Heir to the Empire pt2

"I see." Thrawn considered a moment, then half turned to look past Pellaeon's shoulder. "Rukh."

Pellaeon started as Rukh brushed silently past him; he hadn't realized the Noghri had followed them down. Thrawn waited until Rukh was standing at his side, then turned back to Colclazure. "Do you know the difference between an error and a mistake, Ensign?"

The entire bridge had gone deathly still. Colclazure swallowed again, his face starting to go pale. "No, sir."

"Anyone can make an error, Ensign. But that error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it." He raised a finger-

And, almost lazily, pointed.

Pellaeon never even saw Rukh move. Pieterson certainly never had time to scream.

From farther down the crew pit came the sound of someone trying valiantly not to be sick. Thrawn glanced over Pellaeon's shoulder again and gestured, and the silence was further broken by the sound of a pair of stormtroopers coming forward. "Dispose of it," the Grand Admiral ordered them, turning away from Pieterson's crumpled body and pinning Colclazure with a stare. "The error, Ensign," he told the other softly, "has now been corrected. You may begin training a replacement."

He held Colclazure's eyes another heartbeat. Then, seemingly oblivious to the tension around him, he turned back to Pellaeon. "I want a full technical/tactical readout on the last few seconds of that encounter, Captain," he said, all calm business again. "I'm particularly interested in his lightspeed vector."

"I have it all here, sir," a lieutenant spoke up a bit hesitantly, stepping forward to offer the Grand Admiral a data pad.

"Thank you." Thrawn glanced at it briefly, handed it to Pellaeon. "We'll have him, Captain," he said, starting back down the crew pit toward the stairway. "Very soon now, we'll have him."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon agreed cautiously, hurrying to catch up with the other. "I'm sure it's just a matter of time."

Thrawn raised an eyebrow. "You misunderstand me," he said mildly. "I mean that literally. He's out there right now, not very far away. And-" he smiled slyly at Pellaeon "-he's helpless."

Pellaeon frowned. "I don't understand, sir."

"That maneuver he used has an interesting side effect I suspect he didn't know about," the Grand Admiral explained. "Backfiring an acceleration compensator like that does severe damage to the adjoining hyperdrive. A light-year away, no farther, and it will fail completely. All we have to do is make a search along that vector, or persuade others to do our searching for us, and he'll be ours. You follow?"

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said. "Shall I contact the rest of the fleet?"

Thrawn shook his head. "Preparing for the Sluis Van attack is the fleet's top priority at the moment. No, I think we'll subcontract this one out. I want you to send messages to all the major smuggling chiefs whose groups operate in this area-Brasck, Karrde, Par'tah, any others we have on file. Use their private frequencies and encrypt codes-a little reminder of how much we know about each of them should help ensure their cooperation. Give them Skywalker's hyperspace vector and offer a bounty of thirty thousand for his capture."

"Yes, sir." Pellaeon glanced back down the crew pit, at the activity still going on around the tractor beam station. "Sir, if you knew that Skywalker's escape was only temporary . . . ?"

"The Empire is at war, Captain," the Grand Admiral said, his voice cold. "We cannot afford the luxury of men whose minds are so limited they cannot adapt to unexpected situations."

He looked significantly at Rukh, then turned those glowing eyes back on Pellaeon. "Carry out your orders, Captain. Skywalker will be ours. Alive . . . or otherwise."

Chapter 17

In front of Luke, the scopes and displays glowed softly as the diagnostic messages, most of them bordered in red, scrolled past. Beyond the displays, through the canopy, he could see the X-wing's nose, lit faintly by the sheen of distant starlight. Beyond that were the stars themselves, blazing all around him with cold brilliance.

And that was all. No sun, no planets, no asteroids, no cometary bodies. No warships, transports, satellites, or probes. Nothing. He and Artoo were stranded, very literally, in the middle of nowhere.

The computer's diagnostic package came to an end. "Artoo?" he called. "What've you got?"

From behind him came a distinctly mournful electronic moan, and the droid's reply appeared on the computer scope. "That bad, huh?"

Artoo moaned again, and the computer's summary was replaced by the droid's own assessment of their situation.

It wasn't good. Luke's reverse-triggering of the acceleration compensator had caused an unanticipated feedback surge into both hyperdrive motivators-not enough to fry them on the spot, but scorching them badly enough to cause sudden failure ten minutes into their escape. At the Point Four the ship had been doing at the time, that translated into approximately half a light-year of distance. Just for good measure, the same power surge had also completely crystallized the subspace radio antenna.

"In other words," Luke said, "we can't leave, we aren't likely to be found, and we can't call for help. Does that about sum it up?"

Artoo beeped an addition. "Right," Luke sighed. "And we can't stay here. Not for long, anyway."

Luke rubbed a hand across his chin, forcing back the sense of dread gnawing at him. Giving in to fear would only rob him of the ability to think, and that was the last thing he could afford to lose at this point. "All right," he said slowly. "Try this. We take the hyperdrive motivators off both engines and see if we can salvage enough components to put together a single functional one. If we can, we remount it somewhere in the middle of the aft fuselage where it can handle both engines. Maybe where the S-Foil servo actuator is now-we don't need that to get home. Possible?"

Artoo whistled thoughtfully. "I'm not asking if it'll be easy," Luke said patiently as the droid's response came up. "Just if it would be possible."

Another whistle, another pessimistic message. "Well, let's give it a try anyway," Luke told him, unstrapping his restraints and trying to wriggle around in the cramped confines of the cockpit. If he pulled off the back of the ejection seat, he would be able to get into the cargo compartment and the tools stored there.

Artoo warbled something else. "Don't worry, I'm not going to get stuck," Luke assured him, changing his mind and reaching for the in-cockpit pouches instead. The gloves and helmet seals for his flight suit were stored there; it'd be just as easy at this point to gear himself for vacuum and then get into the cargo compartment through its underside hatch. "If you want to be helpful, you might pull up the maintenance specs and find out exactly how I go about getting one of those motivators out. And cheer up, will you? You're starting to sound like Threepio."

Artoo was still jabbering indignantly over that characterization when the last of Luke's helmet seals cut off the sound. But he did sound less frightened.

It took nearly two hours for Luke to get past all the other cables and tubing in the way and remove the port engine hyperdrive motivator from its socket.

It took less than a minute more to discover that Artoo's earlier pessimism had been justified.

"It's riddled with cracks," Luke told the droid grimly, turning the bulky box over in his hands. "The whole shield casing. Just hairlines, really-you can barely see some of them. But they run most of the length of the sides."

Artoo gave a soft gurgle, a comment which required no translation. Luke hadn't done a lot of X-wing maintenance, but he knew enough to recognize that without an intact superconducting shield, a hyperdrive motivator was little more than a box of interconnected spare parts. "Let's not give up yet," he reminded Artoo. "If the other motivator's casing is all right we may still be in business."

Collecting his tool kit, feeling inordinately clumsy in zero-gee freefall, he made his way under the X-wing's fuselage to the starboard engine. It took only a few minutes to remove the proper access cover and tie back some of the interfering cables. Then, trying to get both his faceplate and his glow rod together in the opening without blinding himself, he peered inside.

A careful look at the motivator casing showed that there was no need to continue the operation.

For a long moment he just hung there, one knee bumping gently against the power surge vent, wondering what in the name of the Force they were going to do now. His X-wing, so sturdy and secure in even the thick of combat, seemed now to be little more than a terribly fragile thread by which his life was hanging

He looked around him-looked at the emptiness and the distant stars-and as he did so, the vague sense of falling that always accompanied zero-gee came flooding back in on him. A memory flashed: hanging from the underside of Cloud City, weak from fear and the shock of losing his right hand, wondering how long he would have the strength to hang on. Leia, he called silently, putting all the power of his new Jedi skill into the effort. Leia, hear me. Answer me.

There was no answer except for the echoing of the call through Luke's own mind. But then, he hadn't expected one. Leia was long gone, safe on Kashyyyk by now, under the protection of Chewbacca and a whole planet of Wookiees.

He wondered if she'd ever find out what had happened to him.

For the Jedi, there is no emotion; there is peace. Luke took a deep breath, forcing back the black thoughts. No, he would not give up. And if the hyperdrive couldn't be fixed . . . well, perhaps there was something else they could try. "I'm coming in, Artoo," he announced, replacing the access panel and again collecting his tools. "While you're waiting, I want you to pull everything we've got on the subspace radio antenna."

Artoo had the data assembled by the time Luke got the cockpit canopy sealed over him again. Like the hyperdrive data, it wasn't especially encouraging. Made of ten kilometers of ultrathin superconducting wire wound tightly around a U-shaped core, a subspace radio antenna wasn't something that was supposed to be field-repairable.

But then, Luke wasn't the average X-wing pilot, either.

