into a hangar bay as he'd hoped, but into a wide vehicle corridor equipped with what looked like some kind of repulsorlift pads set across the deck. "What happened with the computer?" he asked Mara.

"I couldn't get in," Mara said. "Though it wouldn't have mattered if I had. That stormtrooper squad had plenty of time to call for help. Unless you thought to jam their comlinks," she added, looking at Karrde.

"Come now, Mara," Karrde chided. "Of course I jammed their comlinks. Unfortunately, since they probably had orders to report once they were in position, we still won't have more than a few minutes. If that much."

"Is that our way out?" Luke frowned, looking along the corridor. "I thought we'd be taking the lift straight down to the hangar bays."

"This lift doesn't seem to go all the way down," Karrde said. "Offset from the hangar bay shaft, apparently. That lighted hole in the corridor deck ahead is probably it."

"What then?" Luke asked.

"We'll see if this control can operate that lift," Karrde said, holding up the data pad he'd taken from the tech. "I doubt it, though. If only for security they'll probably have-"

"Look!" Mara snapped, pointing down the corridor. Far ahead down the corridor was another lift plate, moving down toward the lighted opening Karrde had pointed out a moment earlier. If that was indeed the exit to the hangar bays-and if the lift plate stopped there, blocking their way-

Karrde had apparently had the same thought. Abruptly, Luke was slammed hard into his seat as the Falcon leaped forward, clearing the edge of their lift plate and shooting down the corridor like a scalded tauntaun. For a moment it yawed wildly back and forth, swinging perilously near the corridor walls as the ship's repulsorlifts strobed with those built into the deck. Clenching his teeth, Luke watched as the lift plate ahead steadily closed the gap, the same bitter taste of near-helplessness in his mouth that he remembered from the Rancor pit beneath Jabba the Hutt's throne room. The Force was with him here, as it had been there, but at the moment he couldn't think of a way to harness that power. The Falcon shot toward the descending plate-he braced himself for the seemingly inevitable collision-

And abruptly, with a short screech of metal against metal, they were through the gap. The Falcon rolled over once as it dropped through to the huge room below, cleared the vertical lift plate guides-

And there, straight ahead as Karrde righted them again, was the wide hangar entry port. And beyond it, the black of deep space.

A half dozen blaster bolts sizzled at them as they shot across the hangar bay above the various ships parked there. But the shooting was reflexive, without any proper setup or aiming, and for the most part the shots went wild. A near miss flashed past the cockpit canopy; and then they were out, jolting through the atmosphere barrier and diving down out of the entry port toward the planet below.

And as they did so, Luke caught a glimpse across the entry port of TIE fighters from the forward hangar bays scrambling to intercept.

"Come on, Mara," he said, slipping off his restraints. "You know how to handle a quad laser battery?"

"No, I need her here," Karrde said. He had the Falcon skimming the underside of the Star Destroyer now, heading for the ship's portside edge. "You go ahead. And take the dorsal grin bay-I think I can arrange for them to concentrate their attack from that direction."

Luke had no idea how he was going to accomplish that, but there was no time to discuss it. Already the Falcon was starting to jolt with laser hits, and from experience he knew there was only so much the ship's deflector shields could handle. Leaving the cockpit, he hurried to the gun well ladder, leaping halfway up, then climbing the rest of the way. He strapped in, fired up the quads:and as he looked around he discovered what Karrde had had in mind. The Falcon had curved up past the portside edge of the Chimaera, swung aft along the upper surface, and was now driving hard for deep space on a vector directly above the exhaust from the Star Destroyer's massive sublight drive nozzles. Skimming rather too close to it, in Luke's opinion; but it was for sure that no TIE fighters would be coming at them from underneath for a while.

The intercom pinged in his ear. "Skywalker?" Karrde's voice came. "They're almost here. You ready?"

"I'm ready," Luke assured him. Fingers resting lightly on the firing controls, he focused his mind and let the Force flow into him.

The battle was furious but short, in some ways reminding Luke of the Falcon's escape from the Death Star so long ago. Back then, Leia had recognised that they'd gotten away too easily; and as the TIE fighters swarmed and fired and exploded around him, Luke wondered uneasily whether or not the Imperials might have something equally devious in mind this time, too.

And then the sky flared with starlines and went mottled, and they were free.

Luke took a deep breath as he cut power to the quads. "Good flying," he said into the intercom.

"Thank you," Karrde's dry voice came back. "We seem to be more or less clear, though we took some damage around the starboard power converter pack. Mara's gone to check it out."

"We can manage without it," Luke said. "Han's got the whole ship so cross-wired that it'll fly with half the systems out. Where are we headed?"

"Coruscant," Karrde said. "To drop you off and also to follow through on the promise I made to you earlier."

Luke had to search his memory. "You mean that bit about the New Republic standing to gain from your rescue?"

"That's the one," Karrde assured him. "As I recall Solo's sales pitch to me back on Myrkr, your people are in need of transport ships. Correct?"

"Badly in need of them," Luke agreed. "You have some stashed away?"

"Not exactly stashed away, but it won't be too hard to put my hands on them. What do you think the New Republic would say to approximately two hundred pre-Clone Wars vintage Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers?"

Luke felt his mouth fall open. Growing up on Tatooine had been a sheltered experience, but it hadn't been that sheltered. "You don't mean the Dark Force?"

"Come on down and we'll discuss it," Karrde said. "Oh, and I wouldn't mention it to Mara just yet."

"I'll be right there." Turning off the intercom, Luke hung the headset back on its hook and climbed onto the ladder - and for once, he didn't even notice the discontinuity as the gravity field changed direction partway down the ladder.

The Millennium Falcon shot away from the Chimaera, out maneuvering and outgunning its pursuing TIE fighters and driving hard for deep space. Pellaeon sat at his station, hands curled into fists, watching the drama in helpless silence. Helpless, because with the main computer still only partially operational, the Chimaera's sophisticated weapons and tractor beam systems were useless against a ship that small, that fast, and that distant. Silent, because the disaster was far beyond scope of any of his repertoire of curses.

The ship flickered and was gone : and Pellaeon prepared himself for the worst.

The worst didn't come. "Recall the TIE fighters to their stations, Captain," Thrawn said, his voice showing no sign of strain or anger. "Secure from intruder alert, and have Systems Control continue bringing the main computer back on line. Oh, and the supply unloading can be resumed."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, throwing a surreptitious frown at his superior. Had Thrawn somehow missed the significance of what had just happened out there?

The glowing red eyes glinted as Thrawn looked at him. "We've lost a round, Captain," he said. "No more."

"It seems to me, Admiral, that we've lost far more than that," Pellaeon growled. "There's no chance that Karrde won't give the Katana fleet to the Rebellion now."

"Ah; but he won't simply give it to them," Thrawn corrected, almost lazily. "Karrde's pattern has never been to give anything away for free. He'll attempt to bargain, or else will set conditions the Rebellion will find unsatisfactory. The negotiations will take time, particularly given the suspicious political atmosphere we've taken such pains to create on Coruscant. And a little time is all we need."

Pellaeon shook his head. "You're assuming that ship thief Ferrier will be able to find the Corellian group's ship supplier before Karrde and the Rebellion work out their differences."

"There's no assumption involved," Thrawn said softly. "Ferrier is even now on Solo's trail and has extrapolated his destination for us : and thanks to Intelligence's excellent work on Karrde's background, I know exactly who the man is we'll be meeting at the end of that trail."

He gazed out the viewport at the returning TIE fighters. "Instruct Navigation to prepare a course for the Pantolomin system, Captain," he said, his voice thoughtful. "Departure to be as soon as the supply shuttles have been unloaded."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, nodding the order on to the navigator and doing a quick calculation in his head. Time for the Millennium Falcon to reach Coruscant; time for the Chimaera to reach Pantolomin :

"Yes," Thrawn said into his thoughts. "Now it's a race.

Chapter 24

The sun had set over the brown hills of Honoghr, leaving a lingering hint of red and violet in the clouds above the horizon. Leia watched the fading color from just inside the dukha door, feeling the all-too-familiar sense of nervous dread that always came when she was about to go into danger and battle. A few more minutes and she, Chewbacca, and Threepio would be setting out for Nystao, to free Khabarakh and escape. Or to die trying.

She sighed and walked back into the dukha, wondering dimly where she'd gone wrong on this whole thing. It had seemed so reasonable to come to Honoghr-so right, somehow, to make such a bold gesture of good faith to the Noghri. Even before leaving Kashyyyk she'd been convinced that the offer hadn't been entirely her own idea, but instead the subtle guidance of the Force.

And perhaps it had been. But not necessarily from the side of the Force she'd assumed.

A cool breeze whispered in through the doorway, and Leia shivered. The Force is strong in my family. Luke had said those words to her on the eve of the Battle of Endor. She hadn't believed it at first, not until long afterward when his patient training had begun to bring out a hint of those abilities in her. But her father had had that same training and those same abilities : and yet had ultimately fallen to the dark side.

One of the twins kicked. She paused, reaching out to gently touch the two tiny beings within her; and as she did so, fragments of memory flooded in on her. Her mother's face, taut and sad, lifting her from the darkness of the trunk where she'd lain hidden from prying eyes. Unfamiliar faces leaning over her, while her mother spoke to them in a tone that had frightened her and set her crying. Crying again when her mother died, holding tightly to the man she'd learned to call Father.

Pain and misery and fear : and all of it because' of her true father, the man who had renounced the name Anakin Skywalker to call himself Darth Vader.

There was a faint shuffling sound from the doorway. "What is it, Threepio?" Leia asked, turning to face the droid.

"Your Highness, Chewbacca has informed me that you will be leaving here soon," Threepio said, his prim voice a little anxious. "May I assume that I will be accompanying you?"

"Yes, of course," Leia told him. "Whatever happens in Nystao, I don't think you'll want to be here for the aftermath."

"I quite agree." The droid hesitated, and Leia could see in his stance that his anxiety hadn't been totally relieved. "There is, however, something that I really think you should know," he continued. "One of the decon droids has been acting very strangely."

"Really?" Leia said. "What exactly does this strangeness consist of?"

"He seems far too interested in everything," Threepio said. "He has asked a great number of questions, not only about you and Chewbacca, but also about me. I've also seen him moving about the village after he was supposed to be shut down for the night."

"Probably just an improper memory wipe the last time around," Leia said, not really in the mood for a fullblown discussion of droid personality quirks. "I could name one or two other droids who have more curiosity than their original programming intended."

"Your Highness!" Threepio protested, sounding wounded. "Artoo is a different case altogether."

"I wasn't referring only to Artoo." Leia held up a hand to forestall further discussion. "But I understand your concerns. I tell you what: you keep an eye on this droid for me. All right?"

"Of course, Your Highness," Threepio said. He gave a little bow and shuffled his way back out into the gathering dusk.

Leia sighed and looked around her. Her restless wandering around the dukha had brought her to the genealogy wall chart, and for a long minute she gazed at it. There was a deep sense of history present in the carved wood; a sense of history, and a quiet but deep family pride. She let her eyes trace the connections between the names, wondering what the Noghri themselves thought and felt as they studied it. Did they see their triumphs and failures both, or merely their triumphs? Both, she decided. The Noghri struck her as a people who didn't deliberately blind themselves to reality.

"Do you see in the wood the end of our family, Lady Vader?"

Leia jumped. "I sometimes wish you people weren't so good at that," she growled as she regained her balance.

"Forgive me," the maitrakh said, perhaps a bit dryly. "I did not mean to startle you." She gestured at the chart. "Do you see our end there, Lady Vader?"

Leia shook her head. "I have no vision of any future, maitrakh. Not yours; not even mine. I was just thinking about children. Trying to imagine what it's like to try to raise them. Wondering how much of their character a family can mold, and how much is innate in the children them selves." She hesitated. "Wondering if the evil in a family's history can be erased, or whether it always passes itself on to each new generation."

The maitrakh tilted her head slightly, the huge eyes studying Leia's face. "You speak as one newly facing the challenge of child-service.

"Yes," Leia admitted, her hand caressing her belly. "I don't know if Khabarakh told you, but I'm carrying my first two children."

"And you fear for them."

Leia felt a muscle in her cheek twitch. "With good reason. The Empire wants to take them from me."

The maitrakh hissed softly. "Why?"

"I'm not sure. But the purpose can only be an evil one."

The maitrakh dropped her gaze. "I'm sorry, Lady Vader. I would help you if I could."

Leia reached over to touch the Noghri's shoulder. "I know."

The maitrakh looked up at the genealogy chart. "I sent all four of my sons into danger, Lady Vader. To the Emperor's battles. It never becomes easier to watch them go forth to war and death."

Leia thought of all her allies and companions who had died in the long war. "I've sent friends to their deaths," she said quietly. "That was hard enough. I can't imagine sending my children."

"Three of them died," the maitrakh continued, almost as if talking to herself. "Far from home, with none but their companions to mourn them. The fourth became a cripple, and returned home to live his shortened life in the silent despair of dishonor before death released him."

Leia grimaced. And now, as the cost for helping her, Khabarakh was facing both dishonor and death-

The line of thought paused. "Wait a minute. You said all four of your sons went to war? And that all four have since died?"

The maitrakh nodded. "That is correct."

"But then what about Khabarakh? Isn't he also your son?"

"He is my thirdson," the maitrakh said, a strange expression on her face. "A son of the son of my firstson."

Lela looked at her, a sudden horrible realization flashing through her. If Khabarakh was not her son but instead her great-grandson; and if the maitrakh had personally witnessed the space battle that had brought destruction on Honoghr : "Maitrakh, how long has your world been like this?" she breathed. "How many years?"

The Noghri stared at her, clearly sensing the sudden change in mood. "Lady Vader, what have I said-?"

"How many years?"

The maitrakh twitched away from her. "Forty-eight Noghri years," she said. "In years of the Emperor, forty-four."

Leia put her hand against the smooth wood of the genealogy chart, her knees suddenly feeling weak with shock. Forty-four years. Not the five or eight or even ten that she'd assumed. Forty-four. "It didn't happen during the Rebellion," she heard herself say. "It happened during the Clone Wars."

And suddenly the shock gave way to a wall of blazing white anger. "Forty-four years, she snarled. "They've held you like this for forty-four years?"

She spun to face the door. "Chewie!" she called, for the moment not caring who might hear her. "Chewie, get in here!"

A hand gripped her shoulder, and she turned back around to find the maitrakh gazing at her, an unreadable expression on her alien face. "Lady Vader, you will tell me what is the matter."

"Forty-four years, maitrakh, is what's the matter," Leia told her. The fiery heat of her anger was fading, leaving behind an icy resolve. "They've held you in slavery for almost half a century. Lying through their teeth to you, cheating you, murdering your sons." She jabbed a finger down toward the ground beneath their feet. "That is not forty-four years' worth of decontamination work. And if they aren't just cleaning the dirt-

There was a heavy footstep at the door and Chewbacca charged in, bowcaster at the ready. He saw Leia, roared a question as his weapon swung to cover the maitrakh.

"I'm not in danger, Chewie," Leia told him. "Just very angry. I need you to get me some more samples from the contaminated area. Not soil this time: some of the kholm-grass."

She could see the surprise in the Wookie's face. But he merely growled an acknowledgment and left. "Why do you wish to examine the kholm grass?" the maitrakh asked.

"You said yourself it smelled different than before the rains came," Leia reminded her. "I think there may be a connection here we've missed."

"What connection could there be?"

Leia shook her head. "I don't want to say anything more right now, maitrakh. Not until I'm sure."

"Do you still wish to go to Nystao?"

"More than ever," Leia said grimly. "But not to hit and run. If Chewie's samples show what I think they will, I'm going to go straight to the dynasts."

"What if they refuse to listen?"

Leia took a deep breath. "They can't refuse," she said. "You've already lost three generations of your sons. You can't afford to lose any more.

For a minute the Noghri gazed at her in silence. "You speak truth," she said. She hissed softly between her needle teeth, and with her usual fluid grace moved toward the door. "I will return within the hour," she said over her shoulder. "Will you be ready to leave then?"

"Yes," Leia nodded. "Where are you going?"

The maitrakh paused at the door, her dark eyes locking onto Leia's. "You speak truth, Lady Vader: they must listen. I will be back."

The maitrakh returned twenty minutes later, five minutes ahead of Chewbacca. The Wookiee had collected a double handful of the kholm-grass from widely scattered sites and retrieved the analysis unit from its hiding place in the decon droid shed. Leia got the unit started on a pair of the ugly brown plants and they set off for Nystao.

But not alone. To Leia's surprise, a young Noghri female was already seated at the driver's seat of the open topped landspeeder the maitrakh had obtained for them; and as they drove through the village at a brisk walking pace a dozen more Noghri joined them, striding along on both sides of the landspeeder like an honor guard. The maitrakh herself walked next to the vehicle, her face unreadable in the dim reflected light from the instrument panel. Sitting in the back seat next to the analysis unit, Chewbacca fingered his bowcaster and rumbled distrustingly deep in his throat. Behind him, wedged into the luggage compartment at the rear of the vehicle, Threepio was uncharacteristically quiet.

They passed through the village into the surrounding cropland, running without lights, the small group of Noghri around them virtually invisible in the cloudshrouded starlight. The party reached another village, barely distinguishable from the cropland now that its own lights were darkened for the night, and passed through without incident. More cropland; another village; more cropland. Occasionally Leia caught glimpses of the lights of Nystao far' ahead, and she wondered uneasily whether confronting the dynasts directly was really the wisest course of action at this point. They ruled with the assistance or at least the tacit consent of the Empire, and to accuse them of collaboration with a lie would not sit well with such a proud and honor-driven people.

