“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 partwas 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.”