"All right, here's what we're going to do," he told the droid slowly. "The antenna's outer wiring is useless, but it doesn't look like the core itself was damaged. If we can find ten kilometers of superconducting wire somewhere else on the ship, we should be able to make ourselves a new one. Right?"

Artoo thought about that, gurgled an answer. "Oh, come on now," Luke admonished him. "You mean to tell me you can't do what some nonintelligent wire-wrapping machine does all day?"

The droid's beeping response sounded decidedly indignant. The translation that scrolled across the computer scope was even more so. "Well, then, there's no problem," Luke said, suppressing a smile. "I'd guess either the repulsorlift drive or else the sensor jammer will have all the wire we need. Check on that, will you?"

There was a pause, and Artoo quietly whistled something. "Yes, I know what the life support's limitations are," Luke agreed. "That's why you'll be the one doing all the wiring. I'm going to have to spend most of the time back in hibernation trance."

Another series of whistles. "Don't worry about it," Luke assured him. "As long as I come up every few days for food and water, hibernation is perfectly safe. You've seen me do it a dozen times, remember? Now get busy and run those checks."

Neither of the two components had quite the length of wiring they needed, but after poking around a little in the more esoteric sections of his technical memory, Artoo came to the conclusion that the eight kilometers available in the sensor jammer should be adequate to create at least a low-efficiency antenna. He conceded, however, that there was no way to know for sure until they actually tried it.

It was another hour's work for Luke to get the jammer and antenna out of the ship, strip the ruined wire off the core of the latter, and move everything to the upper aft fuselage where Artoo's two graspers could reach it. Jury-rigging a framework to feed the wire and protect it from snagging took another hour, and he took a half hour more to watch the operation from inside to make sure it was going smoothly.

At which point there was nothing left for him to do.

"Now, don't forget," he warned the droid as he settled himself as comfortably into the cockpit seat as possible. "If anything goes wrong-or you even think something's about to go wrong- you go ahead and wake me up. Got that?"

Artoo whistled his assurances. "All right," Luke said, more to himself than to the droid. "I guess this is it, then."

He took a deep breath, letting his gaze sweep one last time across the starry sky. If this didn't work . . . But there was no point in worrying about that now. He'd done all he could for the moment. It was time now for him to draw upon inner peace, and to entrust his fate to Artoo.

To Artoo . . . and to the Force.

He took another deep breath. Leia, he called, uselessly, one last time. Then, turning his mind and thoughts inward, he began to slow his heart.

The last thing he remembered before the darkness took him was the odd sense that someone, somewhere, had in fact heard that final call. . . .

Leia . . .

Leia jerked awake. "Luke?" she called, propping herself up on one elbow and peering into the dimness surrounding her. She could have sworn she'd heard his voice. His voice, or perhaps the touch of his mind.

But there was no one. Nothing but the cramped space of the Lady Luck's main cabin and the pounding of her own heart and the familiar background sounds of a ship in flight. And, a dozen meters away in the cockpit, the unmistakable sense of Chewbacca's presence. And as she woke further, she remembered that Luke was hundreds of light-years away.

It must have been a dream.

With a sigh, she lay back down. But even as she did so, she heard the subtle change in sound and vibration pattern as the main sublight drive shut down and the repulsorlift kicked in. Listening closer, she could hear the faint sound of air rushing past the hull.

Slightly ahead of schedule, they were coming in to Kashyyyk.

She got out of bed and found her clothes, feeling her quiet misgivings gnawing with renewed force as she got dressed. Han and Chewbacca could make all the reassuring noises they wanted, but she'd read the diplomatic reports, and she knew full well how strong the undercurrent of resentment was that the Wookiees still harbored toward humans. Whether her status as a member of the New Republic hierarchy would make up for that was, in her view, entirely problematical.

Especially given her chronic difficulty in understanding their language.

The thought made her wince, and not for the first time since leaving Nkllon, she wished she'd had Lando use some other droid for his little voice-matching trick. Having Threepio and his seven-million-language translator along would have made this whole thing so much less awkward.

The Lady Luck was already deep into the atmosphere by the time she arrived in the cockpit, skimming low over a surprisingly flat layer of clouds and making smooth curves around the treetops that were occasionally visible poking through them. She remembered when she'd first come across a reference to the size of Kashyyyk's trees; she'd had a full-blown argument with the Senate librarian at the time about how the government could not afford to have its records data shot through with such clearly absurd errors. Even now, with them right in front of her, she found the things hard to believe. "Is that size typical for wroshyr trees?" she asked Chewbacca as she slipped into the seat beside him.

Chewbacca growled a negative: the ones visible above the clouds were probably half a kilometer taller than the average. "They're the ones you put nursery rings on, then," Leia nodded.

He looked at her, and even with her limited ability to read Wookiee faces his surprise was quite evident. "Don't look so shocked," she admonished him with a smile. "Some of us humans know a little about Wookiee culture. We aren't all ignorant savages, you know."

For a moment he just stared at her. Then, with an urf-urf-urf of laughter, he turned back to the controls.

Ahead and to the right, a tighter group of the extra-tall wroshyr trees had come into view. Chewbacca turned the Lady Luck toward it, and within a few minutes they were close enough for Leia to see the network of cables or thin branches linking them together just above cloud height. Chewbacca circled the ship partway around, bringing it within the perimeter; and then, with just a growl of warning, dropped sharply down into the clouds.

Leia grimaced. She'd never really liked flying blind, especially in an area crowded with obstacles the size of wroshyr trees. But almost before the Lady Luck was completely enveloped by the thick white fog they were clear of it again. Immediately below them was another cloud layer. Chewbacca dropped them into that one, too, and drove through it to clear air again-

Leia inhaled sharply. Filling the entire gap between the group of massive trees, apparently hanging suspended in midair, was a city.

Not just a collection of primitive huts and fires like the Ewok tree villages on Endor. This was a real, genuine city, stretching out over a square kilometer or more of space. Even from this distance she could see that the buildings were large and complex, some of them two or three stories high, and that the avenues between them were straight and carefully laid out. The huge boles of the trees poked up around and, in some places, through the city, giving the illusion of giant brown columns supporting a rooftop of clouds. Surrounding the city on all sides, strangely colored searchlight beams lanced outward.

Beside her, Chewbacca rumbled a question. "No, I've never even seen holos of a Wookiee village," she breathed. "My loss, obviously." They were getting closer now; close enough for her to see that the Cloud City-type unipod she'd expected was nowhere to be seen.

For that matter, there was no support of any kind visible. Was the whole city being held up by repulsorlifts?

The Lady Luck banked slightly to the left. Directly ahead of them now, at one edge of the city and a little above it, was a circular platform rimmed with landing lights. The platform seemed to be sticking straight out from one of the trees, and it took a few seconds for her to realize that the whole thing was nothing more or less than the remnant of a huge limb that had been horizontally cut off near the trunk.

A not insignificant engineering feat. Dimly, she wondered how they'd disposed of the rest of the limb.

The platform didn't look nearly big enough to accommodate a ship the size of the Lady Luck, but a quick glance back at the city itself showed that the apparent smallness was merely a trick of the tree's deceptive scale. By the time Chewbacca put them down on the fire-blackened wood, in fact, it was clear that the platform could not only easily handle the Lady Luck, but probably full-sized passenger liners, as well.

Or, for that matter, Imperial Strike Cruisers. Perhaps, Leia decided, she shouldn't inquire too deeply into the circumstances of the platform's construction.

She had half expected the Wookiees to send a delegation out to meet her, and she turned out to have been half right. Two of the giant aliens were waiting beside the Lady Luck as Chewbacca lowered the entry ramp, indistinguishable to her untrained eye except for their slightly different heights and the noticeably different designs of the wide baldrics curving from shoulder to waist across their brown fur. The taller of the two, his baldric composed of gold-threaded tan, took a step forward as Leia headed down the ramp. She continued toward him, using all the calming Jedi techniques she knew, praying that this wouldn't be as awkward as she was very much afraid it would be. Chewbacca was hard enough for her to understand, and he'd been living out among humans for decades. A native Wookiee, speaking a native dialect, was likely to be totally incomprehensible.

The tall Wookiee bowed his head slightly and opened his mouth. Leia braced herself-

[I to you, Leiaorganasolo, bring greetings,] he roared. [I to Rwookrrorro welcome you.]

Leia felt her jaw drop in astonishment. "Ah . . . thank you," she managed. "I'm-ah-honored to be here."

[As we by yourr presence arre honored,] he growled politely. [I am Ralrracheen. You may find it easierr to call me Ralrra.]

"I'm honored to meet you," Leia nodded, still feeling a little dazed by it all. Apart from the odd extended growling of his final r sounds, Ralrra's Wookiee speech was perfectly understandable. Listening to him, in fact, it was as if all the static she'd always had to plow through had suddenly cleared away. She could feel her face warming, and hoped her surprise didn't show.