And then, in the northeast sky, the larger of Honoghr's three moons broke through a thick cloud bank : and with a shock Leia saw that she and her original escort were no longer alone. All around them was an immense sea of shadowy figures, flowing like a silent tide along the landspeeder's path.

Behind her, Chewbacca growled surprise of his own. With his hunter's senses he had already been aware that the size of their party was increasing with each village they passed, through. But even he hadn't grasped the full extent of the recruitment, and wasn't at all certain he liked it.

But Leia found some of the tightness in her chest easing as she settled back against the landspeeder's cushions. Whatever happened in Nystao now, the sheer size of the assemblage would make it impossible for the dynasts to simply arrest her and cover up the fact that she'd ever been there.

The maitrakh had guaranteed her a chance to speak. The rest would be up to her.

They reached the edge of Nystao just before sunrise : to find another crowd of Noghri waiting for them.

"Word has arrived ahead of us," the maitrakh told Leia as the land speeder and its escort moved toward them. "They have come to see the daughter of the Lord Vader and to hear her message."

Leia looked at the crowd. "And what is the message you've told them to expect?"

"That the debt of honor to the Empire has been paid in full," the maitrakh said. "That you have come to offer a new life for the Noghri people."

Her dark eyes bored into Leia's face in unspoken question. Leia looked in turn over her shoulder at Chewbacca, and raised her eyebrows. The Wookiee rumbled an affirmative and tilted the analysis unit up to show her the display.

Sometime during their midnight journey the unit had finally finished its work:and as she read the analysis, Leia felt a fresh stirring of her earlier anger toward the Empire at what they'd done to these people. "Yes," she told the maitrakh. "I can indeed prove that the debt has been paid."

Nearer now to the waiting crowd, she could see in the dusky light that most of the Noghri were females. The relative handful of males she could spot were either the very light gray skin tone of children and young adolescents or the much darker gray of the elderly. But directly in line with the landspeeder's path were a group of about ten males with the steely-gray color of young adults. "I see the dynasts have heard the word, too," she said.

"That is our official escort," the maitrakh said. "they will accompany us to the Grand Dukha, where the dynasts await you."

The official escort-or guards, or soldiers; Lela wasn't quite sure how to think of them-remained silent as they walked in arrowhead formation in front of the landspeeder. The rest of the crowd was alive with whispered conversation, most of it between the city dwellers and the villagers. What they were saying Leia didn't know; but wherever her eyes turned the Noghri fell silent and gazed back in obvious fascination.

The city was smaller than Leia had expected, particularly given the limited land area the Noghri had available to them. After only a few minutes, they arrived at the Grand Dukha.

From its name Leia had expected it to be simply a larger version of the dukha back in the village. It was certainly larger; but despite the similarity in design, there was a far different sense to this version. Its walls and roof were made of a silver-blue metal instead of wood, with no carvings of any sort on their surfaces. The supporting pillars were black-metal or worked stone, Leia couldn't tell which. A wide set of black-and-red-marbled steps led up to a gray flagstone entrance terrace outside the double doors. The whole thing seemed cold and remote, very different from the mental picture of the Noghri ethos that she'd built up over the past few days. Fleetingly, she wondered if the Grand Dukha had been built not by the Noghri, but by the Empire.

At the top of the steps stood a row of thirteen middle aged Noghri males, each wearing an elaborately tooled garment that looked like a cross between a vest and a shawl. Behind them, his arms and legs chained to a pair of upright posts in the middle of the terrace, was Khabarakh.

Leia gazed past the row of dynasts at him, a ripple of sympathetic ache running through her. The maitrakh had described the mechanics of a Noghri public humiliation to her; but it was only as she looked at him that she began to grasp the full depth of the shame involved in the ritual. Khabarakh's face was haggard and pale, and he sagged with fatigue against the chains holding his wrists and upper arms. But his head was upright, his dark eyes alert and watching.

The crowd parted to both sides as the landspeeder reached the dukha area, forming a passage for the vehicle to move through. The official escort went up the stairs, forming a line between the crowd and the row of dynasts. "Remember, we're not here to fight," Leia murmured to Chewbacca; and summoning every bit of regal demeanor she could muster, she stepped out of the landspeeder and walked up the stairs.

The last rustle of conversation in the crowd behind her vanished as she reached the top. "I greet you, dynasts of the Noghri people," she said in a loud voice. "I am Leia Organa Solo, daughter of your Lord Darth Vader. He who came to you in your distress, and brought you aid." She held out the back of her hand toward the Noghri in the center of the line.

He gazed at her for a moment without moving. Then, with obvious reluctance, he stepped forward and gingerly sniffed at her hand. He repeated the test twice before straightening up again. "The Lord Vader is dead," he said. "Our new lord the Grand Admiral has ordered us to bring you to him, Leia Organa Solo. You will come with us to await the preparation of transport."

From the bottom of the steps Chewbacca growled warningly. Leia quieted him with a gesture and shook her head. "I have not come here to surrender to your Grand Admiral," she told the dynast.

"You will do so nonetheless," he said. He signaled, and two of the guards left their line and moved toward Leia.

She stood her ground, again signaling Chewbacca to do the same. "Do you serve the Empire, then, or the people of Honoghr?"

"All Noghri of honor serve both," the dynast said.

"Indeed?" Leia said. "Does serving Honoghr now mean sending generation after generation of young men to die in the Empire's wars?"

"You are an alien," the dynast said contemptuously. "You know nothing about the honor of the Noghri." He nodded to the guards now standing at Leia's sides. "Take her into the dukha."

"Are you then so afraid of the words of a lone alien woman?" Leia asked as the Noghri took her arms in a firm grip. "Or is it that you fear your own power will be diminished by my coming?

"You will speak no words of discord and poison!" the dynast snarled.

Chewbacca rumbled again, and Leia could sense him preparing to leap up the stairs to her aid. "My words are not of discord," she said, raising her voice loud enough for the whole crowd to hear. "My words are of treachery."

There was a sudden stirring from the crowd. "You will be silent," the dynast insisted. "Or I will have you silenced."

"I would hear her speak," the maitrakh called from below.

"You will be silent as well!" the dynast barked as the crowd murmured approval of the maitrakh's demand. "You have no place or speech here, maitrakh of the clan Kihm'bar. I have not called a convocate of the Noghri people."

"Yet the convocate is here," the maitrakh countered. "The Lady Vader has come. We would hear her words."

"Then you will hear them in prison." The dynast gestured, and two more of the official guard left their line, heading purposefully toward the steps.

It was, Leia judged, the right moment. Glancing down at her belt, she reached out through the Force with all the power and control she could manage-

And her lightsaber leaped from her belt, breaking free from its quick-release and jumping up in front of her. Her eyes and mind found the switch, and with a snap-hiss the brilliant green-white blade flashed into existence, carving out a vertical line between her and the line of dynasts.

There was a sound like a hissing gasp from the crowd. The two Noghri who had been moving toward the maitrakh froze in midstride:and as the gasp vanished into utter silence, Leia knew that she'd finally gotten their complete attention. "I am not merely the daughter of the Lord Vader," she said, putting an edge of controlled anger into her voice. "I am the Mal'ary'ush: heir to his authority and his power. I have come through many dangers to reveal the treachery that has been done to the Noghri people."

She withdrew as much of her concentration as she could risk from the floating lightsaber to look slowly down the line of dynasts. "Will you hear me? Or will you instead choose death?"

For a long minute the silence remained unbroken. Leia listened to the thudding of her heart and the deep hum of the lightsaber, wondering how long she could hold the weapon steady in midair before losing control of it. And then, from halfway down the line to her left, one of the dynasts took a step forward. "I would hear the words of the Mal'ary'ush," he said.

The first dynast spat. "Do not add your own discord, Ir'khaim," he warned. "You see here only a chance to save the honor of the clan Kihm'bar.

"Perhaps I see a chance to save the honor of the Noghri people, Vor'corkh," Ir'khaim retorted. "I would hear the Mal'ary'ush speak. Do I stand alone?"

Silently, another dynast stepped forward to join him. Then another did so; and another, and another, until nine of the thirteen stood with Ir'khaim. Vor'corkh hissed between his teeth, but stepped back to his place in line. "The dynasts of Honoghr have chosen," he growled. "You may speak."

The two guards released her arms. Leia counted out two more seconds before reaching a hand up to take the lightsaber and close it down. "I will tell the story twice," she said, turning to the crowd as she returned the weapon to her belt. "Once as the Empire has told you; once as it truly is. You may then decide for yourselves whether or not the Noghri debt has been paid.

"You all know the history of how your world was devastated by the battle in space. How many of the Noghri were killed by the volcanoes and earthquakes and killer seas that followed, until a remnant arrived here to this place. How the Lord Darth Vader came to you, and offered you aid. How after the falling of the strange-smelling rains all plants except the kholm-grass withered and died. How the Empire told you the ground had been poisoned with chemicals from the destroyed ship, and offered machines to clean the soil for you. And you know all too well the price they demanded for those machines."

"Yet the ground is indeed poisoned," one of the dynasts told her. "I and many others have tried through the years to grow food in places where the machines have not been. But the seed was wasted, for nothing would grow."

"Yes," Leia nodded. "But it was not the soil that was poisoned. Or rather, not the soil directly."

She signaled to Chewbacca. Reaching back into the landspeeder, he picked up the analyzer unit and one of the kholm-grass plants and brought them up the steps to her. "I will now tell you the story that is true," Leia said as the Wookiee went back down the steps. "After the Lord Vader left in his ship, other ships came. They flew far and wide over your world. To any who asked they probably said they were surveying the land, perhaps searching for other survivors or other habitable places. But that was all a lie. Their true purpose was to seed your world with a new type of plant." She held up the kholm-grass. "This plant."

"Your truth is dreams," the dynast Vor'corkh spat. "Kholm-grass has grown on Honoghr since the beginning of knowledge."

"I didn't say this was kholm-grass," Leia countered. "It looks like the kholm-grass you remember, and even smells very much like it. But not exactly. It is, in fact, a subtle creation of the Empire:sent by the Emperor to poison your world."

The silence of the crowd broke into a buzz of stunned conversation. Leia gave them time, letting her gaze drift around the area as she waited. There must be close to a thousand Noghri pressed around the Grand Dukha, she estimated, and more were still coming into the area. The word about her must still be spreading, she decided, and glanced around to see where they were coming from.

And as she looked off to her left a slight glint of metal caught her eye. Well back from the Grand Dukha, half hidden in the long early-morning shadows beside another building, was the boxy shape of a decon droid.

Leia stared at it, a shiver of sudden horror running through her. A decon droid with unusual curiosity-Threepio had mentioned that, but she'd been too preoccupied at the time to pay any attention to his concerns. But for a decon droid to be in Nystao, fifty kilometers or more from its designated work area, was far more than just over developed curiosity. It had to be-

She squatted down, mentally berating herself for her carelessness. Of course the Grand Admiral wouldn't have just flitted away on the spur of the moment. Not without leaving someone or something to keep an eye on things. "Chewie-over there to your right," she hissed. "Looks like a decon droid, but I think it's an espionage droid."

The Wookiee growled something vicious and started pushing his way through the crowd. But even as the Noghri made way for him, Leia knew he would never make it. Espionage droids weren't brilliant, but they were smart enough to know not to hang around after their cover had been blown. Long before Chewbacca could get over there it would be off and running. If it had a transmitter-and if there were any Imperial ships within range-

"People of Honoghr!" she shouted over the conversation. "I will prove to you right now the truth of what I say. One of the Empiror's decon droids is there." She pointed to it. "Bring it to me.

The crowd turned to look, and Leia could sense their uncertainty. But before anyone could move, the droid abruptly vanished around the corner of the building it had been skulking beside. A second later Leia caught a glimpse of it between two other buildings, scuttling away for all it was worth.

It was, tactically, the worst decision the droid could have made. Running away was as good as admitting guilt, particularly in front of a people who had grown up with the things and knew exactly what the normal behavioral range of a decon droid was. The crowd roared, and from the rear perhaps fifty of the older adolescents took off after it.

And as they did so, one of the guards on the terrace beside Leia cupped his hand around his mouth and sent a piercing half-scream into the air.

Leia jerked away, ears ringing with the sound. The guard screamed again, and this time there was an answer from somewhere in the near distance. The guard switched to a warble that sounded like a complicated medley of birdcalls; a short reply, and both fell silent. "He calls others to the hunt," the maitrakh told Leia.

Leia nodded, squeezing her hands into fists as she watched the pursuers disappear around a corner after the droid. If the droid had a transmitter it would right now be frantically dumping its data :

And then, suddenly, the pursuers were back in sight, accompanied by a half dozen adult Noghri males. Held aloft like the prize from a hunt, still wiggling uselessly in their grip, was the droid.

Leia took a deep breath. "Bring it here to me," she said as the party approached. They did so, six of the adolescents lugging it up the stairs and laying it on its back on the terrace. Leia ignited her lightsaber, her eyes searching the droid as she did so for signs of a concealed antenna port. She couldn't see one, but that by itself didn't prove anything. Steeling herself for the worst, she sliced a vertical cut through the droid's outer shell. Two more crosswise cuts, and its internal workings were laid out for all to see.

Chewbacca was already kneeling beside the droid as Leia shut down her lightsaber, his huge fingers probing delicately among the maze of tubes and cables and fibers. Near the top of the cavity was a small gray box. He threw a significant look at Leia and pulled it free from its connections.

Leia swallowed as he laid it on the ground beside him. She recognized it, all right, from long and sometimes bitter experience: the motivator recorder unit from an Imperial probe droid. But the antenna connector jack was empty. Luck, or the Force, was still with them.

Chewbacca was poking around the lower part of the cavity now. Leia watched as he pulled several cylinders out of the tangle, examined their markings, and returned them to their places. The crowd was starting to murmur again when, with a satisfied murmur of his own, he pulled out a large cylinder and slender needle from near the intake hopper.

Gingerly, Leia took the cylinder from him. It shouldn't be dangerous to her, but there was no point in taking chances. "I call on the dynasts to bear witness that this cylinder was indeed taken from the inside of this machine," she called to the crowd.

"Is this your proof?" Ir'khaim asked, eyeing the cylinder doubtfully.

"It is," Leia nodded. "I have said that these plants are not the kholm-grass you remember from before the disaster. But I have not yet said what is different about them." Picking up one of the plants, she held it up for them to see. "The Emperor's scientists took your kholm-grass and changed it," she told the crowd. "They created differences that would breed true between generations. The altered smell you have noticed is caused by a chemical which the stem, roots, and leaves secrete. A chemical which has one purpose only: to inhibit the growth of all other plant life. The machines that the Grand Admiral claims are cleaning the ground are in fact doing nothing but destroying this special kholm-grass which the Empire planted."

"Your truth is again dreams," Vor'corldi scoffed. "The droid machines require nearly two tens of days to cleanse a single pirkha of land. My daughters could destroy the kholm-grass there in one."

Leia smiled grimly. "Perhaps the machines don't require as much time as it appears. Let's find out." Holding the kholm-grass out in front of her, she eased a drop of pale liquid from the tip of the needle and touched it to the stem.

It was as dramatic a demonstration as she could have hoped for. The drop soaked through the dull brown surface of the plant, and for a handful of seconds nothing seemed to happen. There was a faint sizzling sound; and then, without warning, the plant suddenly began to turn black and wither. There was a hissing gasp from the crowd as the patch of catalytic destruction spread along the stem toward the leaves and roots. Leia held it up a moment longer, then dropped it on the terrace. There it lay, writhing like a dry branch thrown into a fire, until there was nothing left but a short and unrecognizable filament of wrinkled black. Leia touched it tentatively with the toe of her hoot, and it disintegrated into a fine powder.

She had expected another outburst of surprise or outrage from the crowd. Their dead silence was in its own way more unnerving than any noise would have been. The Noghri understood the implications of the demonstration, all right.

And as she looked around at their faces, she knew that she'd won.

She put the cylinder down on the terrace beside the destroyed plant and turned to face the dynasts. "I have shown you my proof," she said. "You must now decide whether the Noghri debt has been paid."

She looked at Vor'corkh; and moved by an impulse she couldn't explain, she unhooked her lightsaber from her belt and put it in his hand. Stepping past him, she went over to Khabarakh. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I didn't expect for you to have to go through anything like this because of me."

Khabarath opened his mouth in a needle-toothed Noghri smile. "The Empire has long taught us that it is a honor pride and duty to face pain for his overlord. Should I do less for the Mal'ary'ush of the Lord Vader?"

Leia shook her head. "I'm not your overlord, Khabarakh, and I never will be. The Noghri are a free people. I came only to try to restore that freedom to you."

"And to bring us on your side against the Empire," Vor'corkh said caustically from behind her.

Leia turned. "That would be my wish," she agreed. "But I do not ask it."

Vor'corkh studied her a moment. Then, reluctantly, he handed her lightsaber back to her. "The dynasts of Honoghr cannot and will not make so important a decision in a single day," he said. "There is much to consider, and a full convocate of the Noghri people must be called."

"Then call it," Khabarakh urged. "The Mal'ary'ush of the Lord Vader is here."

"And can the Mal'ary'ush protect us from the might of the Empire, should we choose to defy it?" Vor'corkh countered.

"But-"

"No, Khabarakh, he's right," Leia said. "The Empire would rather kill you all than let you defect or even become neutral."

"Have the Noghri forgotten how to fight?" Khabarakh scoffed.

"And has Khabarakh clan Kihm'bar forgotten what happened to Honoghr forty-eight years ago?" Vor'corkh snapped. "If we left the Empire now, we would have no option but to leave our world and hide."