Apparently, it did. Beside her, Chewbacca was urf-urf-urfing quietly again. "Let me guess," she suggested dryly, looking up at him. "You've had a speech impediment all these years and never thought to mention it to me?"

Chewbacca laughed even louder. [Chewbacca speaks most excellently,] Ralrra told her. [It is I who has a speech impediment. Strangely, it is the kind of trouble that humans find easierr to understand.]

"I see," Leia said, though she didn't entirely. "Were you an ambassador, then?"

Abruptly, the air around her seemed to grow chilly. [I was a slave to the Empirre,] Ralrra growled softly. [As was Chewbacca also, beforre Hansolo freed him. My captorrs found me useful, to speak with the otherr Wookiee slaves.]

Leia shivered. "I'm sorry," was all she could think of to say.

[You must not be,] he insisted. [My role gave me much information about the Empirre's forces. Information that proved useful when yourr Alliance freed us.]

Abruptly, Leia realized that Chewbacca was no longer standing at her side. To her shock, she saw that he was locked in a death grip with the other Wookiee, his bowcaster trapped uselessly against his shoulder by the other's massive arm. "Chewie!" she snapped, hand dropping to the blaster belted at her side.

She'd barely gotten hold of it, though, before Ralrra's shaggy hand landed in an iron grip on top of hers. [Do not disturb them,] the Wookiee told her firmly. [Chewbacca and Salporin have been friends since childhood, and have not seen each otherr in many yearrs. Theirr greeting must not be interrupted.]

"Sorry," Leia murmured, dropping her hand to her side and feeling like an idiot.

[Chewbacca said in his message that you requirre sanctuary,] Ralrra continued, perhaps recognizing her embarrassment. [Come. I will show you the preparations we have made.]

Leia's eyes flicked to Chewbacca and Salporin, still clinging to each other. "Perhaps we should wait for the others," she suggested, a little uncertainly.

[Therre will be no dangerr.] Ralrra drew himself up to his full height. [Leiaorganasolo, you must understand. Without you and yourr people many of us would still be slaves to the Empirre. Slaves, orr dead at theirr hand. To you and yourr Republic we owe a life debt.]

"Thank you," Leia said, feeling the last bit of residual tension draining away. There was a great deal about Wookiee culture and psychology that was still opaque to her; but the life debt, at least, she understood very well. Ralrra had formally committed himself to her safety now, that commitment backed up by Wookiee honor, tenacity, and raw strength.

[Come,] Ralrra growled, gesturing toward what looked like an open-cage liftcar at the edge of the platform. [We will go to the village.]

"Certainly," Leia said. "That reminds me-I was going to ask how you keep the village in place. Do you use repulsorlifts?"

[Come,] Ralrra said. [I will show you.]

The village was not, in fact, being held up by repulsorlifts. Nor with unipods, tractor anchorlines, or any other clever scheme of modern technology. Which made it all the more sobering for Leia to realize that the Wookiees' method was, in its own way, more sophisticated than any of them.

The village was held up by branches.

[It was a great task, a village of this size to build,] Ralrra told her, waving a massive hand upward at the latticework above them. [Many of the branches at the level desired werre removed. Those which remained then grew strongerr and fasterr.]

"It looks almost like a giant spiderweb," Leia commented, peering from the liftcar at the underside of the village and trying not to think about the kilometers of empty space directly beneath them. "How did you mesh them together like that?"

[We did not. Through theirr own growth they arre a unity.]

Leia blinked. "Excuse me?"

[They have grown togetherr,] Ralrra explained. [When two wroshyr branches meet, they grow into one. Togetherr then they sprout new branches in all directions.]

He growled something under his breath, a word or phrase for which Leia had no translation. [It is a living reminderr of the unity and strength of the Wookiee people,] he added, almost to himself.

Leia nodded silently. It was also, she realized, a strong indication that all the wroshyr trees in this bunch were a single giant plant, with a unified or at least an intermixed root system. Did the Wookiees realize that? Or had their obvious reverence for the trees forbidden such thinking and research?

Not that curiosity would help them all that much in this case. Dropping her gaze, she peered down into the hazy dimness beneath the liftcar. Somewhere down there were the shorter wroshyrs and hundreds of other types of trees that made up the vast jungles of Kashyyyk. Several different arboreal ecosystems were reputed to exist in the jungle, arranged in roughly horizontal layers descending toward the ground, each layer more deadly than the one above. She didn't know whether the Wookiees had ever even made it all the way down to the surface; it was for sure that no one who had would have taken the time for leisurely botanical studies.

[They arre called kroyies,] Ralrra said.

Leia blinked at the odd non sequitur. But even as she opened her mouth to ask what he was talking about, she spotted the double wedge of birds flying swiftly through the sky beneath them. "Those birds?" she asked.

[Yes. Once they werre a prize food to the Wookiee people. Now even the poorr may eat them.] He pointed toward the edge of the village above them, to the haze of light coming from the searchlights she'd seen during their approach. [Kroyies will come to those lights,] he explained. [Hunterrs therre await them.]

Leia nodded understanding; she'd seen visual lures of varying degrees of sophistication used to attract food animals on other worlds. "Don't all those clouds interfere with their effectiveness, though?"

[Through the clouds they work best,] Ralrra said. [The clouds spread the light. A kroyie will see it from great distances and come.]

As he spoke, the double wedge of birds banked sharply, climbing toward the clouds overhead and the lights playing against them. [Even so, you see. Tonight we shall perhaps dine on one of them.]

"I'd like that," she said. "I remember Chewie saying once that they were delicious."

[Then we must return to the village,] Ralrra said, touching the liftcar's control. With a creak of the cable, it started upward. [We had hoped to shelterr you in one of the morre luxurious homes,] he commented as they started upward. [But Chewbacca would not allow it.]

He gestured, and for the first time Leia noticed the homes built directly into the tree beside them. Some of them were multistoried and quite elaborate; all of them seemed to open up directly onto empty space. "Chewbacca understands my preferences," she told Ralrra, suppressing a shiver. "I was wondering why the liftcar went this far down past the village proper."

[The liftcarr is used mainly forr cargo transportation orr the ill,] Ralrra said. [Most Wookiees preferr to climb the trees naturally.]

He held out a hand to her, palm up; and as the muscles under the skin and fur flexed, a set of wickedly curved claws slid into sight from hidden fingertip sheaths.

Leia swallowed hard. "I didn't realize Wookiees had claws like those," she said. "Though I suppose I should have. You are arboreal, after all."

[To live among trees without them would be impossible,] Ralrra agreed. The claws retracted again, and the Wookiee waved the hand upward. [Even vine travel would be difficult without them.]

"Vines?" Leia echoed, frowning up through the liftcar's transparent roof. She hadn't noticed any vines on the trees earlier, and didn't really see any now. Her eyes fell on the cable running from the liftcar up into the leaves and branches above . . .

The dark green cable.

"That cable?" she asked carefully, nodding toward it. "That's a vine?"

[It a kshyy vine is,] he assured her. [Do not worry about its strength. It is strongerr than composite cable material, and cannot even by blasterrs be cut. Too, it is self-repairing.]

"I see," Leia said, staring at the vine and fighting hard against the sudden sense of panic. She'd flown all around the galaxy in hundreds of different types of airspeeders and spaceships without the slightest twinge of acrophobia, but this hanging out on the edge of nowhere without a solid powered cockpit around her was something else entirely. The warm sense of security she'd been feeling at being on Kashyyyk was starting to evaporate. "Have the vines ever broken?" she asked, trying to sound casual.

[In the past, it sometimes happened,] Ralrra said. [Various parasites and fungi, if unchecked, can erode them. Now, we employ safeguards which ourr ancestorrs did not have. Liftcarrs such as this one contain emergency repulsorlift systems.]

"Ah," Leia said, the momentary discomfort easing as she once again found herself feeling like a raw and not very bright diplomatic beginner. It was easy to forget that, despite their somewhat quaint-looking arboreal villages and their own animalistic appearance, Wookiees generally were quite at home with high technology.

The liftcar rose above the level of the village floor. Chewbacca and Salporin were standing there waiting for them, the former fingering his bowcaster and giving the little twitches that Leia had learned to associate with impatience. Ralrra brought them to a stop at the level of the wide exit ramp and opened the door, Salporin stepping forward as he did so to offer Leia his hand in assistance.

[We have made arrangements forr you and Chewbacca to stay at Salporin's home,] Ralrra said as they stepped out onto relatively solid ground again. [It is not farr. Therre arre transports available, if you wish.]

Leia looked out across the nearest parts of the village. She wanted very much to walk, to get out among the people and start getting the feel of the place. But after all the effort they'd put into sneaking her onto Kashyyyk in the first place, parading herself in front of the whole population would probably not be the smartest thing to do. "A transport would probably be best," she told Ralrra.

Chewbacca growled something as they came up to him. [She wished to see the village's structurre,] Ralrra told him. [We arre now ready to go.]

Chewbacca gave another growl of displeasure, but returned his bowcaster to his shoulder and strode off without further comment toward a repulsor sled parked at the side of the road perhaps twenty meters away. Ralrra and Leia followed, with Salporin bringing up the rear. The houses and other buildings began right at the edge of the matted branches, Leia had already noted, without anything more substantial than a few twisted kshyy vines between them and empty space. Ralrra had implied that the homes clinging to the trees themselves were the more prestigious ones; perhaps those here at the edge belonged to the upper middle class. Idly, she looked at the nearest of them, glancing into the windows as they passed. A face moved into view in the shadows behind one of them, catching her eye-

"Chewie!" she gasped. Even as her hand darted for her blaster the face vanished. But there was no mistaking those bulging eyes and protruding jaw and steel-gray skin.

Chewbacca was at her side in an instant, bowcaster in hand. "One of those creatures who attacked us on Bimmisaari is in there," she told him, reaching out with all the Jedi sense she could muster. Nothing. "At that window," she added, pointing with her blaster. "He was right there."

Chewbacca barked an order, sliding his massive bulk between Leia and the house and easing her slowly backwards, his bowcaster weaving back and forth across the structure in a covering pattern. Ralrra and Salporin were already at the house, each carrying a pair of wicked-looking knives they'd pulled from somewhere. They took up flanking positions beside the front door; and with a brilliant flash from his bowcaster, Chewbacca shot the door in.

From somewhere in toward the center of the village someone roared-a long, ululating Wookiee howl of anger or alarm that seemed to echo from the buildings and massive trees. Even before Ralrra and Salporin had disappeared into the house the howl was being taken up by other voices, rising in number and volume until it seemed as if half the village had joined in. Leia found herself pressing against Chewbacca's hairy back, wincing at the sheer ferocity in that call and flashing back to the Bimmisaari marketplace reacting to her jewelry theft.

Except that these weren't funny little yellow-clad Bimms. They were giant, violently strong Wookiees.

A large crowd had begun to form by the time Ralrra and Salporin emerged from the house-a crowd that Chewbacca paid no more attention to than he had the howling as he kept his eyes and bowcaster trained on the house. The other two Wookiees also ignored the crowd, disappearing around opposite sides of the house. They reappeared seconds later, their manner that of hunters who'd come up dry.

"He was there," Leia insisted as they returned to where she and Chewbacca stood. "I saw him."

[That may be true,] Ralrra said, slipping his knives back into hidden sheaths behind his baldric. Salporin, his attention still back on the house, kept his own knives ready. [But we found no trace of anyone.]

Leia bit at her lip, eyes flicking across the area. There were no other houses near enough for the alien to have crossed to without her and Chewbacca seeing him. No cover of any sort, for that matter, on this side of the house. On the other side, there was nothing but the edge of the village.

"He went over the edge," she realized suddenly. "He must have. Either worked his way under the village with climbing gear or else met a craft hovering down below."

[That is unlikely,] Ralrra said, starting past her. [But possible. I will go down the liftcarr, to try and discoverr him.]

Chewbacca reached a hand out to stop him, growling a negative. [You arre right,] Ralrra conceded, though clearly reluctantly. [Yourr safety, Leiaorganasolo, is the most important thing at this point. We will take you to safety first, and then make inquiries about this alien.]

To safety. Leia gazed at the house, a shiver running up her back. And wondered if there would ever again be such a thing for her as safety.

Chapter 18

The trilling code, coming from somewhere far behind him, startled Luke up out of his dreamless sleep. "Okay, Artoo, I'm awake," he said groggily, reaching up to rub at his eyes. His knuckles bumped into the visor of his flight helmet, and the impact did a bit to dissipate the fog still swirling through his mind. He couldn't remember exactly the circumstances under which he'd gone into hibernation, but he had the distinct feeling that Artoo had brought him out too soon. "Is anything wrong?" he asked, trying to track down exactly what it was the droid was supposed to be doing.

The trilling changed to an anxious-sounding warble. Still fighting to get his eyes properly focused, Luke searched out the computer scope for the translation. To his mild surprise, it was dark. As were all the rest of his instruments; and then it came back to him. He was trapped in deep space, with all the X-wing's systems shut down except power for Artoo and minimal life support for himself.

And Artoo was supposed to be winding a new subspace radio antenna. Twisting a slightly stiff neck, he turned halfway around to look back at the droid, wondering what the problem was-

And felt his muscles twitch with surprise. There, bearing rapidly down on them, was another ship.

He spun back around, fully awake now, hands jabbing for the bank of power switches and slapping them all on. But it was so much useless reflex. Even with shortcuts, it would still take nearly fifteen minutes to bring the X-wing's engines from a cold start to any serious possibility of flight, let alone combat. If the intruder was unfriendly . . .

Using the emergency maneuvering jets, he got the X-wing turning slowly around to face the approaching ship. The scopes and sensors were starting to come back on line again, confirming what his eyes had already told him: his visitor was a midsized, slightly dilapidated-looking Corellian bulk freighter. Not the sort of ship the Imperials usually used, and there were certainly no Imperial markings on its hull.

But under the circumstances, it was just as unlikely that it was an innocent freight handler, either. A pirate, perhaps? Luke reached out with the Force, trying to get a sense of the crew . . .

Artoo warbled, and Luke glanced down at the computer scope. "Yes, I noticed that, too," Luke told him. "But a normal bulk freighter might be able to pull that kind of deceleration if it was empty. Why don't you do a quick analysis of the sensor readings, see if you can spot any weapons emplacements."

The droid beeped an acknowledgment, and Luke gave the other instruments a quick scan. The primary laser cannon capacitors were at half charge now, with the main sublight drive about halfway through its preflight sequence.

And the flashing radio signal indicated that he was being hailed.

Bracing himself, Luke flipped on the receiver. "-need assistance?" a cool female voice said. "Repeating: unidentified starfighter, this is the freighter Wild Karrde. Do you need assistance?"

"Wild Karrde, this is New Republic X-wing AA-589," Luke identified himself. "As a matter of fact, yes, I could use some help."

"Acknowledged, X-wing," the other said. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Hyperdrive," Luke told her, watching the ship closely as it continued its approach. A minute earlier he'd rotated to face the freighter's approach; the other pilot had responded with a slight sidling drift of her own, with the result that the Wild Karrde was no longer in line with the X-wing's lasers. Probably just being cautious . . . but there were other possibilities. "I've lost both motivators," he continued. "Cracked shield cases, probably some other problems, too. I don't suppose you'd be carrying any spares?"

"Not for a ship that size." There was a short pause. "I'm instructed to tell you that if you'd care to come aboard, we can offer you passage to our destination system."

Luke reached out with the Force, trying to measure the sense behind the words. But if there was deceit there, he couldn't detect it. And even if there was, he had precious little choice. "Sounds good," he said. "Any chance you could take my ship, too?"

"I doubt you could afford our shipping rates," the other told him dryly. "I'll check with the captain, but don't get your hopes up. We'd have to take it in tow, anyway-our holds are pretty full at the moment."

Luke felt his lip twitch. A fully loaded bulk freighter couldn't possibly have managed the deceleration profile Artoo had noted earlier. Either they were lying about that, or else that normal-looking drive system had undergone a complete and massive upgrading.

Which made the Wild Karrde either a smuggler, a pirate, or a disguised warship. And the New Republic had no disguised warships.

The other pilot was talking again. "If you'll hold your present position, X-wing, we'll move up close enough to throw a force cylinder out to you," she said. "Unless you'd rather suit up and spacewalk across."

"The cylinder sounds fastest," Luke said, deciding to try a light verbal probe. "I don't suppose either of us has any reason to hang around this place. How did you happen to wind up out here, anyway?"

"We can handle a limited amount of baggage," the other went on, ignoring the question. "I imagine you'll want to bring your astromech droid along, too."

So much for the light verbal probe. "Yes, I will," he told her.

"All right, then, stand by. Incidentally, the captain says the transport fee will be five thousand."

"Understood," Luke said, unstrapping his restraints. Opening the side pouches, he pulled out his gloves and helmet seal and folded them into his flight suit's chest pockets where he'd have quick access to them. A force cylinder was relatively foolproof, but accidents could always happen. Besides which, if the Wild Karrde's crew was hoping to pick themselves up a free X-wing, shutting the cylinder down halfway through the operation would be the simplest and least messy way to dispose of him.