"And doing that would guarantee the instant slaughter of the commando teams that are out serving the Empire," Leia pointed out to Khabarakh. "Would you have them die without even knowing the reason? There is no honor in that."

"You speak wisdom, Lady Vader," Vor'corkh said, and for the first time Leia thought she could detect a trace of grudging respect in his eyes. "True warriors understand the value of patience. You will leave us now?"

"Yes," Leia nodded. "My presence here is still a danger to you. I would ask one favor: that you would allow Khabarakh to return me to my ship."

Vor'corkh looked at Khabarakh. "Khabarakh's family conspired to free him," he said. "They succeeded, and he escaped into space. Three commando teams who were here on leave have followed in pursuit. The entire clan Kihm'bar will be in disgrace until they yield up the names of those responsible."

Leia nodded. It was as good a story as any. "Just he sure to warn the commandos you send to be careful when they make contact with the other teams. If even a hint of this gets back to the Empire, they'll destroy you."

"Do not presume to tell warriors their job," Vor'corkh retorted. He hesitated. "Can you obtain more of this for us?" he asked, gesturing back at the cylinder.

"Yes," Leia said. "We'll need to go to Endor first and pick up my ship. Khabarakh can accompany me back to Coruscant then and I'll get him a supply."

The dynast hesitated. "There is no way to bring it sooner?"

A fragment of conversation floated up from Leia's memory: the maitrakh, mentioning that the window for planting this season's crops was almost closed. "There might be," she said. "Khabarakh, how much time would we save if we skipped Endor and went directly to Coruscant?"

"Approximately four days, Lady Vader," he said.

Leia nodded. Han would kill her for leaving his beloved Falcon sitting in orbit at Endor like that, but there was no way around it. "All right," she nodded. "That's what we'll do, then. Don't forget to be careful where you use it, though-you can't risk incoming Imperial ships spotting new cropland."

"Do not presume, either, to tell farmers their job," Vor'corkh said; but this time there was a touch of dry humor in his voice. "We will eagerly await its arrival."

"Then we'd better leave at once," Leia said. She looked past him to the maitrakh, and nodded her head in thanks. Finally-finally-everything was starting to go their way. Despite her earlier doubts, the Force was clearly with her.

Turning back to Khabarakh, she ignited her lightsaber and cut him loose from his chains. "Come on, Khabarakh," she said. "Time to go."

Chapter 25

The Coral Vanda billed itself as the most impressive casino in the galaxy:and as he looked around the huge and ornate Tralla Room, Han could understand why he'd never heard of anyone challenging that claim.

The room had at least a dozen sabacc tables scattered around its three half-levels, plus a whole range of lugjack bars, tregald booths, halo-chess tables, and even a few of the traditional horseshoe-shaped warp-tops favored by hard-core crinbid fanatics. A bar bisecting the room stocked most anything a customer would want to drink, either to celebrate a win or forget a loss, and there was a serving window built into the back wall for people who didn't want to stop playing even to eat.

And when you got tired of looking at your cards or into your glass, there was the view through the full-wall transparent outer hull. Rippling blue-green water, hundreds of brilliantly colored fish and small sea mammals; and around all of it the intricate winding loops and fans of the famous Pantolomin coral reefs.

The Tralla Room was, in short, as fine a casino as Han had ever seen in his life : and the Coral Vanda had seven other rooms just like it.

Sitting at the bar beside him, Lando downed the last of his drink and pushed the glass away from him. "So what now?" he asked.

"He's here, Lando," Han told him, tearing his gaze from the reef outside and looking one more time around the casino. "Somewhere."

"I think he's skipped this trip," Lando disagreed. "Probably ran out of money. Remember what Sena said-the guy spends it like poisoned water."

"Yeah, but if he was out of money he'd be trying to sell them another ship," Han pointed out. He drained his own glass an,d got up from his seat. "Come on-one more room to go."

"And then we do it all over again," Lando growled. "And again, and again. It's a waste of time."

"You got any other ideas?"

"Matter of fact, I do," Lando said as they swung wide to get around a large Herglic balanced precariously across of two of the seats and headed down the bar toward the exit. "Instead of just wandering around like we have for the past six hours, we should plant ourselves at a sabac table somewhere and start dropping some serious money. Word'll get around that there are a couple of pikers ripe for plucking; and if this guy loses money as fast as Sena says, he'll be plenty interested in trying to make some of it back."

Han looked at his friend in mild surprise. He'd had the same idea a couple of hours ago, but hadn't figured on Lando going for it. "You think your professional gambler's pride can take that kind of beating?"

Lando looked him straight in the eye. "If it'll get me out of here and back to my mining operation, my pride can take anything."

Han grimaced. He sometimes forgot that he'd kind of dragged Lando into all of this. "Yeah," he said. "Sorry. Okay, tell you what. We'll give the Saffkin Room one last look. If he's not there, we'll come back here and-"

He broke off. There on the bar, in front of an empty seat, was a tray with a still-smoldering cigarra sitting in it. A cigarra with an unusual but very familiar aroma to it:

"Uh-oh," Lando said quietly at his shoulder.

"I don't believe it," Han said, dropping his hand to his blaster as he threw a quick look around the crowded room.

"Believe it, buddy," Lando said. He touched the cushion of the vacant seat. "It's still warm. He must be-there he is."

It was Niles Ferrier, all right, standing beneath the ornate shimmerglass exit archway, another of his ever present cigarras gripped between his teeth. He grinned at them, made a sort of mock salute, and disappeared out the door.

"Well, that's just great," Lando said. "Now what?"

"He wants us to follow him," Han said, throwing a quick glance around them. He didn't see anyone he recognized, but that didn't mean anything. Ferrier's people were probably all around them. "Let's go see what he's up to."

"It could be a trap," Lando warned.

"Or he could be ready to deal," Han countered. "Keep your blaster ready."

"No kidding."

They were halfway to the archway when they heard it: a short, deep-toned thud like a distant crack of thunder. It was followed by another, louder one, and then a third. The conversational din of the casino faltered as others paused to listen; and as they did so, the Coral Vanda seemed to tremble a little.

Han looked at Lando. "You thinking what I'm thinking?" he muttered.

"Turbolaser bursts hitting the water," Lando murmured grimly. "Ferrier's dealing, all right. Only not with us."

Han nodded, feeling a hard knot settle into his stomach. Ferrier had gone ahead and made a deal with the Empire : and if the Imperials got their hands on the Katana fleet, the balance of power in the ongoing war would suddenly be skewed back in their favor.

And under the command of a Grand Admiral :

"We've got to find that ship dealer, and fast," he said, hurrying toward the exit. "Maybe we can get him out in an escape pod or something before we're boarded."

"Hopefully, before the rest of the passengers start panicking," Lando added. "Let's go.

They'd made it to the archway when their time ran out. There was a sudden thunderclap, not distant this time but seemingly right on top of them, and for a second the coral reef outside the transparent hull lit up with an angry green light. The Coral Vanda lurched like a wounded animal, and Han grabbed at the edge of the archway for balance-

Something caught his arm and pulled hard, yanking him out of the archway to his right. He grabbed reflexively for his blaster, but before he could draw it strong furry arms wrapped around his chest and face, pinning his gun hand to his side and blotting out all view of the sudden panic in the corridor. He tried to shout, but the arm was blocking his mouth as well as his eyes. Struggling uselessly, swearing under what breath he could get, he was hauled back was down the corridor. Two more thunderclaps came, the second nearly throwing both him and his attacker off their feet. A change of direction sideways-his elbow banged against the side of a doorway-

A hard shove and he was free again, gasping for breath. He was in a small drinks storage room, with crates of bottles lining three of the walls almost to the ceiling. Several had already been knocked to the floor by the Coral Vanda's lurching, and out of one of them a dark red liquid was oozing.

Lounging beside the door, grinning again, was Ferrier. "Hello, Solo," he said. "Nice of you to drop in."

"It was too kind an invitation to turn down," Han said sourly, looking around. His blaster was hovering in front of a stack of crates two meters away, right in the middle of a thick and strangely solid shadow.

"You remember my wraith, of course," Ferrier said blandly, gesturing at the shadow. "He's the one who sneaked up onto the Lady Luck's ramp to plant our backup homing beacon. The one inside the ship."

So that was how Ferrier had managed to get here so fast. Another thunderclap shook the Coral Vanda, and another crate tottered too far and crashed to the floor. Han jumped back out of the way and took a closer look at the shadow. This time he was able to pick out the eyes and a glint of white fangs. He'd always thought wraiths were just space legend. Apparently not. "It's not too late to make a deal," he told Ferrier.

The other gave him a look of surprise. "This is your deal, Solo," he said. "Why else do you think you're in here instead of out where shooting's about to start? We're just going to keep you here, nice and safe, until things settle down again." He cocked an eyebrow. "Calrissian, now-he's another story."

Han frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I'm tired of him getting in my way," Ferrier said softly. "So when the Coral Vanda finally gives up and surfaces, I'm going to make sure he's right up there in front, trying valiantly to protect poor Captain Hoffner from the evil stormtroopers. With any luck :" He spread his hands and smiled.

"Hoffner's the guy's name huh?" Han said, fighting his anger down. Getting mad wasn't going to help Lando any. "Suppose he's not on board? The Imperials won't be happy about that."

"Oh, he's aboard," Ferrier assured him. "Getting a little stircrazy. though. He's been sort of locked in our suite since about an hour after we sailed."

"You sure you got the right guy?"

Ferrier shrugged. "If not, the Grand Admiral has only himself to blame. He's the one who supplied me with the name."

Another blast rocked the ship. "Well, nice talking to you, Solo, but I've got a deal to close," Ferrier said, regaining his balance and hitting the door release. "See you around."

"We'll pay you twice what the Empire's offering," Han said, trying one last time.

Ferrier didn't even bother to answer. Smiling one last time, he slipped out the door and closed it behind him.

Han looked at the shadow that was the wraith. "How about you?" he asked. "You want to be rich?"

The wraith showed its teeth, but made no other reply. There was another thunderclap, and they were jerked hard to the side. The Coral Vanda was a well-built ship, but Han knew it couldn't stand up to this kind of pounding for long. Sooner or later, it would have to give up and surface:and then the stormtroopers would come.

He had just that long to find a way out of here.

The Chimaera's turbolaser batteries fired again, and on the bridge holo display a short red line dug briefly into the sea near the tapered black cylinder that marked the Coral Vanda's position. For an instant the red line was sheathed in the pale green of seawater suddenly flashed into superheated steam; and then the pale green spread outward in all directions, and the Coral Vanda rocked visibly as the shock wave passed it. "They're stubborn, I'll give them that," Pellaeon commented.

"They have a great many wealthy patrons aboard," Thrawn reminded him. "Many of whom would rather drown than give up their money under threat of force."

Pellaeon glanced at his readouts. "It won't be long until they're at that choice. Main propulsion's been knocked out, and they're developing microfractures in their hull seams. Computer projects that if they don't surface in ten minutes, they won't be able to."

"They're a ship full of gamblers, Captain," Thrawn said. "They'll gamble on the strength of their ship while they seek an alternative."

Pellaeon frowned at the holo display. "What alternative could they possibly have?"

"Observe." Thrawn touched his board, and a small white circle appeared on the holo in front of the Coral Vanda, extending backward like the path of a crazed worm. "There appears to be a path here beneath this section of the reef that would allow them to evade us, at least temporarily. I believe that's where they're heading."

"They'll never make it," Pellaeon decided. "Not the way they're bouncing around down there. Best to be sure, though. A shot right at the entrance to that maze should do it."

"Yes," Thrawn said, his voice meditative. "A pity, though, to have to damage any of these reefs. They're genuine works of art. Unique, perhaps, in that they were created by living yet nonsentient beings. I should have liked to have studied them more closely."

He turned to Pellaeon again, gave a short nod. "You may fire when ready."

There was another clap of thunder as the Imperial ship overhead flash-boiled the water near them : and as the Coral Vanda lurched to the side Han made his move.

Letting the ship's motion throw him sideways, he half staggered, half fell across the storeroom to slam into one of the stacks of crates, turning at the last instant so that his back was to them. His hands, flung up over his head as if for balance, found the bottom corners of the topmost crate; and as the force of his impact shook the stack, he brought the box tipping over on top of him. He let it roll a quarter rotation toward his head, then shifted his grip and shoved it as hard as he could toward the wraith.

The alien caught it square on the upper torso, lost his balance, and crashed backward to the floor.

Han was on him in a second, kicking his blaster out of the wraith's hand and jumping after it. He caught up with the weapon, spun back up. The wraith had gotten clear of the box and was scrambling to get back to his feet on a floor now slippery with spilled Menkooro whiskey. "Hold it!" Han snapped, gesturing with the blaster.

He might as well have been talking to a hole in the air. The wraith continued on to his feet-

And with the only other option being to shoot him dead, Han lowered his aim and fired into the pool of whiskey. There was a gentle whoosh; and abruptly, the center of the room burst into blue-tinged flame.

The alien leaped backward out of the fire, screaming something in his own language which Han was just as glad he couldn't understand. The wraith's momentum slammed him up against a stack of crates, nearly bringing the whole pile down. Han fired twice into the crate above the alien, starting twin waterfalls of alcohol cascading down around his shoulders and head. The alien screamed again, got his balance back-

And with one final shot, Han set the waterfalls on fire.

The wraith's scream turned into a high-pitched wail as it twisted away from the blaze, its head and shoulders sheathed in flame. More in anger than pain, though, Han knew-alcohol fires weren't all that hot. Given time, the wraith would slap out the fire, and then very likely break Han's neck.

He wasn't given that time. Midway through the wail the storeroom's automatic fire system finally sputtered into action, the sensors directing streams of fire foam straight into the wraith's face.

Han didn't wait to see the outcome. Ducking past the temporarily blinded alien, he slipped out the door.

The corridor, which had been crowded with panicking people when he'd first been grabbed, was now deserted, the passengers on their way to the escape pods or the imagined safety of their staterooms. Firing a shot into the storeroom lock to seal it, Han hurried forward toward the ship's main hatchway. And hoped he'd get to Lando in time.

From far below him, almost lost among the shouts and screams of frightened passengers, Lando could hear the muffled hum of activated pumps. Sooner than he'd expected, the Coral Vanda was surrendering.

He swore under his breath, throwing another quick look over his shoulder. Where in blazes had Han gotten to, anyway? Probably hunting for Ferrier, wanting to see what the slippery ship thief was up to. Trust Han to run off and play a hunch when there was work to be done.

A dozen of the Coral Vanda's crewers were busy taking up defensive positions inside the ship's main hatchway as he arrived. "I need to talk to the captain or another officer right away," he called to them.

"Get back to your room," one of the men snapped without looking at him. "We're about to be boarded."

"I know," Lando said. "And I know what the Imperials want."

That one rated him a quick look. "Yeah? What?"

"One of your passengers," Lando told him. "He has something the Empire-"

"What's his name?"

"I don't know. I've got a description, though."

"Wonderful," the crewer grunted, checking the power level on his blaster. "Tell you what you do-you head aft and start going door to door. Let us know if you find him."

Lando gritted his teeth. "I'm serious."

"So am I," the other retorted. "Go on, get out of here."

"But-"

"I said move it." He pointed his blaster at Lando. "If your passenger's got any sense he's probably already ejected in an escape pod, anyway."

Lando backed away down the corridor, the whole thing belatedly falling together in his mind. No, the ship supplier wouldn't be in any escape pod. He probably wouldn't even be in his stateroom. Ferrier was here; and knowing Ferrier, he wouldn't have deliberately shown himself like that unless he'd already won the race.

The deck rocked slightly beneath his feet: the Coral Vanda had reached the surface. Turning, Lando hurried aft again. There was a passenger-access computer terminal a couple of corridors back. If he could get a passenger list from it and find Ferrier's room, he might be able to get to them before the Imperials took control of the ship. Breaking into a quick jog, he turned into a cross corridor-

They were striding purposefully toward him: four large men with blasters at the ready, with a thin, whitehaired man almost hidden in the center of the group. The lead man spotted Lando, snapped his blaster up, and fired.

The first shot was a clean miss. The second sizzled into the wall as Lando ducked back behind the corner.

"So much for finding Ferrier's room," Lando muttered. Another handful of shots spit past his barricade; and then, surprisingly, the firing stopped. Blaster in hand, hugging the corridor wall, Lando eased back to the corner and threw a quick look around it.

They were gone.

"Great," he muttered, taking a longer look. They were gone, all right, probably into one of the crew-only areas that ran down the central core of the ship. Chasing after someone through an unfamiliar area was usually not a good idea, but there weren't a whole lot of other options available. Grimacing to himself, he started around the corner-

And yelped as a blaster bolt from his right scorched past his sleeve. He dived forward into the cross corridor, catching a glimpse as he fell of three more men coming toward him down the main corridor. He hit the thick carpet hard enough to see stars, rolled onto his side and yanked his legs out of the line of fire, fully aware that if any of the original group was watching from cover, he was dead. A barrage of blaster shots from the newcomers bit into the wall, with the kind of clustering that meant it was being used as cover fire while they advanced on him. Breathing hard-that crash dive had knocked the wind out of him-Lando got to his feet and started toward an arched doorway halfway down the cross corridor. It wouldn't give him much cover, but it was the best he had.

He had just made it to the doorway when there was a sudden curse from the direction of his attackers, a handful of shots from what sounded like a different model blaster-

And then, silence.

Lando frowned, wondering what they were pulling now. He could hear footsteps running toward him; flattening himself into the doorway as best he could, he leveled his blaster at the intersection.

The footsteps came to the intersection and paused. "Lando?"

Lando lowered his blaster with a silent sigh of relief. "Over here, Han," he called. "Come on-Ferrier's people have our man."