The crew. Luke paused, straining his senses toward the ship moving steadily toward him. There was something wrong there; something he could feel but couldn't quite track down.

Artoo warbled anxiously. "No, she didn't answer the question," Luke agreed. "But I can't think of any legitimate reason for them to be out this far. Can you?"

The droid gave a soft, electronic moan. "Agreed," Luke nodded. "But refusing the offer doesn't buy us anything at all. We'll just have to stay alert."

Reaching into the other side pouch, he pulled out his blaster, checked its power level, and slid it into the holster pocket built into his flight suit. His comlink went into another pocket, though what use it would be aboard the Wild Karrde he couldn't imagine. The emergency survival pack went around his waist, awkward to fasten in the cramped quarters. And last, he pulled out his lightsaber and fastened it to his belt.

"Okay, X-wing, we've got the cylinder established," the voice came. "Whenever you're ready."

The Wild Karrde's small docking bay was directly above him, its outer door gaping invitingly. Luke checked his instruments, confirmed there was indeed a corridor of air between the two ships, and took a deep breath. "Here we go, Artoo," he said, and popped the canopy.

A puff of breeze brushed across his face as the air pressures equalized. Giving himself a careful push, he eased up and out, gripping the edge of the canopy to turn himself around. Artoo, he saw, had ejected from his socket and was drifting freely just above the X-wing, making distinctly unhappy noises about his situation. "I've got you, Artoo," Luke soothed, reaching out with the Force to pull the droid toward him. Getting his bearings one last time, he bent his knees and pushed off.

He reached the airlock at the back of the bay a half second ahead of Artoo, grabbed hold of the straps fastened to the walls, and brought both of them to a smooth halt. Someone was obviously watching; they were still moving when the outer lock door slid shut. Gravity came back, slowly enough for him to adjust his stance to it, and a moment later the inner door slid open.

There was a young man waiting for them, wearing a casual coverall of an unfamiliar cut. "Welcome aboard the Wild Karrde," he said, nodding gravely. "If you'll follow me, the captain would like to see you."

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and headed down the curving corridor. "Come on, Artoo," Luke murmured, starting after him and reaching out with the Force for a quick survey of the ship. Aside from their guide, he could sense only four others aboard, all of them in the forward sections. Behind him, in the aft sections . . .

He shook his head, trying to clear it. It didn't help: the aft sections of the ship still remained oddly dark to him. An aftereffect of the long hibernation, probably. It was for certain, though, that there were no crew members or droids back there, and that was all he needed to know for the moment.

The guide led them to a door, which slid open as he stepped to one side. "Captain Karrde will see you now," he said, waving toward the open door.

"Thank you," Luke nodded to him. With Artoo bumping against his heels, he stepped into the room.

It was an office of sorts; small, with much of its wall space taken up with what looked like highly sophisticated communications and encrypt equipment. In the center was a large desk/ console combination . . . and seated behind it, watching Luke's approach, was a slender man, thin-faced, with short dark hair and pale blue eyes.

"Good evening," he said in a cool, carefully modulated voice. "I'm Talon Karrde." His eyes flicked up and down Luke, as if measuring him. "And you, I presume, are Commander Luke Skywalker."

Luke stared at him. How in the worlds . . . ? "Private citizen Skywalker," he said, striving to keep his own voice calm. "I resigned my Alliance commission nearly four years ago."

An almost-smile twitched the corners of Karrde's mouth. "I stand corrected. I must say, you've certainly found a good place to get away from it all."

The question was unstated, but no less obvious for that. "I had some help choosing it," Luke told him. "A small run-in with an Imperial Star Destroyer about half a light-year away."

"Ah," Karrde said, without any surprise that Luke could see or sense. "Yes, the Empire is still quite active in this part of the galaxy. Growing more so, too, particularly of late." He cocked his head slightly to the side, his eyes never leaving Luke's face. "Though I presume you've already noticed that. Incidentally, it looks like we'll be able to take your ship in tow, after all. I'm having the cables rigged now."

"Thank you," Luke said, feeling the skin on the back of his neck start to tingle. Whether a pirate or a smuggler, Karrde should certainly have reacted more strongly to the news that there was a Star Destroyer in the area. Unless, of course, he already had an understanding with the Imperials . . . "Allow me to thank you for the rescue, as well," he continued. "Artoo and I are lucky you happened along."

"And Artoo is-? Oh, of course-your astromech droid." The blue eyes flicked down briefly. "You must be a formidable warrior indeed, Skywalker-escaping from an Imperial Star Destroyer is no mean trick. Though I imagine a man like yourself is accustomed to giving the Imperials trouble."

"I don't see much front-line action anymore," Luke told him. "You haven't told me how you came to be out here, Captain. Or, for that matter, how you knew who I was."

Another almost-smile. "With a lightsaber attached to your belt?" he asked wryly. "Come now. You were either Luke Skywalker, Jedi, or else someone with a taste for antiques and an insufferably high opinion of his swordsmanship." Again, the blue eyes flicked up and down Luke. "You're not really what I expected, somehow. Though I suppose that's not all that surprising-the vast majority of Jedi lore has been so twisted by myth and ignorance that to get a clear picture is almost impossible."

The warning bell in the back of Luke's mind began to ring louder. "You almost sound as if you were expecting to find me here," he said, easing his body into a combat stance and letting his senses reach out. All five of the crewers were still more or less where they'd been a few minutes earlier, farther up toward the forward part of the ship. None except Karrde himself was close enough to pose any kind of immediate threat.

"As a matter of fact, we were," Karrde agreed calmly. "Though I can't actually take any of the credit for that. It was one of my associates, Mara Jade, who led us here." His head inclined slightly to his right. "She's on the bridge at the moment."

He paused, obviously waiting. It could be a setup, Luke knew; but the suggestion that someone might actually have been able to sense his presence from light-years away was too intriguing to pass up. Keeping his overall awareness clear, Luke narrowed a portion of his mind to the Wild Karrde's bridge. At the helm was the young woman he'd spoken to earlier from the X-wing. Beside her, an older man was busy running a calculation through the nav computer. And sitting behind them-

The jolt of that mind shot through him like an electric current. "Yes, that's her," Karrde confirmed, almost offhandedly. "She hides it quite well, actually-though not, I suppose, from a Jedi. It took me several months of careful observation to establish that it was you, and you personally, for whom she had these feelings."

It took Luke another second to find his voice. Never before, not even from the Emperor, had he ever felt such a black and bitter hatred. "I've never met her before," he managed.

"No?" Karrde shrugged. "A pity. I was rather hoping you'd be able to tell me why she feels this way. Ah, well." He got to his feet. "I suppose, then, there's nothing more for us to talk about for the moment . . . and let me say in advance that I'm very sorry it has to be this way."

Reflexively, Luke's hand darted for his lightsaber. He'd barely begun the movement when the shock of a stun weapon coursed through him from behind.

There were Jedi methods for fighting off unconsciousness. But they all took at least a split second of preparation-a split second that Luke did not have. Dimly, he felt himself falling; heard Artoo's frantic trilling in the distance; and wondered with his last conscious thought how in the worlds Karrde had done this to him.

Chapter 19

He awoke slowly, in stages, aware of nothing but the twin facts that, one, he was lying flat on his back and, two, he felt terrible.

Slowly, gradually, the haze began to coalesce into more localized sensations. The air around him was warm but damp, a light and shifting breeze carrying several unfamiliar odors along with it. The surface beneath him had the soft/firm feel of a bed; the general sense of his skin and mouth implied he'd been asleep for probably several days.

It took another minute for the implications of that to percolate through the mental fog filling his brain. More than an hour or two was well beyond the safe capabilities of any stun weapon he'd ever heard of. Clearly, after being shot, he'd been drugged.

Inwardly, he smiled. Karrde was probably expecting him to be incapacitated for a while longer; and Karrde was in for a surprise. Forcing his mind into focus, he ran through the Jedi technique for detoxifying poisons and then waited for the haze to clear.

It took him some time to realize that nothing was, in fact, happening.

Somewhere in there he fell asleep again; and when he next awoke, his mind had cleared completely. Blinking against the sunlight streaming across his face, he opened his eyes and lifted his head.

He was lying on a bed, still in his flight suit, in a small but comfortably furnished room. Directly across from him was an open window, the source of the aroma-laden breezes he'd already noted. Through the window, too, he could see the edge of a forest fifty meters or so away, above which a yellowish-orange sun hovered-rising or setting, he didn't know which. The furnishings of the room itself didn't look much like those of a prison cell-

"Finally awake, are you?" a woman's voice said from the side.

Startled, Luke twisted his head toward the voice. His first, instantaneous thought was that he had somehow missed sensing whoever was over there; his second, following on the heels of the first, was that that was clearly ridiculous and that the voice must be coming instead from an intercom or comlink.