Han rounded the corner and sprinted toward him. "That's not all, buddy," he panted. "Ferrier's gunning for you, too."

Lando grimaced. He hadn't missed by much, either. "Never mind me," he said. "I think they must have gone down the ship's core. We've got to catch up with them before they reach the main hatchway."

"We can try," Han said grimly, looking around. "Over there-looks like a crewer access door."

It was. And it was locked.

"Ferrier's people got in," Lando grunted, stooping down to examine the half-open release panel. "Yeah. Here-it's been hot-wired Let's see:"

He probed carefully into the mechanism with the tip of his little finger; and with a satisfying click, the panel unlocked and slid open. "There we go," he said. He got to his feet again-

And jumped back from the opening as a stuttering of blaster fire flashed through.

"Yeah, there we go all right," Han said. He was against the wall on the other side of the opening, blaster ready but with no chance of getting a shot in through the rear guard's fire. "How many people has Ferrier got on this ship, anyway?"

"A lot," Lando growled. The door, apparently deciding that no one was going through after all, slid shut again. "I guess we do this the hard way. Let's get back to the main hatchway and try to catch them there."

Han grabbed his shoulder. "Too late," he said. "Listen."

Lando frowned, straining his ears. Over the quiet hum of ship's noises, he could make out the rapid-fire spitting of stormtrooper laser rifles in the distance. "They're aboard," he murmured.

"Yeah," Han nodded. The deck vibrated briefly beneath their feet, and abruptly the laser fire slackened off. "Subsonic grenade," he identified it. "That's it. Come on."

"Come on where?" Lando asked as Han set off down the cross corridor.

"Aft to the escape pod racks, the other said. "We're getting out of here."

Lando felt his mouth drop open. But he looked at his friend, and his objections died unsaid. Han's face was set into tight lines, his eyes smoldering with anger and frustration. He knew what this meant, all right. Probably better than Lando did.

The escape pod bobbed on the surface of the sea, surrounded by a hundred other pods and floating bits of reef. Through the tiny porthole Han watched as, in the distance, the last of the Imperial assault shuttles lifted from the Coral Vanda and headed back to space. "That's it, then?" Lando ventured from the seat behind him.

"That's it," Han said, hearing the bitterness in his voice. "They'll probably start picking up the pods soon."

"We did all we could, Han," Lando pointed out quietly. "And it could have been worse. They could have blown the Coral Vanda out of the water-it might have been days before anyone came to get us then."

Which would have given the Empire that much more of a head start. "Oh, yeah, great," Han said sourly. "We're really on top of things."

"What else could we have done?" Lando persisted. "Scuttled the ship to keep them from getting him-never mind that we'd have killed several hundred people in the process? Or maybe just gotten ourselves killed fighting three assault shuttles' worth of stormtroopers? At least this way Coruscant has a chance to get ready before ships from the Dark Force start showing up in battle."

Lando was trying-you had to give him that. But Han wasn't ready to be cheered up yet. "How do you get ready to get hit by two hundred Dreadnaughts?" he growled. "We're stretched to the limit as it is."

"Come on, Han," Lando said, his voice starting to sound a little irritated. "Even if the ships are in mint condition and ready to fly, they're still going to need two thousand crewers apiece to man them. It'll be years before the Imperials can scrape that many recruits together and teach them how to fly the things."

"Except that the Empire already had a call out for new ships," Han reminded him. "Means they already have a bunch of recruits ready to go."

"I doubt they have four hundred thousand of them," Lando countered. "Come on, try looking on the bright side for once.

"There's not much bright side here to look at." Han shook his head.

"Sure there is," Lando insisted. "Thanks to your quick action, the New Republic still has a fighting chance."

Han frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"You saved my life, remember? Shot those goons of Ferrier's off my back."

"Yeah, I remember. What does that have to do with the New Republic's chances?"

"Han!" Lando said, looking scandalized. "You know perfectly well how fast the New Republic would fall apart without me around."

Han tried real hard, but he couldn't quite strangle off a smile on that one. He compromised, letting it come out twisted. "All right, I give up," he sighed. "If I stop grousing, will you shut up?"

"Deal," Lando nodded.

Han turned back to the porthole, the smile fading away. Lando could talk all he wanted; but the loss of the Katana fleet would be a first magnitude disaster, and they both knew it. Somehow, they had to stop the Empire from getting to those ships.

Somehow.

Chapter 26

Mon Mothma shook her head in wonderment. "The Katana fleet," she breathed. "After all these years. It's incredible."

"Some might even put it more strongly than that," Fey'lya added coolly, his fur rippling as he gazed hard at Karrde's impassive face. He'd been doing a lot of that throughout the hastily called meeting, Leia had noticed: gazing hard at Karrde, at Luke, at Leia herself. Even Mon Mothma hadn't been left out. "Some might, in fact, have severe doubts that what you're telling us is true at all."

Beside Karrde, Luke shifted in his seat, and Leia could sense his efforts to control his annoyance with the Bothan. But Karrde merely cocked an eyebrow. "Are you suggesting that I'm lying to you?"

"What, a smuggler lie?" Fey'lya countered. "What a thought."

"He's not lying," Han insisted, an edge to his voice. "The fleet's been found. I saw some of the ships."

"Perhaps," Fey'lya said, dropping his eyes to the polished surface of the table. Of all those at the meeting, Han had so far been the only one to escape Fey'lya's posturing and his glare. For some reason, the Bothan seemed reluctant to even look at him. "Perhaps not. There are more Dreadnaught cruisers in the galaxy than just the Katana fleet."

"I don't believe this," Luke spoke up at last, looking back and forth between Fey'lya and Mon Mothma. "The Katana fleet's been found, the Empire's going after it, and we're sitting here arguing about it?"

"Perhaps the problem is that you believe too much, or too easily," Fey'lya retorted, turning his gaze on Luke. "Solo tells us the Empire is holding someone who can lead them to these alleged ships. And yet Karrde has said only he knows their location."

"And as I've mentioned at least once today," Karrde said tartly, "the assumption that no one else knew what we'd found was just that: an assumption. Captain Hoffner was a very astute man in his way, and I have no trouble believing that he might have pulled a copy of the coordinates for himself before I erased them."

"I'm glad you have such faith in your former associate," Fey'lya said. "For myself I find it easier to believe that it is Captain Solo who is wrong." His fur rippled. "Or has been deliberately deceived."

Beside her, Leia felt Han's mood darken. "You want to explain that, Councilor?" he demanded.

"I think you were lied to," Fey'lya said bluntly, his eyes still not meeting Han's. "I think this contact of yours-who I notice you've been remarkably reluctant to identify-told you a story and dressed it up with false evidence. That piece of machinery you say Calrissian examined could have come from anywhere. And you yourself admitted that you were never actually aboard any of the ships."

"What about that Imperial raid on the Coral Vanda?" Han demanded. "They thought there was someone there worth grabbing."

Fey'lya smiled thinly. "Or else they wanted us to believe that they did. Which they very well might : if your unnamed contact is in fact working for them."

Leia looked at Han. There was something there, beneath the surface. Some swirl of emotion she couldn't identify. "Han?" she asked quietly.

"No," he said, his eyes still on Fey'lya. "He's not working for the Imperials."

"So you say," Fey'lya sniffed. "You offer little proof of that."

"All right, then," Karrde put in. "Let's assume for the moment that all of this is in fact a giant soap bubble. What would the Grand Admiral stand to gain from it?"

Fey'lya's fur shifted in a gesture Leia decided was probably annoyance. Between her and Karrde they'd pretty well burst the Bothan's theory that Thrawn was not, in fact, an Imperial Grand Admiral; and Fey'lya wasn't taking even that minor defeat well. "I should think that was obvious," he told Karrde stiffly. "How many systems would we have to leave undefended, do you suppose, in order to reassign enough trained personnel to reactivate and transport two hundred Dreadnaughts? No, the Empire has a great deal to gain by hasty action on our part."

"They also have a great deal to gain by our total lack of action," Karrde said, his voice icy cold. "I worked with Hoffner for over two years; and I can tell you right now that it won't take the Imperials a great deal of time to obtain the fleet's location from him. If you don't move quickly, you stand to lose everything."

"If there's anything out there to lose," Fey'lya said.

Leia put a warning hand on Han's arm. "That should be easy enough to check," she jumped in before Karrde could respond. "We can send a ship and tech crew out to take a look. If the fleet is there and seems operational, we can start a full-scale salvage effort."

From the look on Karrde's' face she could tell that he thought even that was moving too slowly. But he nodded. "I suppose that's reasonable enough," he said.

Leia looked at Mon Mothma. "Mon Mothma?"

"I agree," the other said. "Councilor Fey'lya, you'll speak to Admiral Drayson at once about assigning an Escort Frigate and two X-wing squadrons to this mission. Preferably a ship already here at Coruscant; we don't want anyone outside the system to get even a hint of what we're doing."

Fey'lya inclined his head slightly. "As you wish. Will tomorrow morning be sufficiently early?"

"Yes." Mon Mothma looked at Karrde. "We'll need the fleet's coordinates."

"Of course," Karrde agreed. "I'll supply them tomorrow morning."

Fey'lya snorted. "Let me remind you, Captain Karrde-"

"Unless, of course, Councilor," Karrde continued smoothly, "you'd prefer I leave Coruscant tonight and offer the location to the highest bidder."

Fey'lya glared at him, his fur flattening. But there was nothing he could do about it, and he knew it. "In the morning, then," he growled.

"Good," Karrde nodded. "If that's all, then, I believe I'll return to my quarters and rest awhile before dinner."

He looked across at Leia : and suddenly, there was something different in his face or his sense. She nodded fractionally, and his gaze slid unconcernedly away from her as he stood up. "Mon Mothma; Councilor Fey'lya," he said, nodding to each in turn. "It's been interesting."

"We'll see you in the morning," Fey'lya said darkly.

A faintly sardonic smile touched Karrde's lips. "Of course.

"Then I declare this meeting adjourned," Mon Mothma said, making it official.

"Let's go," Leia murmured to Han as the others began collecting their data cards together.

"What's going on?" he murmured back.

"I think Karrde wants to talk," she told him. "Come on-I don't want to get bogged down here talking to Mon Mothma."

"Yeah, well, you go on," Han said, his voice oddly preoccupied.

She frowned at him. "You sure?"

"Yeah," he said. His eyes flicked over her shoulder, and she glanced around in time to see Fey'lya stride from the room. "Go on. I'll catch up with you."

"All right," she said, frowning at him.

"It's okay," he assured her, reaching down to squeeze her hand. "I just need to talk to Fey'lya for a minute."

"What about?"

"Personal stuff." He tried one of those lopsided smiles she usually found so endearing. It didn't look nearly so innocent this time as it normally did. "Hey-it's okay," he repeated. "I'm just going to talk to him. Trust me.

"I've heard that before," Leia sighed. But Luke had already left the room, and Karrde was on his way out : and Mon Mothma had that look about her that signified that she was about to come over and ask Leia for a favor. "Just try to be diplomatic, all right?"

His eyes flicked over her shoulder again. "Sure," he said. "Trust me.

Fey'lya was heading down the Grand Corridor toward the Assemblage chamber when Han caught sight of him, walking with that peculiar gait of someone who's in a terrific hurry but doesn't want anyone else to know it. "Hey!" Han called. "Councilor Fey'lya!"

The only response was a brief flush of pale red across the nearest of the line of ch'hala trees. Glowering at the back of Fey'lya's head, Han lengthened his stride, and within a dozen quick paces had caught up with the other. "I'd like a word with you, Councilor," he said.

Fey'lya didn't look at him. "We have nothing to discuss," he said.

"Oh, I think we do," Han said, falling into step beside him. "Like maybe trying to find a way out of the jam you're in here."

"I thought your female was the diplomat of the family," Fey'lya sniffed, throwing a sideways look at Han's shirtfront.

"We take turns," Han told him, trying real hard not to dislike the other. "See, what got you into trouble here was trying to play politics by Bothan rules. That bank thing made Ackbar look bad, so like any good Bothan, you jumped on him. Trouble is, no one else jumped with you, so you were left there all alone with your neck stuck way out and your political reputation on the line. You don t know how to back out gracefully, and you figure the only way to salvage your prestige is to make sure Ackbar goes down."

"Indeed?" Fey'lya said acidly. "Did it ever occur to you that I might have stuck my neck out, as you put it, because I truly believed Ackbar was guilty of treason?"

"Not really, no," Han told him. "But a lot of other people think that, and that's what's got your reputation on the line. They can't imagine anyone making such a fuss without some proof."

"What makes you think I haven't any proof?"

"For starters, the fact that you haven't shown it," Han said bluntly. "Then there's the fact that you sent Breil'lya scrambling out to New Cov to try and make some sort of high-prestige deal with Senator Bel Iblis. That is what Breil'lya was doing out there, isn't it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Fey'lya muttered.

"Right. And that's the third thing: the fact that five minutes ago you were ready to throw Bel Iblis to the cravers if it would buy you enough time to bring in the Katana fleet."

Abruptly, Fey'lya stopped. "Let me speak frankly with you, Captain Solo," he said, still not looking directly at Han's face. "Whether you understand my motivations or not, I certainly understand yours. You hope to bring the Katana fleet to Coruscant yourself; and with that leverage to force my downfall and Ackbar's reinstatement."

"No," Han said tiredly, shaking his head. "That's the whole point, Councilor. Leia and the others don't play by Bothan rules. They make decisions based on evidence, not prestige. If Ackbar is guilty, he gets punished; if he's innocent, he gets released. It's that simple."

Fey'lya smiled bitterly. "Take my advice, Captain Solo, and stick with smuggling and fighting and other things you understand. The private rules of politics are far beyond you."

"You're making a mistake, Councilor," Han said, trying one last time. "You can back out now without losing anything-you really can. But if you keep going, you risk bringing the whole New Republic down with you."

Fey'lya drew himself up to his full height. "I do not intend to fall, Captain Solo. My supporters among the New Republic military will see to that. Ackbar will fall, and I will rise in his place. Excuse me, now; I must speak with Admiral Drayson."

He turned and stalked off. Han watched him go, the sour taste of defeat in his mouth. Couldn't Fey'lya see what he was doing? That he was risking everything on a single long-shot bet?

Maybe he couldn't. Maybe it took an experienced gambler to see how the odds were stacked here.

Or a politician who wasn't so set in his own system that he couldn't change.

Fey'lya reached the end of the Grand Corridor and headed to the left toward the Admiralty center. Shaking his head, Han turned and headed back toward Karrde's guest quarters. First the Coral Vanda, and now this. He hoped it wasn't the start of a trend.

Mara stood at the window of her room, staring out at the Manarai Mountains in the distance, feeling the oppressive weight of black memories gathering around her mind. The Imperial Palace. After five years, she was back in the Imperial Palace. Scene of important governmental meetings, glittering social functions, dark and private intrigues. The place where her life had effectively begun.

The place where she'd been when it had ended.

Her fingernails grated across the carved swirls of the window frame as well-remembered faces rose before her: Grand Admiral Thrawn, Lord Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, advisers and politicians and sycophants by the hundreds. But above them all was the image of the Emperor. She could see him in her mind's eye as clearly as if he were staring in at her through the window, his wrinkled face frowning, his yellow-tinged eyes bright with anger and disapproval.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER

"I'm trying," she whispered to the words echoing through her mind. But even as she said it she wondered if it were really true. She'd helped save Skywalker's life on Myrkr; had come begging for his help on Jomark; and had now uncomplainingly come to Coruscant with him.

She wasn't in any danger. Neither was Karrde. There was no way she could think of why Skywalker would be useful to either her or any of Karrde's people.

She had, in short, no excuses left.

From the next room over came the faint sound of a door opening and closing: Karrde, returned from his meeting. Turning from the window, glad of an excuse to drop this line of thought, she headed toward the door connecting their rooms.

Karrde got there first. "Mara?" he said, opening the door and poking his head through. "Come in here, please."

He was standing by the room's computer terminal when she arrived. One look at his face was all she needed. "What's gone wrong?" she asked.

"I'm not entirely sure," he said, pulling a data card from the terminal's copy slot. "That Bothan on the Council put up a surprising amount of resistance to our offer. He basically forced Mon Mothma to hold off on any serious retrieval mission until the location's been checked out. He's getting a ship set up now for a morning flight."

Mara frowned. "A double-cross?"

"Possibly, but I can't see any point to it." Karrde shook his head. "Thrawn already has Hoffner. He'll get to the fleet soon enough. No, I think it more likely Fey'lya's playing internal politics here, perhaps connected to his campaign against Admiral Ackbar. But I'd rather not take any chances."

"I've heard stories about internal Bothan politics," Mara agreed grimly. "What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to leave tonight for the Trogon system," he said, handing her the data card. "Best guess is that's where Aves will have holed up. Make contact and tell him I want everything we have that can both fly and fight to rendezvous with me at the Katana fleet as soon as possible."

Mara took the card gingerly, her fingers tingling at the touch of the cool plastic. There it was, in her hands: the Katana fleet. A lifetime's worth of wealth or power : "I may have trouble persuading Aves to trust me," she warned.

"I don't think so," Karrde said. "The Imperials will have reinstated the hunt for our group by now-that alone should convince him I've escaped. There's also a special recognition code on that data card that he'll know, a code the Grand Admiral couldn't possibly have extracted from me this quickly."

"Let's hope he doesn't have a higher opinion of Imperial interrogation methods than you do," Mara said, sliding the data card into her tunic. "Anything else?"

"No-yes," Karrde corrected himself. "Tell Ghent I'd like him to come to Coruscant instead of going to the Katana fleet. I'll meet him here after all this is over."

"Ghent?" Mara frowned. "Why?"