He finished his turn, to discover that the first thought had indeed been correct.

She was sitting in a high-backed chair, her arms draped loosely over the arms in a posture that seemed strangely familiar: a slender woman about Luke's own age, with brilliant red-gold hair and equally brilliant green eyes. Her legs were casually crossed; a compact but wicked-looking blaster lay on her lap.

A genuine, living human being . . . and yet, impossibly, he couldn't sense her.

The confusion must have shown in his face. "That's right," she said, favoring him with a smile. Not a friendly or even a polite smile, but one that seemed to be made up of equal parts bitterness and malicious amusement. "Welcome back to the world of mere mortals."

-and with a surge of adrenaline, Luke realized that the strange mental veiling wasn't limited to just her. He couldn't sense anything. Not people, not droids, not even the forest beyond his window.

It was like suddenly going blind.

"Don't like it, do you?" the woman mocked. "It's not easy to suddenly lose everything that once made you special, is it?"

Slowly, carefully, Luke eased his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, giving his body plenty of time to get used to moving again. The woman watched him, her right hand dropping to her lap to rest on top of the blaster. "If the purpose of all this activity is to impress me with your remarkable powers of recuperation," she offered, "you don't need to bother."

"Nothing so devious," Luke advised, breathing hard and trying not to wheeze. "The purpose of all this activity is to get me back on my feet." He looked her hard in the eye, wondering if she would flinch away from his gaze. She didn't even twitch. "Don't tell me; let me guess. You're Mara Jade."

"That doesn't impress me, either," she said coldly. "Karrde already told me he'd mentioned my name to you."

Luke nodded. "He also told me that you were the one who found my X-wing. Thank you."

Her eyes flashed. "Save your gratitude," she bit out. "As far as I'm concerned, the only question left is whether we turn you over to the Imperials or kill you ourselves."

Abruptly she stood up, the blaster ready in her hand. "On your feet. Karrde wants to see you."

Carefully, Luke stood up, and as he did so, he noticed for the first time that Mara had attached his lightsaber to her own belt. Was she, then, a Jedi herself? Powerful enough, perhaps, to smother Luke's abilities? "I can't say that either of those options sounds appealing," he commented.

"There's one other one." She took half a step forward, moving close enough that he could have reached out and touched her. Lifting the blaster, she pointed it directly at his face. "You try to escape . . . and I kill you right here and now."

For a long moment they stood there, frozen. The bitter hatred was blazing again in those eyes . . . but even as Luke gazed back at her, he saw something else along with the anger. Something that looked like a deep and lingering pain.

He stood quietly, not moving; and almost reluctantly, she lowered the weapon. "Move. Karrde's waiting."

Luke's room was at the end of a long hallway with identical doors spaced at regular intervals along its length. A barracks of sorts, he decided, as they left it and started across a grassy clearing toward a large, high-roofed building. Several other structures clustered around the latter, including another barracks building, a handful that looked like storehouses, and one that was clearly a servicing hangar. Grouped around the hangar on both sides were over a dozen starships, including at least two bulk cruisers like the Wild Karrde and several smaller craft, some of them hidden a ways back into the forest that pressed closely in on the compound from all sides. Tucked away behind one of the bulk cruisers, he could just see the nose of his X-wing. For a moment he considered asking Mara what had happened to Artoo, decided he'd do better to save the question for Karrde.

They reached the large central building and Mara reached past Luke to slap the sensor plate beside the door. "He's in the greatroom," Mara said as the panel slid open in response. "Straight ahead."

They walked down a long hallway, passing a pair of what seemed to be medium-sized dining and recreation rooms. Ahead, a large door at the end of the hallway slid open at their approach. Mara ushered him inside-

And into a scene straight out of ancient legend.

For a moment Luke just stood in the doorway, staring. The room was large and spacious, its high ceiling translucent and crisscrossed by a webwork of carved rafters. The walls were composed of a dark brown wood, much of it elaborately open-mesh carved, with a deep blue light glowing through the interstices. Other luxuries were scattered sparingly about: a small sculpture here, an unrecognizable alien artifact there. Chairs, couches, and large cushions were arranged in well-separated conversation circles, giving a distinctly relaxed, almost informal air to the place.

But all that was secondary, taken in peripherally or at a later time entirely. For that first astonishing moment Luke's full attention was fixed solidly on the tree growing through the center of the room.

Not a small tree, either, like the delicate saplings that lined one of the hallways in the Imperial Palace. This one was huge, a meter in diameter at the base, extending from a section of plain dirt floor through the translucent ceiling and far beyond. Thick limbs starting perhaps two meters from the ground stretched their way across the room, some of them nearly touching the walls, almost like arms reaching out to encompass everything in sight.

"Ah; Skywalker," a voice called from in front of him. With an effort, Luke shifted his gaze downward, to find Karrde sitting comfortably in a chair at the base of the tree. On either side two long-legged quadrupeds crouched, their vaguely doglike muzzles pointing stiffly in Luke's direction. "Come and join me."

Swallowing, Luke started toward him. There were stories he remembered from his childhood about fortresses with trees growing up through them. Frightening stories, some of them, full of danger and helplessness and fear.

And in every one of those stories, such fortresses were the home of evil.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Karrde said as Luke approached. He picked up a silvery pitcher from the low table at his side, poured a reddish liquid into a pair of cups. "I must apologize for having kept you asleep all this time. But I'm sure you appreciate the special problems involved in making sure a Jedi stays where you've put him."

"Of course," Luke said, his attention on the two animals beside Karrde's chair. They were still staring at him with an uncomfortable intensity. "Though if you'd just asked nicely," he added, "you might have found me quite willing to cooperate."

A flicker of a smile touched Karrde's lips. "Perhaps. Perhaps not." He gestured to the chair across from him. "Please sit down."

Luke started forward; but as he did so, one of the animals rose up slightly on his haunches, making a strange sort of choked purr. "Easy, Sturm," Karrde admonished, looking down at the animal. "This man is our guest."

The creature ignored him, its full attention clearly on Luke. "I don't think it believes you," Luke suggested carefully. Even as he spoke, the second animal made the same sort of sound as the first had.

"Perhaps not." Karrde had a light grip on each of the animals' collars now and was glancing around the room. "Chin!" he called toward the three men lounging in one of the conversation circles. "Come and take them out, will you?"

"Sure." A middle-aged man with a Froffli-style haircut got up and trotted over. "Come on, fellows," he grunted, taking over Karrde's grip on the collars and leading the animals away. "What hai we go for a walk, hee?"

"My apologies, Skywalker," Karrde said, frowning slightly as he watched the others go. "They're usually better behaved than that with guests. Now; please sit down."

Luke did so, accepting the cup Karrde offered him. Mara stepped past him and took up position next to her chief. Her blaster, Luke noted, was now in a wrist holster on her left forearm, nearly as accessible as it would have been in her hand.

"It's just a mild stimulant," Karrde said, nodding to the cup in Luke's hand. "Something to help you wake up." He took a drink from his own cup and set it back down on the low table.

Luke took a sip. It tasted all right; and anyway, if Karrde had wanted to drug him, there was hardly any need to stoop to such a childish subterfuge. "Would you mind telling me where my droid is?"

"Oh, he's perfectly all right," Karrde assured him. "I have him in one of my equipment sheds for safekeeping."

"I'd like to see him, if I may."

"I'm sure that can be arranged. But later." Karrde leaned back in his seat, his forehead furrowing slightly. "Perhaps after we've figured out just exactly what we're going to do with you."

Luke glanced up at Mara. "Your associate mentioned the possibilities. I'd hoped I could add another to the list."

"That we send you back home?" Karrde suggested.

"With due compensation, of course," Luke assured him. "Say, double whatever the Empire would offer?"

"You're very generous with other people's money," Karrde said dryly. "The problem, unfortunately, doesn't arise from money, but from politics. Our operations, you see, extend rather deeply into both Imperial and Republic space. If the Empire discovered we'd released you back to the Republic, they would be highly displeased with us."

"And vice versa if you turned me over to the Empire," Luke pointed out.

"True," Karrde said. "Except that given the damage to your X-wing's subspace radio, the Republic presumably has no idea what happened to you. The Empire, unfortunately, does."

"And it's not what they would offer," Mara put in. "It's what they have offered. Thirty thousand."

Luke pursed his lips. "I had no idea I was so valuable," he said.

"You could be the difference between solvency and failure for any number of marginal operators," Karrde said bluntly. "There are probably dozens of ships out there right now, ignoring schedules and prior commitments to hunt for you." He smiled tightly. "Operators who haven't given even a moment of consideration to how they would hold onto a Jedi even if they caught one

"Your method seems to work pretty well," Luke told him. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me how you've managed it."