"I want to see what a really expert slicer can do with that suspicious lump in Ackbar's bank account. Skywalker mentioned a theory that the break-in and deposit happened at the same time, but he said that so far no one's been able to prove it. I'm betting Ghent can do so."

"I thought this involvement in New Republic politics was supposed to be a one-shot deal," Mara objected.

"It is," Karrde nodded. "I don't want to leave an ambitious Bothan at my back when we leave."

"Point," she had to concede. "All right. You have a ship for me to use?"

There was a tap at the door. "I will in a minute," Karrde said, crossing to the door and pulling it open.

It was Skywalker's sister. "You wanted to see me?" she asked.

"Yes," Karrde nodded in greeting. "I believe you know my associate, Mara Jade?"

"We met briefly when you arrived on Coruscant," Organa Solo nodded. For a moment her eyes met Mara's, and Mara wondered uneasily how much Skywalker had told her.

"I need Mara to go on an errand for me," Karrde said, glancing both directions down the corridor before closing the door. "She'll need a fast, long-range ship."

"I can get her one," Organa Solo said. "Will a reconnaissance Y-wing do, Mara?"

"That'll be fine," Mara said shortly.

"I'll call the spaceport and make arrangements." She looked back at Karrde. "Anything else?"

"Yes," Karrde said. "I want to know if you can throw together a tech team and get it into space tonight."

"Councilor Fey'lya's already sending a team," she reminded him.

"I know that. I want yours to get there first."

She studied him a moment. "How big a team do you want?"

"Nothing too elaborate," Karrde told her. "A small transport or freighter, perhaps a starfighter squadron if you can find one that doesn't mind risking official wrath. The point is not to have Fey'lya's presumablly handpicked crew the only ones there."

Mara opened her mouth; closed it again without speaking. If Karrde wanted Organa Solo to know that his own people would also be coming, he would tell her himself. Karrde glanced at her, back at Organa Solo. "Can you do it?"

"I think so," she said. "Fey'lya has built up a lot of support in the military, but there are enough people who would rather have Admiral Ackbar back in charge."

"Here are the coordinates," Karrde said, handing her a data card. "The sooner you can get the team moving, the better."

"It'll be gone in two hours," Organa Solo promised.

"Good," Karrde nodded, his face hardening. "There's just one more thing, then. I want you to understand that there are exactly two reasons why I'm doing this. First, as gratitude to your brother for risking his life to help Mara rescue me; and second, to get the Imperials off my back by eliminating their chief reason to hunt me down. That's all. As far as your war and your internal politics are concerned, my organization intends to remain completely neutral. Is that clear?"

Organa Solo nodded. "Very clear," she said.

"Good. You'd better get moving, then. It's a long way to the fleet, and, you'll want as much head start on Fey'lya as you can get."

"Agreed." Organa Solo looked at Mara. "Come on, Mara. Let's get you your ship."

The comm beside Wedge Antilles' bunk buzzed its annoying call-up signal. Groaning under his breath, he groped in the darkness and slapped in the general direction of the switch. "Come on, give me a break, huh?" he pleaded. "I'm still running on Ando time."

"It's Luke, Wedge," a familiar voice said. "Sorry to drag you out of bed, but I need a favor. You feel like maybe getting your people into some trouble?"

"When aren't we in trouble?" Wedge countered, coming fully awake. "What's the deal?"

"Get your pilots together and meet me at the spaceport in an hour," Luke told him. "Docking Pad 15. We've got an old transport; we should be able to fit all your X-wings aboard."

"It's a long trip, then?"

"A few days," Luke said. "I can't tell you any more than that right now."

"You're the boss," Wedge said. "We'll be there in one hour."

"See you then. And thanks."

Wedge keyed off and rolled out of bed, feeling a stirring of old excitement. He'd seen a lot of action in the decade he'd been with the Rebellion and New Republic; a lot of flying, a lot of fighting. But somehow, the missions he remembered as being the most interesting always seemed to be the ones where Luke Skywalker was also involved. He wasn't sure why; maybe Jedi just had a knack for that.

He hoped so. Between politics on Coruscant and cleaning up after Imperial raids across the New Republic, things were getting more and more frustrating around here. A change would do him good.

Keying on the light, he pulled a fresh tunic out of his wardrobe and started getting dressed.

There was no problem getting the midnight transport off Coruscant; Leia's authorization guaranteed that. But a freighter with a cargo consisting of a dozen X-wings was unusual enough to spark comment and speculation : and it was inevitable that the speculation would eventually reach the ears of one of Fey'lya's supporters.

By morning, he knew everything.

"This goes well beyond internal political infighting," he snarled at Leia, his fur rippling back and forth like short stalks of grain caught in a succession of dust devils. "It was blatantly illegal. If not treasonous."

"I'm not sure I'd go quite that far," Mon Mothma said. But she looked troubled. "Why did you do it, Leia?"

"She did it because I asked her to," Karrde put in calmly. "And since the Katana fleet is technically not yet under New Republic jurisdiction, I don't see, how any activity related to it can be considered illegal."

"We'll explain proper legal procedure to you later, smuggler," Fey'lya said acidly. "Right now, we have a serious breach of security to deal with. Mon Mothma, I request an executive order be made out for Solo's and Skywalker's arrest."

Even Mon Mothma seemed taken aback by that one. "An arrest order?"

"They know where the Katana fleet is," Fey'lya bit out. "None of their group has been cleared for that information. They must be sequestered until the fleet has been entirely brought into New Republic possession.

"I hardly think that will be necessary," Leia said, throwing a look at Karrde. "Han and Luke have both handled classified information in the past-"

"This is not the past," Fey'lya interrupted her. "This is the present; and they have not been cleared." His fir flattened. "Under the circumstances, I think I Lad best take personal charge of this mission.

Leia threw a look at Karrde, saw her own thought reflected in his face. If Fey'lya was able to personally bring back the Katana fleet- "You're certainly welcome to come along, Councilor," Karrde told the Bothan. "Councilor Organa Solo and I will appreciate your company."

It took a second for that to register. "What are you talking about?" Fey'lya demanded. "No one's authorized either of you to come along."

"I'm authorizing it, Councilor," Karrde said coldly. "The Katana fleet is still mine, and will remain so until the New Republic takes possession of it. Until then, I make the rules."

Fey'lya's fur flattened again, and for a moment Leia thought the Bothan was going to launch himself physically at Karrde's throat. "We will not forget, this, smuggler," he hissed instead. "Your time will come."

Karrde smiled sardonically. "Perhaps. Shall we go?"

Chapter 27

The proximity alert warbled, and Luke straightened up in his seat. After five days, they'd made it. "here we go," he said. "You ready?"

"You know me, Han said from the pilot's seat beside him. "I'm always ready."

Luke threw a sideways glance at his friend. To all outward appearances, Han seemed perfectly normal, or at least as close to it as he ever got. But beneath the casual flippancy Luke had noticed something else over the past few days: a darker, almost brooding sense that had been with him since they left Coruscant. It was there now; and as he studied Han's face, Luke could see the tension lines there. "You all right?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, sure. Fine." The lines tightened a little further. "But just once I'd like them to find someone else to go off on these little jaunts across the galaxy. You know Leia and I didn't even get a day together? We didn't see each other for a whole month; and we didn't even get a day."

Luke sighed. "I know," he said. "Sometimes I feel like I've been running full speed since we blasted out of Tatooine with the droids and Ben Kenobi way lack when."

Han shook his head. "I hadn't seen her for a month," he repeated. "She looks twice as pregnant as she did when she left. I don't even know what happened to her and Chewie out there-all she had time to tell me was that those Noghri things are on our side now. Whatever that means. I can't get anything out of Chewie, either. Says it's her story, and that she should tell it herself. I'm about ready to strangle him."

Luke shrugged. "You have to face it, Han. We're just too good at what we do."

Han snorted. But some of the tension left his face. "Yeah. Right."

"More to the point, I guess, we're on the list of people Leia knows she can trust," Luke continued more seriously. "Until we find that information tap the Empire's got into the Imperial Palace, that list is going to stay pretty short."

"Yeah." Han grimaced. "Someone told me the Imperials call it Delta Sourse. You got any ideas who or what it might be?"

Luke shook his head. "Not really. Got to be close in to the Assemblage, though. Maybe even to the Council. One thing's for sure-we'd better get busy and find it."

"Yeah." Han stirred and reached for the hyperdrive levers. "Get ready :"

He pulled the levers; and a moment later they were again in the blackness of deep space. "Here we are," Han announced.

"Right." Luke looked around, an involuntary shiver running up his back. "Dead center in the middle of nowhere."

"Should be a familiar feeling for you," Han suggested, keying for a sensor scan.

"Thanks," Luke said, "but getting stuck between systems with a d,e,ad hyperdrive isn't something I want to get familiar with."

"I didn't mean that," Han said innocently as he keyed the comm. "I was talking about Tatooine. Wedge?"

"Right here," the other's voice came over the "Looks like we've got a target at oh-four-seven mark one-six-six," Han told him. "You ready to fly?"

"Ready and eager."

"Okay." Han took a last look out the viewport and keyed the cargo hatch release. "Go."

Luke craned his neck to look in the direction Han had indicated. At first all he could see was the normal scattering of stars, achingly bright against the total blackness around them. And then he saw them: the softer glow of a ship's running lights. His eyes traced the empty space between them, his brain forcing a pattern to the lights; and suddenly the image coalesced. "It's a Dreadnaught, all right."

"There's another one just past it," Han said. "And three more to port and a little below."

Luke nodded as he located them, a strange tingle running through him. The Katana fleet. Only now did he realize just how little he'd really believed in the fleet's existence. "Which one do we check out?" he asked.

"Might as well take the closest," Han said.

"No," Luke said slowly, trying to focus on the vague impression tingling through him. "No. Let's try:that one over there." He pointed to a set of running lights a few kilometers farther away.

"Any particular reason?"

"I don't really know," Luke had to admit.

He could feel Han's eyes on him. Then the other shrugged. "Okay," he said. "Sure. We'll take that one. Wedge, you getting all this?"

"Copy, transport," Wedge's voice confirmed. "We're shifting into escort formation around you. So far it looks clean."

"Good," Han said. "Stay sharp anyway." He keyed the transport's intercom into the circuit and glanced at his chrono. "Lando? Where are you?"

"Just inside the cargo hatch," the other answered. "We've got the sled loaded and ready to go.

"Okay," Han said. "We're heading in."

They were approaching their target Dreadnaught now, close enough that Luke could see the faint outline of reflected starlight that marked the edge of the hull. Roughly cylindrical in shape, with a half dozen weapons blisters arranged around its midsection and a bow that he'd heard once described as a giant clam with an overbite, the ship looked almost quaintly archaic. But it was a false impression. The Dreadnaught Heavy Cruiser had been the backbone of the Old Republic's fleet; and while it might not look as sleek as the Imperial Star Destroyer that had replaced it, its massive turbolaser batteries still packed an awesome punch. "How do we get aboard?" he asked Han.

"There's the main docking bay," Han said, pointing to a dim rectangle of lights. "We'll take the ship inside."

Luke looked at the rectangle doubtfully. "If it's big enough."

His fears proved groundless. The entrance to the docking bay was larger than it had appeared, and the bay itself even more so. With casual skill Han brought the transport in, swiveled it around to face the opening, and put it down on the deck. "Okay," he said, keying the systems to standby and unstrapping. "Let's get this over with."

Lando, Chewbacca, and the four-man tech team were waiting at the cargo hatchway when Han and Luke arrived, the techs looking somewhat ill at ease with the unaccustomed blasters belted awkwardly to their sides. "Checked the air yet, Anselm?" Han asked.

"It looks fine," the head of the tech team reported, offering Han a data pad for inspection. "Better than it should be after all these years. Must still be some droids on housekeeping duty."

Han glanced at the analysis, handed back the data pad, and nodded to Chewbacca. "Okay, Chewie, open the hatch. Tomrus, you drive the sled. Watch out for blank spots in the gravity plates-we don't want you bouncing the sled off the ceiling."

The air in the bay had a strangely musty odor about it; a combination of oil and dust, Luke decided, with a slight metallic tang. But it was fresh enough otherwise. "Pretty impressive," he commented as the group walked behind the repulsorlift sled toward the main hatchway. "Especially after all this time."

"Those full-rig computer systems were designed to last," Lando said. "So what's the plan, Han?"

"I guess we split up," Han said. "You and Chewie take Anselm, Tomrus, and the sled and go check out engineering. We'll head up to the bridge."

For Luke, it was one of the eeriest trips of his life, precisely because it all looked so normal. The lights in the wide corridors were all working properly, as were the gravity plates and the rest of the environment system. Doors leading off the corridor slid open automatically whenever any of the group strayed close enough to trigger them, revealing glimpses of perfectly maintained machine shops, equipment rooms, and crew lounges. The faint mechanical noises of idling systems whispered behind the sound of their own footsteps, and occasionally they glimpsed an ancient droid still going about its business. To all appearances, the ship might just as well have been abandoned yesterday.

But it hadn't been. The ships had been floating here in the blackness for half a century : and their crews had not left, but had died here in agony and madness. Looking down empty cross corridors as they walked, Luke wondered what the maintenance droids had made of it all as they cleared away the bodies.

The bridge was a long walk from the docking bay. But eventually they made it. "Okay, we're here," Han announced into his comlink as the blast doors between the bridge and the monitor anteroom behind it opened with only minor grating sounds. "Doesn't seem to be any obvious damage. What have you got on the sublight engines?"

"Doesn't look good," Lando reported. "Tomrus says that six of the eight main power converters have been knocked out of alignment. He's still running a check, but my guess is this tub's not going anywhere without a complete overhaul."

"Ask me if I'm surprised," Han countered dryly. "What about the hyperdrive? Any chance we can at least fly it somewhere in towing range of a shipyard?"

"Anselm is looking into that," Lando said. "Personally, I wouldn't trust it that far."

"Yeah. Well, we're just here to look the thing over, not get it moving. We'll see what kind of control systems we've got left up here and that'll be it."

Luke glanced up at the space over the blast doors. Paused for a second look at the elaborate name plaque fastened there. "It's the Katana," he murmured.

"What?" Han craned his neck for a look. "Huh." He looked oddly at Luke. "Was that why you wanted this one?"

Luke shook his head. "I guess so. It was just intuition through the Force."

"Han, Luke," Wedge's voice cut in suddenly. "We've got incoming."

Luke felt his heart jump. "Where?"

"Vector two-ten mark twenty-one. Configuration : it's an Escort Frigate."

Luke let out a quiet breath. "Better give them a call," he said. "Let them know where we are.

"Actually, they're calling us," Wedge said. "Hang on; I'll patch it through."

"-tain Solo, this is Captain Virgilio of the Escort Frigate Quenfis," a new voice came over Han's comlink. "Do you read?"

"Solo here," Han said. "Calling from aboard the Old Republic ship Katana-"

"Captain Solo, I regret to inform you that you and your party are under arrest," Virgilio cut him off. "You will return to your own vessel at once and prepare to surrender."

Virgilio's words, and the stunned silence that followed, echoed through the command observation deck above and behind the Quenfis's bridge. Seated at the main board, Fey'lya threw a mocking smile at Leia, a slightly less insolent one at Karrde, then returned his attention to the distant X-wing drive trails. "They don't seem to be taking you seriously, Captain," he said toward the intercom. "Perhaps lauching your X-wing squadrons would convince them we're serious."

"Yes, Councilor," Virgilio said briskly, and Leia strained her ears in vain for any signs of resentment in that voice. Most of the warship captains she'd known would be highly annoyed at the prospect of taking line orders from a civilian, particularly a civilian with negligible military experience of his own. But then, Fey'lya would hardly have picked the Quenfis for this mission if Virgilio hadn't been one of his staunchest backers. Just one more indication, if she'd needed it, as to who was really in charge here. "X-wings: launch."

There were a series of dull thuds as the two squadrons of starfighters left the ship. "Captain Solo, this is Captain Virgilio. Please respond."

"Captain, this is Wing Commander Wedge Antilles of Rogue Squadron," Wedge's voice cut in. "May I ask your authorization to order our arrest?"

"Allow me, Captain," Fey'lya said, touching the comm switch on the board behind him. "This is Councilor Borsk Fey'lya, Commander Antilles," he said. "Though I doubt you're aware of it, Captain Solo is operating illegally."

"I'm sorry, Councilor," Wedge said, "but I don't understand how that can be. Our orders came from Councilor Leia Organa Solo."

"And these new orders come directly from Mon Mothma," Fey'lya told him. "Therefore, your authorization is-"

"Can you prove that?"

Fey'lya seemed taken aback. "I have the order sitting here in front of me, Commander," he said. "You're welcome to examine it once you're aboard."

"Commander, for the moment the origin of the arrest order is irrelevant," Virgilio put in, annoyance starting to creep into his voice. "As a superior officer, I order you to surrender and bring your squadron aboard my ship."

There was a long silence. Leia threw a look at Karrde, seated a quarter of the way around the observation deck from her. But his attention was turned outward through the transparisteel bubble, his face impassive. Perhaps he was remembering the last time he'd been to this spot. "What if I refuse?" Wedge asked at last.

"Forget it, Wedge," Han's voice cut in. "It's not worth risking a court martial over. Go on, we don't need you anymore. Nice hearing from you, Fey'lya." There was the faint click of a disconnecting comlink-

"Solo!" Fey'lya barked, leaning over the comm as if that would do any good. "Solo!" He turned and glared at Leia. "Get over here," he ordered her, jabbing a finger at the comm. "I want him back."

Leia shook her head. "Sorry, Councilor. Han won't listen to anyone when he's like this."