Karrde smiled again. "Secrets of that magnitude are worth a great deal of money. Have you any secrets of equal value to trade?"

"Probably not," Luke said evenly. "But, again, I'm sure the New Republic would be willing to pay market value."

Karrde sipped from his drink, eyeing Luke thoughtfully over the rim of the cup. "I'll make you a deal," he said, putting the cup back on the table beside him. "You tell me why the Empire is suddenly so interested in you, and I'll tell you why your Jedi powers aren't working."

"Why don't you ask the Imperials directly?"

Karrde smiled. "Thank you, but no. I'd just as soon not have them start wondering at my sudden interest. Particularly after we pleaded prior commitments when the request came in for us to help hunt you down."

Luke frowned at him. "You weren't hunting for me?"

"No, we weren't." Karrde's lip twisted. "One of those little ironies that make life so interesting. We were simply returning from a cargo pickup when Mara dropped us out of hyperspace on the spur of the moment to do a nav reading."

Luke studied Mara's stony expression. "How fortunate for you," he said.

"Perhaps," Karrde said. "The net result, though, was to put us in the middle of the exact situation that I'd hoped to avoid."

Luke held his hands out, palms upward. "Then let me go and pretend none of this happened. I give you my word I'll keep your part in it quiet."

"The Empire would find out anyway," Karrde shook his head. "Their new commander is extremely good at piecing bits of information together. No, I think your best hope right now is for us to find a compromise. Some way we can let you go while still giving the Imperials what they want." He cocked his head slightly. "Which leads us back to my original question."

"And from there back to my original answer," Luke said. "I really don't know what the Empire wants with me." He hesitated, but Leia should be well beyond Imperial reach by now. "I can tell you, though, that it's not just me. There have been two attempts on my sister Leia, too."

"Killing attempts?"

Luke thought about it. "I don't think so. The one I was present for felt more like a kidnapping."

"Interesting," Karrde murmured, his eyes defocusing slightly. "Leia Organa Solo. Who is in training to be a Jedi like her brother. That could explain . . . certain recent Imperial actions."

Luke waited, but after a moment it became clear that Karrde wasn't going to elaborate. "You spoke of a compromise," he reminded the other.

Karrde seemed to pull his thoughts back to the room. "Yes, I did," he said. "It's occurred to me that your privileged position in the New Republic might be what the Empire was interested in-that they wanted information on the inner workings of the Provisional Council. In such a case, we might have been able to work out a deal whereby you went free while your R2 droid went to the Imperials for debriefing."

Luke felt his stomach tighten. "It wouldn't do them any good," he said as casually as he could manage. The thought of Artoo being sold into Imperial slavery . . . "Artoo has never been to any of the Council meetings."

"But he does have a great deal of knowledge of you personally," Karrde pointed out. "As well as of your sister, her husband, and various other highly placed members of the New Republic." He shrugged. "It's a moot question now, of course. The fact that the focus is exclusively on the New Republic's Jedi and potential Jedi means they're not simply after information. Where did these two attacks take place?"

"The first was on Bimmisaari, the second on Bpfassh."

Karrde nodded. "We've got a contact on Bpfassh; perhaps we can get him to do some backtracking on the Imperials. Until then, I'm afraid you'll have to remain here as our guest."

It sounded like a dismissal. "Let me just point out one other thing before I go," Luke said. "No matter what happens to me-or what happens to Leia, for that matter-the Empire is still doomed. There are more planets in the New Republic now than there are under Imperial rule, and that number increases daily. We'll win eventually, if only by sheer weight of numbers."

"I understand that was the Emperor's own argument when discussing your Rebellion," Karrde countered dryly. "Still, that is the crux of the dilemma, isn't it? While the Empire will wreak swift retribution on me if I don't give you over to them, the New Republic looks more likely to win out in the long run."

"Only if he and his sister are there to hold Mon Mothma's hand," Mara put in contemptuously. "If they aren't-

"If they aren't, the final time frame is somewhat less clear," Karrde agreed. "At any rate, I thank you for your time, Skywalker. I hope we can come to a decision without too much of a delay."

"Don't hurry on my account," Luke told him. "This seems a pleasant enough world to spend a few days on."

"Don't believe it for a moment," Karrde warned. "My two pet vornskrs have a large number of relatives out in the forest. Relatives who haven't had the benefits of modern domestication."

"I understand," Luke said. On the other hand, if he could get out of Karrde's encampment and clear of whatever this strange interference was they were using on him . . .

"And don't count on your Jedi skills to protect you, either," Karrde added, almost lazily. "You'll be just as helpless in the forest. Probably more so." He looked up at the tree towering above him. "There are, after all, considerably more ysalamiri out there than there are here."

"Ysalamiri?" Luke followed his gesture . . . and for the first time noticed the slender, gray-brown creature hanging onto the tree limb directly over Karrde's head. "What is it?"

"The reason you're staying where we put you," Karrde said. "They seem to have the unusual ability to push back the Force-to create bubbles, so to speak, where the Force simply doesn't exist."

"I've never heard of them," Luke said, wondering if there was any truth at all to the story. Certainly neither Yoda nor Ben had ever mentioned the possibility of such a thing.

"Not very many have," Karrde agreed. "And in the past, most of those who did had a vested interest in keeping it that way. The Jedi of the Old Republic avoided the planet, for obvious reasons, which was why a fair number of smuggling groups back then had their bases here. After the Emperor destroyed the Jedi, most of the groups pulled up roots and left, preferring to be closer to their potential markets. Now that the Jedi are rising again-" he nodded gravely to Luke "-perhaps some of them will return. Though I dare say the general populace would probably not appreciate that."

Luke glanced around the tree. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see several other ysalamiri wrapped around and across various of the limbs and branches. "What makes you think it's the ysalamiri and not something else that's responsible for this bubbling in the Force?"

"Partly local legend," Karrde said. "Mainly, the fact that you're standing here talking with me. How else could a man with a stun weapon and an extremely nervous mind have walked right up behind a Jedi without being noticed?"

Luke looked at him sharply, the last piece falling into place. "You had ysalamiri aboard the Wild Karrde."

"Correct," Karrde said. "Purely by chance, actually. Well-" He looked up at Mara. "Perhaps not entirely by chance."

Luke glanced again at the ysalamir above Karrde's head. "How far does this bubbling extend?"

"Actually, I'm not sure anyone knows," Karrde conceded. "Legend says that individual ysalamiri have bubbles from one to ten meters in radius, but that groups of them together have considerably larger ones. Some sort of reinforcement, I gather. Perhaps you'll do us the courtesy of participating in a few experiments regarding them before you leave."

"Perhaps," Luke said. "Though that probably depends on which direction I'm headed at the time."

"It probably will," Karrde agreed. "Well. I imagine you'd like to get cleaned up-you've been living in that flight suit for several days now. Did you bring any changes of clothing with you?"

"There's a small case in the cargo compartment of my X-wing," Luke told him. "Thank you for bringing it along, incidentally."

"I try never to waste anything that may someday prove useful," Karrde said. "I'll have your things sent over as soon as my associates have determined that there are no hidden weapons or other equipment among them." He smiled slightly. "I doubt that a Jedi would bother with such things, but I believe in being thorough. Good evening, Skywalker."

Mara had her tiny blaster in hand again. "Let's go," she said, gesturing with the weapon.

Luke stood up. "Let me offer you one other option," he said to Karrde. "If you decide you'd rather pretend none of this ever happened, you could just return Artoo and me to where you found us. I'd be willing to take my chances with the other searchers."

"Including the Imperials?" Karrde asked.

"Including the Imperials," Luke nodded.

A small smile touched Karrde's lips. "You might be surprised. But I'll keep the option in mind."

The sun had disappeared behind the trees and the sky was noticeably darker as Mara escorted him back across the compound. "Did I miss dinner?" he asked as they walked down the corridor toward his room.

"Something can be brought to you," Mara said, her voice little more than a thinly veiled snarl.

"Thank you." Luke took a careful breath. "I don't know why you dislike me so much-"

"Shut up," she cut him off. "Just shut up."

Grimacing, Luke did so. They reached his room and she nudged him inside. "We don't have any lock for the window," she said, "but there's an alarm on it. You try going out, and it'll be a toss-up as to whether the vornskrs get to you before I do." She smiled, mock-sweetly. "But don't take my word for it. Try it and find out."

Luke looked at the window, then back at Mara. "I'll pass, thanks."

Without another word she left the room, closing the door behind her. There was the click of an electronic lock being engaged, and then silence.

He went to the window, peered out. There were lights showing in some of the other barracks windows, though he hadn't noticed any other lights in his own building. Which made sense, he supposed. Whether Karrde decided to turn him over to the Empire or release him back to the New Republic, there was no point in more of his associates knowing about it than absolutely necessary.