Fey'lya's fur flattened. "I'll ask you one more time, Councilor. If you refuse-"

He never had a chance to finish the threat. Something flickered at the edge of Leia's peripheral vision; and even as she turned to look, the Quenfis's alarms went off. "What-?" Fey'lya yelped, jerking in his seat and looking frantically around him.

"It's an Imperial Star Destroyer," Karrde told him over the blaring of the alarms. "And it appears to be coming this way.

"We got company, Rogue Leader," one of Wedge's X-wing pilots snapped as the sound of the Quenfis's alarms came hooting over the comm. "Star Destroyer; bearing one-seven-eight mark eighty-six."

"Got it," Wedge said, turning his ship away from its confrontation with the Quenfis's approaching starfighters and bringing it around in a tight one-eighty. It was a Star Destroyer, all right: almost straight across from the Quenfis, with the Katana dead center between them. "Luke?" he called.

"We see it," Luke's voice came back tightly. "We're heading for the docking bay now.

"Right-hold it," Wedge interrupted himself. Against the dark bulk of the Star Destroyer's lower hull a large group of drive trails had suddenly appeared. "They're launching," he told the other. "Twelve marks-drop ships, probably, from the look of the drive trails.

"So we hurry," Han's voice came on. "Thanks for the warning; now get back to the Quenfis."

The comlink clicked and went dead. "Like blazes we will," Wedge muttered under his breath. "Rogue Squadron: let's go."

Captain Virgilio was trying to say something on the open channel. Switching to his squadron's private frequency, Wedge kicked the X-wing's drive to full power and set off toward the Katana.

In the near distance, just beyond the drive trails of the Quenfis's X-wings, Rogue Squadron turned and blazed off in the direction of the Star Destroyer. "They're going to attack," Fey'lya breathed. "They must be insane."

"They're not attacking-they're running cover," Leia told him, staring at the scenario unfolding outside the bubble and trying to estimate interception points. It was going to be far too close. "We need to get over there and back them up," she said. "Captain Virgilio-"

"Captain Virgilio, you'll recall your X-wings at once," Fey'lya cut her off. "Navigation will prepare to make the jump to lightspeed."

"Councilor?" Virgilio asked, his voice sounding stunned. "Are you suggesting we abandon them?"

"Our duty, Captain, is to get out of here alive and sound the alarm," Fey'lya countered sharply. "If Rogue Squadron insists on defying orders, there's nothing we can do for them."

Leia was on her feet. "Captain-"

Fey'lya was quicker, slapping off the intercom before she could speak. "I'm in charge here, Councilor," he said as she started toward him. "Authorized by Mon Mothma herself."

"To blazes with your authority," Leia snapped. For a handful of heartbeats she had the almost overwhelming urge to snatch her lightsaber from her belt and send it slicing through that bland face:

With an effort, she choked the urge down. Violent hatred was the path of the dark side. "Mon Mothma didn't anticipate anything like this happening," she said, fighting to keep her voice as calm as she could. "Fey'lya, that's my husband and my brother out there. If we don't help them, they'll die.

"And if we do help them, they'll most likely still die," Fey'lya said coolly. "And your unborn children along with them."

An icy knife jabbed at Leia's heart. "That's not fair," she whispered.

"Reality is not required to be fair," Fey'lya said. "And the reality in this case is that I will not waste men and ships on a lost cause."

"It's not lost!" Leia insisted, her voice breaking with desperation as she threw a look out the bubble. No; it couldn't end like this. Not after all she and Han had survived together. She took another step toward Fey'lya-

"The Quenfis will withdraw," the Bothan said quietly; and suddenly, from some hiding place within the cream-colored fur, a blaster appeared in his hand. "And neither you nor anyone else is going to change that."

"Report from sensors, Captain," the officer at the Judicator's scan station called up to the command walkway. "All the other Dreadnaughts in the region read negative for life-forms."

"So they're concentrating on just the one," Captain Brandei nodded. "That's where we'll hit, then. The Rebels will be in far less of a hurry to open fire on a ship that has their own people aboard. Still just the one starfighter squadron moving to intercept?"

"Yes, sir. The Escort Frigate and other two squadrons haven't yet responded. They must have been caught off guard."

"Perhaps." Brandei permitted himself a slight smile. So it always went with rebels. They fought like crazed animals when they had nothing to lose; but give them a taste of victory and a chance to enjoy the spoils of war and suddenly they weren't nearly so eager to risk their lives anymore. One of many reasons why the Empire would ultimately defeat them. "Order the drop ships into defense formation," he instructed the communications officer. "And have Starfighter Command launch two squadrons of TIE fighters to intercept those X-wings."

He smiled again. "And send a message to the, Chimaera. Inform the Grand Admiral that we have engaged the enemy."

For a long minute Han gazed out the bridge observation bubble at the approaching Imperial ships, doing a quick estimate of times and distances and ignoring the fidgeting tech men waiting nervously at the bridge doorway. "Shouldn't we be going?" Luke prompted from beside him.

Han came to a decision. "We're not leaving," he said, thumbing on his comlink. "We'd get the transport out of the docking bay just in time to run into those drop ships and TIE fighters. Lando?"

"Right here," Lando's voice came tensely back.

"What's happening out there?"

"Imperials on the way," Han told him, moving over to the bridge fire-control panel and gesturing the techs to join him. "Rogue Squadron's moving to intercept, but it sounds like Fey'lya's crowd is going to run for it."

Lando swore under his breath. "We can't just sit here and let Wedge tackle them alone."

"We're not going to," Han assured him grimly. "Get busy back there and see what shape the power coupling to the turbolaser batteries is in. We'll check the fire control up here. And make it fast-once they break formation we won't be able to hit them."

"Right."

Han stuck the comlink back in his belt. "How's it look, Shen?"

"Looks pretty solid," the tech's muffled voice came from underneath the control board. "Kline?"

"Connections look good here, too," the other tech reported from a board across the room. "If we can get the computer to enable the system : there we go." He looked at Han. "You're all set."

Han sat down at the weapons panel, running his eyes over the unfamiliar arrangement of the controls and wondering if all this effort was more than just spitting in vacuum. Even these full-rigged, computer-centralized, slave-circuit-equipped Dreadnaughts still required over two thousand people to fly them.

But the Imperials wouldn't be expecting a derelict ship to fire. He hoped. "Here we go," he muttered to himself as he keyed for visual targeting. The drop ships were still flying in tight formation, using their overlapping shields to protect them from any loose shots from the approaching X-wings. The faster TIE fighters had caught up with them now, sweeping around the group on all sides and starting to pass them.

"You've got just one shot at this," Luke murmured.

"Thanks," Han growled. "I really needed to hear that." He took a deep breath, held it, and gently squeezed the fire control triggers.

The Katana lurched, and as the multiple blazes of turbolaser light flashed outward he felt the double thud of a disintegrating capacitor bank through the deck. Luke had been right-the ship's first shot had been its last. But it had been worth it. The laser bolts hit the drop ship formation dead center; and suddenly the whole Imperial force seemed to come apart in a blaze of multiple explosions. For a few seconds everything was hidden behind secondary explosions and clouds of debris. Then, through the destruction, a handful of ships shot out. A few more joined them, this group moving with the distinctive limp of damaged property.

"Looks like you took out five of the drop ships," Kline reported, peering through a set of macrobinoculars pressed tightly against his face. "A few of the TIE fighters, too.

"They're going into evasive maneuvers," Luke added.

"Okay," Han said, getting up from the chair and pulling out his comlink. "That's it for that game. Lando?"

"Whatever you just did, it made a real mess back here," the other's voice came back. "Took out the firecontrol power coupling and at least one of the generators. What now?"

"We get ready for a boarding party," Han told him. "Meet us in the portside main corridor just forward of the docking bay. We'll see what kind of defense we can set up."

"Right."

Han shut down the comlink. "Let's go," he said.

"This had better be some defense," Luke commented as they left the bridge and headed back down the portside corridor. "Especially when we're talking maybe forty-to-one odds."

Han shook his head. "Never tell me the odds," he admonished the other, glancing at his chrono. It could be any time now. "Besides, you never know when the odds are going to change."

"We can't just abandon them," Leia said again, dimly aware that she was talking to Fey'lya as if he were a child. "That's my husband and brother out there, and a dozen good X-wing pilots. We can't just leave them to the Imperials."

"One mustn't place personal considerations above one's duty to the New Republic, Councilor," Fey'lya said. His fur rippled, perhaps with appreciation of his own insight. But the blaster in his hand remained steady. "Surely you understand that."

"It's not just personal considerations," Leia insisted, fighting hard to keep from losing her temper again. "It's-"

"One moment," Fey'lya interrupted her, touching the intercom switch. "Captain? How soon to lightspeed?"

"Another minute," Virgilio's voice came back. "Perhaps two."

"As quickly as you can, Captain," Fey'lya said. He shut the intercom off again and looked back at Leia. "You were saying, Councilor?"

Leia consciously unclenched her teeth. If Fey'lya's aim would only shift-even a little-she might be able to risk jumping him. But as matters stood, she was helpless. Her rudimentary abilities with the Force weren't nearly strong enough for her to grab or deflect the blaster, and he was nearly a meter out of reach of her lightsaber. "Han and Luke are vitally important to the New Republic," she said. "If they die or are captured-"

"The Katana's firing," Karrde commented calmly, getting to his feet as if for a better view.

Leia glanced out the bubble as the distant Imperial ships were engulfed briefly in flame. "They know a great deal about the workings of the New Republic, Fey'lya. Do you want the Empire to get that knowledge?"

"I'm afraid you're missing the Councilor's point, Leia," Karrde said, walking over to where she sat. He passed in front of her, dropping a data pad casually onto the tracking console beside her as he did so. "You're concerned about your family, of course," he continued, walking on a couple of paces before turning to face Fey'lya. "Councilor Fey'lya has a different set of priorities."

"I'm sure he does," Leia said, her mouth suddenly dry as she looked sideways at the data pad Karrde had set down. On its screen was a short message.

Turn on the intercom and com.

She looked up again. Fey'lya's blaster was still pointed at her, but the Bothan's violet eyes were turned toward Karrde. Setting her teeth, Leia focused on the board behind him and reached out with the Force : and without even a click the intercom was on. Another effort and the comm was, too. "I don't understand," she said to Karrde. "What other priorities could Councilor Fey'lya have?"

"It's simple enough," Karrde said. "Councilor Fey'lya is motivated solely by his own political survival. He's running away from the fight because he's put his most ardent supporters aboard this ship and he can't afford to lose any of them."

Leia blinked. "He's what? But I thought-"

"That this was the normal crew of the Quenfis?"

Karrde shook his head. "Not at all. The captain and senior officers are all that remain, and they were mostly on his side in the first place. That's why Fey'lya wanted a few hours before leaving Coruscant: so that he could shift duty assignments around and make sure everyone aboard was fully loyal to him." He smiled thinly. "Not that any of them realized that, of course. They were given the impression that it was a special security arrangement."

Leia nodded, feeling cold all over. So it wasn't just the captain. The entire ship was on Fey'lya's side.

Which meant it was over, and she had lost. Even if she was somehow able to take out Fey'lya himself she had lost.

"So you can imagine," Karrde went on off handedly, "how reluctant Fey'lya is to risk losing any of them over anything so outmoded as loyalty to one's comrades. Especially after having worked so hard to convince them of how much he cared for the average fighting man."

Leia threw Karrde a sharp look, suddenly seeing where he was going with this. "Is that true, Councilor?" she asked Fey'lya, putting disbelief in her voice. "All this talk about being on the side of the military was nothing more than a play for political power?"

"Don't be foolish, Councilor," Fey'lya said, fur rippling with contempt. "What other use are soldiers to a politician?"

"Is that why you don't care if the men of Rogue Squadron die?" Karrde asked. "Because they prefer to stay out of politics?"

"No one cares if their enemies die," Fey'lya said coldly. "And all those who are not on my side are my enemies. He gestured with his bllaster. "I trust, Captain Karrde, that I need not say more."

Karrde raised his eyes from Fey'lya to the view outside. "No, Councilor." he said. "I believe you've said enough."

Leia followed his gaze. Between the Quenfis and the Katana, in twos and threes, Fey'lya's X-wing squadrons were heading to Wedge's support. Deserting the politician who had just defined the limits of his consideration for their welfare. "Yes," she murmered. "You've said enough."

Fey'lya frowned at her; but even as he started to speak the door to the bridge slid open. Captain Virgilio stood there, flanked by two soldiers. "Councilor Fey'lya," he said stiffly. "I respectfully request you return to your quarters. These men will accompany you."

Fey'lya's fur flattened. "I don't understand, Captain."

"We're closing off this room, sir," Virgilio said, his voice respectful but with an edge. Stepping over to the Bothan's seat, he leaned toward the intercom. "This is the captain," he called. "All hands to battle stations."

The alarm, promptly went off : and in Fey'lya's eyes Leia could see the sudden shock of understanding. "Captain-"

"You see, Councilor, some of us don't consider loyalty to be all that outmoded," Virgilio cut him, turning turning to Leia. "Councilor Organa Solo, I'd like you to join me on the bridge at your convenience. We've called for a Star Cruiser to back us up, but it'll take awhile to get here."

"We'll just have to hold them until then," Leia said, standing up. She looked at Karrde. "Thank you," she said quietly.

"Not for you or your war," Karrde warned her. "Mara and my people could be arriving at any time. I'd just as soon they not be facing a Star Destroyer alone."

"They won't," Virgilio said. "Councilor?"

"It's a lost cause," Fey'lya said, trying one last time as he surrendered his blaster to one of the soldiers.

"That's all right," Virgilio said, smiling tightly. "The whole Rebellion was considered nothing more than a lost cause. Excuse me, Councilor: I have a battle to run."

The Chimaera was touring the region Pellaeon had privately dubbed the Depot when the report from the aJudicator came in. "Interesting," Thrawn commented. "They've responded faster than I'd expected."

"Karrde must have decided to be generous," Pellaeon said, skimming the follow-up report. Five drop ships and three TIE fighters destroyed; one of the Dreadnaughts apparently under Rebellion control and joining battle. It looked like a major scrap was shaping up out there. "I recommend we send another Star Destroyer to assist, Admiral," he said. "The Rebellion may have larger ships on the way."

"We'll go ourselves, Captain," Thrawn said. "Navigation: set us a course back to the Katana fleet."

The navigation officer didn't move. He sat at his station, his back to them, unnaturally stiff. "Navigation?" Thrawn repeated.

"Admiral, message coming through from the sentry line," the comm officer reported suddenly. "Unidentified Lancer-class Frigate has entered the system and is approaching. They insist on speaking with you, personally and immediately."

Thrawn's glowing eyes narrowed as he tapped the comm switch : and suddenly Pellaeon realized who it must be aboard that ship. "This is Thrawn," the Grand Admiral said. "Master C'baoth, I presume?"

"You presume correctly," C'baoth's voice boomed from the speaker. "I would speak with you, Grand Admiral. Now."

"We're on our way to assist the aJudicator," Thrawn said, his eyes flicking to the still-motionless nav officer. "As you perhaps already know. When we return-"

"Now, Grand Admiral."

Moving quietly in the brittle silence, Pellaeon keyed for a course projection on C'baoth's ship. "It'll take at least fifteen minutes to bring him aboard," he murmured.

Thrawn hissed softly between his teeth; and Pellaeon knew what he was thinking. In the fluid situation of a spontaneous battle, a fifteen-minute delay could easily be the difference between victory and defeat. "Captain, order the Peremptory to assist the Judicator," the Grand Admiral said at last. "We'll remain here to consult our ally."

"Thank you, Grand Admiral," C'baoth said; and abruptly, the nav officer gasped and slumped in his chair. "I appreciate your generosity."

Thrawn reached to his board, and with a vicious flick of his wrist cut off the comm. He looked down into the crew pit and motioned to two bridge guards. "Sick bay," he told them, indicating the now-shivering nav officer.

"Where do you suppose C'baoth found that Lancer?" Pellaeon murmured as the guards helped the nav officer out of his seat and carried him aft.

"He most likely hijacked it," Thrawn said, his voice tight. "He's been sending messages for us over distances of several light-years, and he certainly knows how to take control of people. Apparently, he's learned how to meld the two abilities."

Pellaeon looked down into the crew pit, a shiver running up his back. "I'm not sure I like that sir."

"I don't much like it myself, Captain," Thrawn agreed, turning his head to look out the viewport. "It may be time," he added thoughtfully, "to reconsider our arrangement with Master C'baoth. To reconsider it very carefully."

Chapter 28

The Katana's turbolasers flashed, disintegrating the center of the Imperials' drop ship formation, and one of Wedge's X-wing pilots gave a war whoop. "Will you look at that?"

"Cut the chatter, Rogue Seven," Wedge admonished, trying to see through the cloud of flaming debris. The Imperials had gotten a bloody nose, but that was about all. "They've got lots more TIE fighters in reserve.

"Wedge?"

Wedge switched channels. "I'm here, Luke."

"We've decided not to leave the ship," Luke said. "We'd run right into the Imperials, and you know how well transports fight. You might as well get your group out of here and go whistle up some help."

The surviving drop ships, Wedge saw, were reconfiguring into an evasion pattern with the TIE fighters moving ahead to clear a path for them. "You'll never be able to hold out," he told Luke flatly. "There could be three hundred troops aboard those drop ships."

"We'll have a better chance against them than you will against a Star Destroyer," Luke retorted. "Come on, get going."

Wedge clenched his teeth. Luke was right, and they both knew it. But to abandon his friends here-

"Rogue Leader, this is Gold Leader," a new voice abruptly came on the comm. Requesting permission to join the party."

Frowning, Wedge threw a glance out the back of his canopy. They were there, all right: the Quenfis's two X-wing squadrons, coming up behind his group for all they were worth. "Permission granted," he said. "I didn't think Councilor Fey'lya was going to let you come out and play."

"Fey'lya doesn't have any say in it anymore, the other said grimly. "Tell you about it later. Captain's turned things over to Organa Solo."

"First good news I've heard today," Wedge grunted. "All right, here's the scheme. You detail four of your group to hit those drop ships; the rest of us will concentrate on the TIE fighters. With luck, we can clear them out before the next wave gets here. I don't suppose we've gut any backup of our own coming?"

"Captain says there's a Star Cruiser on the way, Gold Leader said. "Don't know when it'll get here, though."

Probably not soon enough, Wedge told himself silently. "Okay," he said aloud. "Let's do it."

A new set of drive trails had appeared near the Star Destroyer's docking bay: the second wave of TIE fighters had launched. That was going to be trouble down the line; but for the moment, the X-wings had this batch of Imperials outnumbered. And the Imperials knew it. They were spreading out, trying to draw their attackers apart where they couldn't cover each other. Wedge did a quick evaluation of the situation- "All X-wings: we'll do a one-on-one," he said. "Choose your target and go."

Closer now, he could see that two of the Imperial starfighters were the faster and more advanced TIE interceptors. Picking one of them for himself he broke formation and headed after it.

Whatever erosion the Empire had experienced in the way of ships and trained personnel over the past five years, it was quickly clear that their starfighter training program hadn't suffered a lot. Wedge's target TIE interceptor slipped adroitly away from his initial attack, doing a sideways skid that simultaneously braked him out of the X-wing's way and swiveled his lasers around to track along its flight vector. Wedge threw the X-wing into a drop loop, wincing as the other's shot came close enough to trigger the starboard engines' heat sensors, and turned sharply to starboard. He braced himself for a second shot, hut it didn't come. Bringing the X-wing out of its combination loop/turn, he looked around for his opponent.

"Watch your back, Rogue Leader!" the voice of Rogue Three snapped in his ear; ana Wedge again threw the X-wing into a drop loop just as another laser blast sizzled past his canopy. Not only had the Imperial not been fooled by Wedge's corkscrew maneuver, he'd even managed to follow him through it. "He's still with you," Rogue Three confirmed. "Go evasive-I can be there in a minute."

"Don't bother," Wedge told him. Through the spinning sky outside his canopy he'd caught a glimpse of another Imperial moving past him to portside. Hauling hard on his controls, he broke out of his loop and drove directly toward it. The TIE fighter jerked slightly as its pilot suddenly became aware of the threat bearing down on him and tried to veer out of the way.

Which was exactly what Wedge had counted on. Ducking beneath the TIE fighter, he threw the X-wing into a upward rolling turn, swinging perilously close to the Imperial's canopy and bringing his nose around to point back the way he'd come.

The TIE interceptor, which had instinctively swerved off Wedge's tail to keep from ramming one of his own ships, was caught flat-footed. A single point-blank blast from the X-wing's lasers blew it out of the sky.

"Nice flying, Rogue Leader," Gold Leader commented. "My turn."

Wedge understood. Throwing power to his drive, he shot away from the TIE fighter he'd used for cover, getting clear just as Gold Leader's lasers caught it. "How we doing?" Wedge asked as his canopy lit up briefly with the reflected light of the explosion.

"We're done," Gold Leader said.

"We are?" Wedge frowned, bringing his X-wing around in a wide circle. Sure enough, the only things visible nearby were X-wings. Apart from expanding clouds of glowing debris, of course. "What about the drop ships?" he asked.

"I don't know," the other admitted. "Gold Three, Gold Four; report."

"We got six of them, Gold Leader," a new voice said. "I don't know what happened to the seventh."

Wedge swore under his breath, switching comm channels as he glanced back toward the Star Destroyer. The new group of TIE fighters was coming up fast. No time for him to do anything for the Katana except maybe warn them. "Luke? You've got company coming."

"We know," Luke's tight voice came back. "They're already here."

They came out of the drop ship with lasers blazing, laying down a heavy cover fire as they moved toward the two sets of blast doors that led forward from the docking bay. Luke couldn't see them from where he was, any more than he could see Han's group waiting silently for them behind the edge of the portside blast doors. But he could hear the Imperials' blaster fire, and he could sense their approach.

And there was something about that sense that set the back of his neck tingling. Something not quite right about them :

His comlink beeped. "Luke?" Lando's voice came softly. "They're coming. You ready?"

Luke closed down his lightsaber and gave his handiwork one last check. A large section of the corridor's ceiling was now hanging perilously by a few strands of metal, ready to come crashing down at the slightest provocation. Beyond it, two sections of the wall were similarly boobytrapped. "All set," he told Lando.

"Okay. Here goes :

And suddenly, the pitch of a different class of weapons joined the cacophony as the defenders opened up on the Imperials. For a few seconds the two groups of weapons vied with each other. Then, with a screech of strained metal, the sounds were cut off.

The four techs were the first around the corner to where Luke waited, their faces showing the mixture of fear and nervousness and exhilaration of men who've just survived their first firelight. Lando was next, with Han and Chewbacca bringing up the rear. "Ready?" Han asked Luke.

"Yes." Luke indicated the rigged sections of ceiling and wall. "It's not going to hold them for long, though."

"Doesn't have to," Han grunted. "As long as it takes a few of them out it's worth it. Let's go."

"Hold it," Luke said, stretching out with the Force. Those strangely disturbing minds : "They're splitting up," he told Han. "About half are still at the portside blast doors; the other half are going to the starboard Operations section."

"Trying to flank us," Han nodded. "Lando, how well is that area sealed off?"

"Not very," Lando admitted. "The blast doors from the docking bay itself should hold for a while, but there's a whole maze of storage rooms and maintenance shops off of Operations that they can probably get back to the main starboard corridor from. There were too many doors for us to close it all off."

From the blast doors they'd just left came the dull thud of a shaped charge. "So this group keeps us busy thinking they're all here, while the other one tries to get behind us," Han decided. "Well, we didn't want to hold the whole corridor, anyway. Chewie, you and Lando take the others and fall back toward the bridge. Take out as many of them as you can on the way. Luke and I'll go across to starboard and see if we can slow that batch down a little."

Chewbacca growled an acknowledgment and headed oft' the it)ur tech men already on their way. "Good luck" Lando said, and followed.

Han looked at Luke. "Still in just the two groups?"

"Yes," Luke said, straining to locate the enemy. The strange feeling was still there :

"Okay. Let's go."

They set off, Han leading the way down a narrow cross corridor lined with the kind of closely spaced doors that indicated crew quarters. "Where are we going?" Luke asked as they hurried along.

"Number two starboard weapons blister," Han said. "Should be something nasty there we can use to flood the main corridor with-turbolaser coolant or something."

"Unless they have life-support gear, Luke pointed out.

"They don't," Han said. "At least, they weren't wearing any when they charged us. They had standard trooper air filters, but if we fill the whole corridor with coolant those won't do them much good. You never know," he added reflectively. "The coolant might be flammable, too."

"Too bad the Katana fleet wasn't made up of Star Galleons," Luke said, reaching out again toward the enemy. As near as he could tell, they were in the maze of rooms Lando had mentioned, working their way around toward the main starboard corridor. "We really could have used those anti-intruder defenses they come equipped with."

"If this was a Star Galleon, the Empire wouldn't be so anxious to take it away from us in one piece," Han retorted. "They'd just blow it out of the sky and be done with it."

Luke grimaced. "Right."

They reached the main starboard corridor; and they were halfway across it when Han suddenly stopped short. "What in blazes-?"

Luke turned to look. Ten meters down the corridor, sitting in a patch of darkness beneath burned-out light panels, was a large metal box resting at a tilt on a half-seen tangle of cables and struts. Twin blaster cannon protruded from beneath a narrow viewport; the corridor walls immediately around it were warped and blackened, with a half dozen good-sized holes visible. "What is it?" he asked.

"Looks like a scaled-down version of a scout walker," Han said. "Let's go take a look."

"Wonder what it's doing here," Luke said as they walked toward it. The floor beneath their feet was noticeably warped, too. Whoever had been in there firing had done a thorough job of it.

"Probably someone brought it out of storage during the hive virus thing that killed everyone," Han suggested. "Either trying to protect the bridge or else just gone crazy themselves."

Luke nodded, shivering at the thought. "It must have been a real trick to get it in here in the first place."

"Well, we're sure not going to get it out," Han said, peering down at the tangle of debris where the walker's right leg had been. He cocked an eyebrow at Luke. "Unless :?"

Luke swallowed. Master Yoda had lifted his X-wing out of a Dagobah swamp once:but Master Yoda had been far stronger in the Force than Luke was. "Let's find out," he said. Taking a deep breath, clearing his mind, he raised his hand and reached out with the Force.

The walker didn't even quiver. Luke tried again; and again. But it was no use. Either the machine was wedged too tightly against walls and ceiling to move, or Luke simply didn't have the strength to lift it.

"Well, never mind," Han said, glancing back down the corridor. "It would have been nice to have it mobile-we could have put it in that big monitor room behind the bridge and picked off anyone who came close. But we can use it here, too. Let's see if we can get in."

Holstering his blaster, he climbed up the single remaining leg. "They're getting closer," Luke warned him, looking uneasily back down the corridor. "Another couple of minutes and they'll be in sight."

"Better get around behind me," Han said. He was at the walker's side door now, and with a grunt be pulled it open-

"What?" Luke asked sharply as Han's sense abruptly changed.

"You don't want to know," Han told him grimly. Visibly bracing himself, he ducked down and climbed inside. "Still has power," he called, his voice echoing slightly. "Let's see :"

Above Luke, the blaster cannon traversed a few degrees. "Still has maneuverability," Han added with satisfaction. "Great."

Luke had made it to the top of the leg now, easing carefully past sharp edges. Whoever the walker had been fighting against had put up a good fight. The back of his mind tingled- "They're coming," he hissed to Han, slipping off the leg and landing silently on the deck. Dropping into a crouch, he peered back through the gap between the angled leg and the main part of the walker, hoping the darkness would be adequate to conceal him.

He'd gotten out of sight just in time. The Imperials were moving swiftly toward them down the corridor, spread out in a properly cautious military formation. The two point men paused as they caught sight of the broken walker, probably trying to decide whether to risk a straight advance or to give up the element of surprise by laying down cover fire. Whoever was in charge opted for a compromise; the point men glided forward while the rest of the party dropped prone or hugged the corridor walls.

Han let them get right up to the base of the walker. Then, swiveling the blaster cannon over their heads, he opened up on the main group.

The answering fire came instantly; but it was no contest at all. Han systematically raked the walls and the floor, driving back the handful who'd been fortunate enough to have a nearby doorway to duck into and annihilating those who hadn't. The two point men reacted instantly, one of them firing upward toward the viewport, the other scrambling up the leg toward the side door.

He reached the top to find Luke waiting for him. His companion down below got three shots off-all deflected-before the lightsaber found him, too.

Abruptly, the blaster cannon stopped firing. Luke glanced down the corridor, reaching out with the Force. "There are still three of them left," he warned as Han opened the walker's door and squeezed out.

"Leave 'em," Han said, climbing carefully down the back of the damaged leg and consulting his chrono. "We need to get back to Lando and Chewie." He threw Luke a mirthless grin. "Besides, the actuator crystals just burned up. Let's get going before they figure that out."

The first wave of TIE fighters had been destroyed, as had all but one of the drop ships. The Rebel Escort Frigate and its X-wings were now engaged with Squadrons One and Three, and appeared to be holding their own quite well.

And Captain Brandei was no longer smiling.

"Squadron Four launching now," Starfighter Control announced. "Squadrons Five and Six are awaiting your orders."

"Order them to stand by," Brandei instructed. Not that he had much choice in the matter. Five and Six were recon and bomber squadrons-useful enough in their particular areas of expertise, but not in straight battle against Rebel X-wings. "Anything further on the Peremptory?"

"No, sir. The last report from the Chimaera-before our shields went up-had their ETA as approximately 1519."

Only about seven minutes away. But battles had been lost in less time than that; and from the look of things, this could very well become one of them.

Which left Brandei only one real option. Much as he disliked the idea of moving into range of that Dreadnaught's turbolasers, he was going to have to take the aJudicator into combat. "All ahead," he ordered the helm. "Shields at full strength; turbolaser batteries stand ready. And inform the leader of the boarding party that I want that Dreadnaught in Imperial hands now."

"Yes, sir." There was a dull roar through the deck as the sublight drive came up to power And, without warning, the roar was joined by the hooting of the ship's alarms. "Bandits coming out of lightspeed astern," the sensor officer snapped. "Eighteen craft-freighter class and smaller. They're attacking."

Brandei swore viciously as he punched for the appropriate display. They weren't Rebel vessels, not this group, and he wondered who in the Empire they could be. But no matter. "Come around to two-seven-one," he ordered the helm. "Bring aft turbolasers to bear on the bandits. And launch Squadron Six."

Whoever they were, he would soon teach them not to meddle in Imperial business. As to their identity : well, Intelligence would be able to ascertain that later from the wreckage.

"Watch it, Mara," Aves's voice warned over the comm. "They're trying to come about. And we've got TIE fighters on the way."

"Right," Mara said, permitting herself a sardonic smile. For all the good that would do. The bulk of the Star Destroyer's starfighters were already engaged with the New Republic forces, which meant that all Karrde's people were likely to get would be recon ships and bombers. Nothing they couldn't handle. "Dankin, Torve-swing down to intercept.

The two pilots acknowledged, and she returned her attention to the inconspicuous spot beneath the Star Destroyer's central sublight drive nozzle where her Z-95's lasers were currently blasting away. Beneath the shielding at that point was a critical part of the lower-aft sensor package. If she could take it out, she and the others would have free run of the relatively undefended underside of the huge ship.

With a sudden puff of vaporized metal and plastic, the lasers punched through. "Got it," she told Aves. "Lower-aft-central sector is now blind."

"Good job," Aves said. "Everyone: move in."

Mara pulled the Z-95 away, glad to be leaving the heat and radiation of the drive emissions. The Wild Karrde and other freighters could handle the job of tearing into the Star Destroyer's outer hull now; her small starfighter would be better utilized in keeping the TIE fighters away from them.

But first, she had enough time to check in. "Jade calling Karrde," she said into the comm. "You there?"

"Right here, Mara, thank you," came a familiar voice; Mara felt a little of her tension drain away. Right here, thank you, meant everything was fine aboard the New Republic ship.

Or as fine as could be expected while facing an Imperial Star Destroyer. "What's the situation?" she asked.

"We've taken some damage, but we seem to be holding our own," he said. "There's a small tech team aboard the Katana and they have the turbolasers operational, which may account for the Star Destroyer's reluctance to move any closer. No doubt they'll overcome their shyness eventually."

"They've overcome it now," Mara said. "The ship was under power when we arrived. And we're not going to be able to distract them for long."

"Mara, this is Leia Organa Solo," a new voice came on the comm. "We've got a Star Cruiser on its way."

"The Imperials will have backup coming, too," Mara said flatly. "Let's not be heroic to the point of stupidity, okay? Get your people off the Katana and get out of here."

"We can't," Organa Solo said. "The Imperials have boarded. Our people are cut off from the docking bay."

Mara looked across at the dark bulk of the Dreadnaught, lit only by its own running lights and the flickers of reflected light from the battle raging near and around it. "Then you'd better write them off," she said. "The Imperials aren't likely to be far away-their backup will get here long before yours does."

And as if cued by her words, there was a flicker of pseudomotion off to her left; and abruptly three Dreadnaughts in triangular formation appeared. "Mara!" Aves snapped.

"I see them," Mara said as a second triad flickered in behind and above the first. "That's it, Karrde. Get out of there-"

"Attention, New Republic forces," a new voice boomed over the channel. "This is Senator Garm Bel Iblis aboard the warship Peregrine. May I offer our assistance?"

Leia stared at the comm speaker, a strange combination of surprise, hope, and disbelief flooding in on her. She glanced up at Karrde, caught his eye. He shrugged slightly, shook his head. "I'd heard he was dead," he murmured.

Leia swallowed. So had she : but it was Bel Iblis's voice, all right. Or else an excellent copy. "Garm, this is Leia Organa Solo," she said.

"Leia!" Bel Iblis said. "It's been a long time, hasn't it?

I didn't expect. you to be out here personally. Though perhaps I should have. Was all this your idea?"

Leia frowned out the viewport. "I don't understand what you mean by all this. What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Captain Solo sent my assistant the coordinates and asked us to come along as backup," Bel Iblis said, a note of caution creeping into his voice. "I assumed it was at your request."

Leia smiled tightly. She should have guessed. "Han's memory sort of slips sometimes," she said. "Though to be honest, we haven't had much time since we got back to compare notes."

"I see," Bel Iblis said slowly. "So it wasn't actually an official request from the New Republic?"

"It wasn't, but it is now," Leia assured him. "On behalf of the New Republic, I hereby ask for your assistance." She looked over at Virgilio. "Log that, please, Captain."

"Yes, Councilor," Virgilio acknowledged. "And speaking for myself, Senator Bel Iblis, I'm delighted to have you along."

"Thank you, Captain," Bel Iblis said, and in her mind's eye Leia could see the other's famous smile. "Let's do some damage, shall we? Peregrine out."

The six Dreadnaughts had moved into encirclement formation around the Star Destroyer now, smothering it with a flood of ion cannon fire and ignoring the increasingly sporadic turbolaser blasts raking them in return.

"Mara's right, though," Karrde said, stepping close to Leia. "As soon as we can get the tech team off that ship, we'd better get them and run."

Leia shook her head. "We can't just leave the Katana fleet to the Empire."

Karrde snorted. "I take it you haven't had a chance to count how many Dreadnaughts are left out there."

Leia frowned. "No. Why?"

"I did a scan," Karrde said grimly. "Earlier, when you were arguing with Fey'lya. Out of the original two hundred Katana ships : there are fifteen left."

Leia stared at him. "Fifteen?" she breathed.

Karrde nodded. "I'm afraid I underestimated the Grand Admiral, Councilor," he said, an edge of bitterness seeping in beneath the studied urbanity of his voice. "I knew that once he had the location of the fleet he would start moving the ships away from here. But I didn't expect him to get the location from Hoffner this quickly."

Leia shivered. She'd undergone an Imperial interrogation herself once. Years later, the memory was still vivid. "I wonder if there's anything left of him."

"Save your sympathy," Karrde advised. "In retrospect, it seems unlikely that Thnvn needed to bother with anything so uncivilized as coercion. For Hoffner to have talked so freely implies the Grand Admiral simply applied a large infusion of cash."

Leia gazed out at the battle, the dark feeling of failure setting over her. They'd lost. After all their efforts, they'd lost.

She took a deep breath, running through the Jedi relaxation exercises. Yes, they'd lost. But it vas just a battle, not the war. The Empire might ha'e taken the Dark Force, but recruiting and training crewers to man all those Dreadnaughts would take years. A lot could happen in that time. "You're right," she told Karrde. "We'd do best to cut our losses. Captain Virgilio, as soon as those TIE fighters have been neutralized I want a landing party sent to the Katana to assist our tech team there."

There was no reply. "Captain?"

Virgilio was staring out the bridge viewport, his face carved from stone. "Too late, Councilor," he said quietly.

Leia turned to look. There, moving toward the besieged Imperial ship, a second Star Destroyer had suddenly emerged from hyperspace.

The Imperials' backup had arrived.

"Pull out!" Aves shouted, his voice starting to sound ragged. "All ships, pull out! Second Star Destroyer in system."

The last word was half drowned out by the clang of the Z-95's proximity warning as something got entirely too close. Mara threw the little ship into a sideways skid, just in time to get out of a TIE fighter's line of fire. "Pull out where?" she demanded, turning her skid into a barely controlled spin that had the effect of killing her forward velocity. Her attacker, perhaps made overconfident by the appearance of the backup force, roared by too fast for more than a wild shot in her direction. Coolly, Mara blew him out of the sky. "In case you've forgotten, some of us don't have enough computing power aboard to calculate a safe hyperspace jump."

"I'll feed you the numbers," Aves said. "Karrde-"

"I agree," Karrde's voice came from the Escort Frigate. "Get out of here."

Mara clenched her teeth, glancing up at the second Star Destroyer. She hated to turn tail and run, but she knew they were right. Bel Iblis had shifted three of his ships to meet the new threat, but even equipped with ion cannon, three Dreadnaughts couldn't hold down a Star Destroyer for long. If they didn't disengage soon, they might not get another chance-

Abruptly, her danger sense tingled. Again she threw the Z-95 into a skid; but this time she was too late. The ship lurched hard, and from behind her came the hissing scream of superheated metal vaporizing into space. "I'm hit!" she snapped, one hand automatically slapping cutoff switches as the other grabbed for her flight suit's helJet seals and fastened them in place. Just in time; a second hiss, cut off almost before it began, announced the failure of cabin integrity. "Power lost, air lost. Ejecting now."

She reached for the eject loop : and paused. By chance-or perhaps last-second instinct her crippled fighter was aimed almost directly at the first Star Destroyer s hangar entry port. If she could coax a little more power out of the auxiliary maneuvering system :

It took more than a little coaxing, but when she finally gripped the eject loop again she had the satisfaction of knowing that even in death the Z-95 would take a minor bit of revenge on the Empire's war machine. Not much, but a little.

She pulled down on the loop, and an instant later was slammed hard into her seat as explosive bolts blew the canopy clear and catapulted her out of the ship. She got a quick glimpse of the Star Destroyer's portside edge, an even quicker glimpse of a TIE fighter whipping past-

And suddenly there was an agonized squeal from the ejection seat's electronics, and the violent crackle of arcing circuits : and with a horrible jolt Mara realized that she had made what might very well be the last mistake of her life. Intent on aiming her crippled Z-95 at the Star Destroyer's hangar bay, she had drifted too close to the giant ship and ejected directly into the path of the Dreadnaughts' ion beam bombardment.

And in that single crackle of tortured electronics she had lost everything. Her comm, her lights, her limited maneuvering jets, her life support regulator, her emergency beacons.

Everything.

For a second her thoughts flickered to Skywalker. He'd been lost in deep space, too, awhile back. But she'd had a reason to find him. No one had a similar reason to find her.

A flaming TIE fighter roared past her and exploded. A large piece of shrapnel glanced off the ceramic armor that wrapped partially around her shoulders, slamming her head hard against the side of the headrest.

And as she fell into the blackness, she saw the Emperor's face before her. And knew that she had again failed him.

They were approaching the monitor anteroom just behind the Katana's bridge when Luke abruptly jerked. "What?" Han snapped, looking quickly around down the corridor behind them.

"It's Mara," the other said, his face tight. "She's in trouble."

"Hit?" Han asked.

"Hit and:and lost," Luke said, forehead straining in concentration. "She must have run into one of the ion beams."

The kid was looking like he'd just lost his best friend, instead of someone who wanted to kill him. Han thought about pointing that out, decided at the last second they had more immediate things to worry about. Probably just one of those crazy Jedi things that never made sense anyway. "Well, we can't help her now," he said, starting forward again. "Come on.

Both the starboard and port main corridors fed into the monitor anteroom, from which a single set of blast doors led the rest of the way forward into the bridge proper. Lando and Chewbacca were at opposite sides of the port corridor entrance way as Han and Luke arrived, huddling back from a barrage of laser fire and occasionally risking a quick shot know. "What've you got, Lando?" Han asked as he and Luke joined them.

"Nothing good, buddy," Lando grunted back. "There are at least ten of then' left. Shen and Tomrus were both hit-Shen will probably die if we don't get him to a medic droid in the next hour or so. Anselm and Kline are taking care of them inside the bridge."

"We did a little better, but we've still got a couple of them coming up behind us," Han told him, doing a quick assesment of the rows of monitor consoles in the anteroom. They would provide reasonable cover, hilt given the layout, the defenders wouldn't be able to retreat farther without opening themselves to enemy fire. "I don't think four of us can hold this place," he decided. "We'd better pull back to the bridge."

"From which there's nowhere else to go, Lando pointed out. "I trust you considered that part?"

Beside him, Han felt Luke brace himself. "All right," Luke said. "Into the bridge, all of you. I'll handle this."

Lando threw him a look. "You'll what?"

"I'll handle it," Luke repeated. With a sharp snap-hiss he ignited his lightsaber. "Get going-I know what I'm doing."

"Come on," Han seconded. He didn't know what Luke had in mind, but something about the kid's face suggested it wouldn't be a good idea to argue. "We can backstop him from inside."

A minute later they were set: Han and Lando just inside the bridge blast doors, Chewbacca a few meters farther in under cover of an engineering console, Luke standing alone in the archway with lightsaber humming. It took another minute for the Imperials to realize that they had the corridors to themselves; but once they did they moved swiftly. Cover fire began ricocheting around the monitor consoles, and as it did so the Imperials began diving one by one through the two corridor archways into the anteroom, taking cover behind the long consoles and adding their contribution to the laser fire storm.

Trying not to wince back from the attack, Han kept up his own fire, knowing full well that he wasn't doing much more than making noise. Luke's lightsaber flashed like something alive and hungry, deflecting the bolts that came too close. So far the kid didn't seem to have been hit : but Han knew that it couldn't last. As soon as the Imperials stopped laying down random cover fire and started concentrating on their aim, there would be too many shots for even a Jedi to stay clear of. Gritting his teeth, wishing he knew what Luke had in mind, he kept shooting.

"Ready!" Luke shouted over the screaming of the bolts : and even as Han wondered what he was supposed to be ready for, the kid took a step back and threw his lightsaber to the side. It spiraled across the anteroom, spun into the wall-

And with a crack like thunder, sliced the anteroom open to space.

Luke leaped backwards, barely making it into the bridge before the blast doors slammed shut against the explosive decompression. Alarms whistled for a moment until Chewbacca shut them oft, and for another minute Han could hear the thudding of laser fire as the doomed Imperials fired uselessly at the blast doors.

And then the firing trailed off into silence : and it was all over.

Luke was already at the main viewport, gazing out at the battle taking place outside. "Take it easy, Luke," Han advised, holstering his blaster and coming up behind him. "We're out of the fight."

"We can't be," Luke insisted, his artificial right hand opening and closing restlessly. Maybe remembering Myrkr, and that long trek with Mara across the forest. "We've got to do something to help. The Imperials will kill everyone if we don't."

"We can't fire, and we can't maneuver," Han growled, fighting back his own feeling of helplessness. Leia was on that Escort Frigate out there : "What's left?"

Luke waved a hand helplessly. "I don't know," he conceded. "You're supposed to be the clever one. You think of something."

"Yeah," Han muttered, looking around the bridge. "Sure. I'm supposed to just wave my hands and-"

He stopped short:and felt a slow, lopsided smile spread across his face. "Chewie, Lando-get over there to those sensor displays," he ordered, looking down at the console in front of him. Not the right one. "Luke, help me find-never mind; here it is."

"Here what is?" Lando asked, stepping in front of the display Han had indicated.

"Think about it a minute," Han said, glancing over the controls. Good; everything still seemed to be engaged. He just hoped it all still worked. "Where are we, anyway?" he added, stepping over to the helm console and activating it.

"We're in the middle of nowhere," Lando said with strained patience. "And fiddling with that helm isn't going to get us anywhere."

"You're right," Han agreed, smiling tightly. "It's not going to get us anywhere."

Lando stared at him:and slowly, a smile of his own appeared. "Right," he said slyly. "Right. This is the Katana fleet. And we're aboard the Katana."

"You got it," Han told him. Taking a deep breath, mentally crossing his fingers, he eased power to the drive.

The Katana didn't move, of course. But the whole reason the entire Katana fleet had disappeared together in the first place-

"Got one," Lando called out, hunching over his sensor display. "Bearing forty-three mark twenty."

"Just one?" Han asked.

"Just one," Lando confirmed. "Count your blessings-after this much time we're lucky to have even one ship whose engines still work."

"Let's hope they stay working," Han grunted. "Give me an intercept course for that second Star Destroyer."

"Uh :" Lando frowned. "Come around fifteen degrees portside and down a hair."

"Right." Carefully, Han made the necessary course change. It was a strange feeling to be flying another ship by slave-rig remote control. "How's that?" he asked Lando.

"Looks good," Lando confirmed. "Give it a little more power."

"The fire control monitors aren't working," Luke warned, stepping to Han's side. "I don't know if you're going to be able to fire accurately without them."

"I'm not even going to try," Han told him grimly. "Lando?"

"Shift a little more to portside," Lando directed. "A little more : that's it." He looked up at Han. "You're lined up perfectly."

"Here goes," Han said; and threw the throttle control wide open.

There was no way the Star Destroyer could have missed seeing the Dreadnaught bearing down on it, of course. But with its electronic and control systems still being scrambled by Bel Iblis's ion attack, there was also no way for it to move out of the way in time.

Even from the Katana's distance, the impact and explosion were pretty spectacular. Han watched the expanding fireball fade slowly, and then turned to Luke. "Okay," he said. "Now we're out of the fight."

Through the Judicator's side viewport Captain Brandei watched in stunned disbelief as the Peremptory died its fiery death. No-it couldn't be. It simply couldn't. Not an Imperial Star Destroyer. Not the mightiest ship in the Empire's fleet.

The crack of a shot against the bridge deflector screen snapped him out of it. "Report," he snapped.

"One of the enemy Dreadnaughts seems to have been damaged in the Peremptory's explosion," the sensor officer reported. "The other two are on their way back here."

To reinforce the three still blasting away with their ion cannon. Brandei gave the tactical display a quick check; but it was a meaningless exercise. He knew full well what their only course was. "Recall all remaining fighters," he ordered. "We'll make the jump to lightspeed as soon as they're aboard."

"Yes sir."

And as the bridge crew moved to comply, Brandei permitted himself a tight smile. Yes, they'd lost this one. But it was just a battle, not the war. They'd be back soon enough:and when they did, it would be with the Dark Force and Grand Admiral Thrawn to command it.

So he would leave the Rebels to enjoy their victory here. It might well be their last.

Chapter 29

The repair party from the Quenfis got the anteroom hull breach patched in what was probably record time. The ship Luke had requested was waiting for him in the docking bay, and he was out in space again barely an hour after the destruction f the second Star Destroyer and the retreat of the first.

Locating a single inert ejection seat among all the debris of battle had been a nearly hopeless task for Karrde's people. For a Jedi, it was no trick at all.

Mara was unconscious when they found her, both from a dangerously depleted air supply and from what was probably a mild concussion. Aves got her aboard the Wild Karrde and set off at near-reckless speed toward the medical facilities of the Star Cruiser which had finally arrived. Luke saw them safely aboard, then headed back toward the Katana and the transport he and the rest of his team would be returning to Coruscant by.

Wondering why it had been so important for him to rescue Mara in the first place.

He didn't know. There were lots of rationalizations he could come up with, from simple gratitude for her assistance in the battle all the way up to the saving of lives being a natural part of a Jedi's duty. But none of them was more than simply a rationalization. All he knew for certain was that he had had to do it.

Maybe it was the guidance of the Force. Maybe it was just one last gasp of youthful idealism and na?vet?.

From the board in front of him, the comm pinged. "Luke?"

"Yes, Han, what is it?"

"Get back here to the Katana. Right away."

Luke looked out his canopy at the dark ship ahead, a shiver running through him. Han's voice had been that of someone walking through a graveyard:"What is it?"

"Trouble," the other said. "I know what the Empire's up to now. And it's not good."

Luke swallowed. "I'll be right there."

"So," Thrawn said, his glowing eyes blazing with cold fire as he looked up from the Judicator's report. "Thanks to your insistence on delaying me, we've lost the Peremptory. I trust you're satisfied."

C'baoth met the gaze evenly. "Don't blame the incompetence of your would-be conquerors on me," he said, his voice as icy as Thrawn's. "Or perhaps it wasn't incompetence, but the skill of the Rebellion. Perhaps it would be you lying dead now if the Chimaera had gone instead."

Thrawn's face darkened. Pellaeon eased a half step closer to the Grand Admiral, moving a little farther into the protective sphere of the ysalamir beside the command chair, and braced himself for the explosion.

But Thrawn had better control than that. "Why are you here?" be asked instead.

C'baoth smiled and turned deliberately away. "You've made many promises to me since you first arrived on Wayland, Grand Admiral Thrawn," he said, pausing to peer at one of the hologram sculptures scattered around the room. "I'm here to make sure those promises are kept."

"And how do you intend to do that?"

"By making certain that I'm too important to be, shall we say, conveniently forgotten," C'baoth said. "I'm hereby informing you, therefore, that I will be returning to Wayland : and will be assuming command of your Mount Tantiss project."

Pellaeon felt his throat tighten. "The Mount Tantiss project?" Thrawn asked evenly.

"Yes," C'baoth said, smiling again as his eyes flicked to Pellaeon. "Oh, I know about it, Captain. Despite your petty efforts to conceal the truth from me."

"We wished to spare you unnecessary discomfort," Thrawn assured him. "Unpleasant memories, for example, that the project might bring to mind."

C'baoth studied him. "Perhaps you did," he conceded with only a touch of sarcasm. "If that was truly your motive, I thank you. But the time for such things has passed. I have grown in power and ability since I left Wayland, Grand Admiral Thrawn. I no longer need you to care for my sensitivities."

He drew himself up to his full height; and when he spoke again, his voice boomed and echoed throughout the room. "I am C'baoth; Jedi Master. The Force which binds the galaxy together is my servant."

Slowly, Thrawn rose to his feet. "And you are my servant, he said.

C'baoth shook his head. "Not anymore, Grand Admiral Thrawn. The circle has closed. The Jedi will rule again."

"Take care, C'baoth," Thrawn warned. "Posture all you wish. But never forget that even you are not indispensable to the Empire."

C'baoth's bushy eyebrows lifted:and the smile which creased his face sent an icy shiver through Pellaeon's chest. It was the same smile he remembered from Wayland.

The smile that had first convinced him that C'baoth was indeed insane.

"On the contrary," the Jedi Master said softly. "As of now, I am all that is not indispensable to the Empire."

He lifted his gaze to the stars displayed on the room's walls. "Come," he said. "Let us discuss the new arrangement of our Empire."

Luke looked down at the bodies of the Imperial troops who had died in his sudden decompression of the Katana's bridge anteroom. Understanding at last why they'd felt strange to his mind. "I don't suppose there s any chance of a mistake," he heard himself say.

Beside him, Han shrugged. "Leia's got them doing a genetic check. But I don't think so."

Luke nodded, staring down at the lies laid out before him. Or rather, at the single face that was shared by all of the bodies.

Clones.

"So that's it," he said quietly. "Somewhere, the Empire's found a set of Spaarti cloning cylinders. And has gotten them working."

"Which means it's not going to take them years to find and train crews for their new Dreadnaughts," Han said, his voice grim. "Maybe only a few months. Maybe not even that long."

Luke took a deep breath. "I've got a really bad feeling about this, Han."

"Yeah. Join the club."

Continued in ... The Last Command