All the more so if Karrde decided to take Mara's advice and just kill him.

He turned away from the window and went back to his bed, fighting back the fear trying to rise inside him. Never since facing the Emperor had he felt so helpless.

Or, for that matter, actually been so helpless.

He took a deep breath. For the Jedi, there is no emotion; there is peace. Somehow, he knew, there had to be a way out of this prison.

All he had to do was to stay alive long enough to find it.

Chapter 20

"No, I assure you, everything is fine," Threepio said in Leia's voice, looking just about as unhappy beneath his headset as a droid could possibly look. "Han and I decided that as long as we were out this way we might as well take a look around the Abregado system."

"I understand, Your Highness," Winter's voice came back over the Falcon's speaker. To Han, she sounded tired. Tired, and more than a little tense. "May I recommend, though, that you don't stay away too much longer."

Threepio looked helplessly at Han. "We'll be back soon," Han muttered into his comlink.

"We'll be back soon," Threepio echoed into the Falcon's mike.

"I just want to check out-"

"I just want to check out-"

"-the Gados's-"

"-the Gados's-"

"-manufacturing infrastructure."

"-manufacturing infrastructure."

"Yes, Your Highness," Winter said. "I'll pass that information on to the Council. I'm sure they'll be pleased to hear it." She paused, just noticeably. "I wonder if I might be permitted to speak with Captain Solo for a moment."

Across the cockpit, Lando grimaced. She knows, he mouthed silently.

No kidding, Han mouthed back. He caught Threepio's eye and nodded. "Of course," the droid said, sagging with obvious relief. "Han-?"

Han switched his comlink over. "I'm here, Winter. What's up?"

"I wanted to know if you had any idea yet when you and Princess Leia would be returning," she said. "Admiral Ackbar, particularly, has been asking about you."

Han frowned at the comlink. Ackbar probably hadn't spoken two words to him outside of official business since he'd resigned his general's commission a few months back. "You'll have to thank the Admiral for his interest," he told Winter, picking his words carefully. "I trust he's doing all right himself?"

"About as usual," Winter said. "He's having some problems with his family, though, now that school is in full swing."

"A little squabbling among the children?" Han suggested.

"Bedtime arguments, mainly," she said. "Problems with the little one over who's going to get to stay up and read-that sort of thing. You understand."

"Yeah," Han said. "I know the kids pretty well. How about the neighbors? He still having trouble with them?"

There was a brief pause. "I'm . . . not exactly sure," she said. "He hasn't mentioned anything about them to me. I can ask, if you'd like."

"It's no big deal," Han said. "As long as the family's doing okay-that's the important thing."

"I agree. At any rate, I think he mainly just wanted to be remembered to you."

"Thanks for passing on the message." He threw Lando a look. "Go ahead and tell him that we won't be out here too much longer. We'll go to Abregado and maybe look in on a couple of others and then head back."

"All right," Winter said. "Anything else?"

"No-yes," Han corrected himself. "What's the latest on the Bpfasshi recovery program?"

"Those three systems the Imperials hit?"

"Right." And where he and Leia had had their second brush with those gray-skinned alien kidnappers; but there was no point in dwelling on that.

"Let me call up the proper file," Winter said. ". . . It's coming along reasonably well. There were some problems with supply shipments, but the material seems to be moving well enough now."

Han frowned at the speaker. "What did Ackbar do, dig up some mothballed container ships from somewhere?"

"Actually, he made his own," Winter came back dryly. "He's taken some capital ships-Star Cruisers and Attack Frigates, mostly-cut the crews back to skeleton size and put in extra droids, and turned them into cargo ships."

Han grimaced. "I hope he's got some good escorts along with them. Empty Star Cruisers would make great target practice for the Imperials."

"I'm sure he's thought of that," Winter assured him. "And the orbit dock and shipyards at Sluis Van are very well defended."

"I'm not sure anything's really well defended these days," Han returned sourly. "Not with the Imperials running loose like they are. Anyway. Got to go; talk to you later."

"Enjoy your trip. Your Highness? Good-bye."

Lando snapped his fingers at Threepio. "Good-bye, Winter," the droid said.

Han made a slashing motion across his throat, and Lando shut off the transmitter. "If those Star Cruisers had been built with proper slave circuits, they wouldn't have to load them with droids to make container ships out of them," he pointed out innocently.

"Yeah," Han nodded, his mind just barely registering Lando's words. "Come on-we've got to cut this short and get back." He climbed out of the cockpit seat and checked his blaster. "Something's about to burn through on Coruscant."

"You mean all that stuff about Ackbar's family?" Lando asked, standing up.

"Right," Han said, heading back toward the Falcon's hatchway. "If I'm reading Winter right, it sounds like Fey'lya has started a major push toward Ackbar's territory. Come on, Threepio-you need to lock up behind us."

"Captain Solo, I must once again protest this whole arrangement," the droid said plaintively, scuttling up behind Han. "I really feel that to impersonate Princess Leia-"

"All right, all right," Han cut him off. "As soon as we get back, I'll have Lando undo the programming."

"It's over already?" Lando asked, pushing past Threepio to join Han at the lock. "I thought you told Winter-"

"That was for the benefit of anyone tapping in," Han said. "As soon as we've worked through this contact, we're going to head back. Maybe even stop by Kashyyyk on the way and pick up Leia."

Lando whistled softly. "That bad, huh?"

"It's hard to say, exactly," Han had to admit as he slapped the release. The ramp dropped smoothly down to the dusty permcrete beneath them. "That 'staying up late to read' is the part I don't understand. I suppose it could mean some of the intelligence work that Ackbar's been doing along with the Supreme Commander position. Or worse-maybe Fey'lya's going for the whole sabacc pot."

"You and Winter should have worked out a better verbal code," Lando said as they started down the ramp.

"We should have worked out a verbal code, period," Han growled back. "I've been meaning for three years to sit down with her and Leia and set one up. Never got around to it."

"Well, if it helps, the analysis makes sense," Lando offered, glancing around the docking pit. "It fits the rumors I've heard, anyway. I take it the neighbors you referred to are the Empire?"

"Right. Winter should have heard something about it if Ackbar had had any luck plugging the security leaks."

"Won't that make it dangerous to go back, then?" Lando asked as they started toward the exit.

"Yeah," Han agreed, feeling his lip twist. "But we're going to have to risk it. Without Leia there to play peacemaker, Fey'lya might just be able to beg or bully the rest of the Council into giving him whatever it is he wants."

"Mmm." Lando paused at the bottom of the ramp leading to the docking pit exit and looked up. "Let's hope this is the last contact in the line."

"Let's hope first that the guy shows," Han countered, heading up the ramp.

The Abregado-rae Spaceport had had a terrible reputation among the pilots Han had flown with in his smuggling days, ranking right down at the bottom with places like the Mos Eisley port on Tatooine. It was therefore something of a shock, though a pleasant one, to find a bright, clean cityscape waiting for them when they stepped through the landing pit door. "Well, well," Lando murmured from beside him. "Has civilization finally come to Abregado?"

"Stranger things have happened," Han agreed, looking around. Clean and almost painfully neat, yet with that same unmistakable air that every general freight port seemed to have. That air of the not-entirely tame . . .

"Uh-oh," Lando said quietly, his eyes on something past Han's shoulder. "Looks like someone's just bought the heavy end of the hammer."

Han turned. Fifty meters down the port perimeter street, a small group of uniformed men with light-armor vests and blaster rifles had gathered at one of the other landing pit entrances. Even as Han watched, half of them slipped inside, leaving the rest on guard in the street. "That's the hammer, all right," Han agreed, craning his neck to try and read the number above the door. Sixty-three. "Let's hope that's not our contact in there. Where are we meeting him, anyway?"

"Right over there," Lando said, pointing to a small windowless building built in the gap between two much older ones. A carved wooden plank with the single word "LoBue" hung over the door. "We're supposed to take one of the tables near the bar and the casino area and wait. He'll contact us there."

The LoBue was surprisingly large, given its modest street front, extending both back from the street and also into the older building to its left. Just inside the entrance were a group of conversation-oriented tables overlooking a small but elaborate dance floor, the latter deserted but with some annoying variety of taped music playing in the background. On the far side of the dance floor were a group of private booths, too dark for Han to see into. Off to the left, up a few steps and separated from the dance floor by a transparent etched plastic wall, was the casino area. "I think I see the bar up there," Lando murmured. "Just back of the sabacc tables to the left. That's probably where he wants us."

"You ever been here before?" Han asked over his shoulder as they skirted the conversation tables and headed up the steps.

"Not this place, no. Last time I was at Abregado-rae was years ago. It was worse than Mos Eisley, and I didn't stay long." Lando shook his head. "Whatever problems you might have with the new government here, you have to admit they've done a good job of cleaning the planet up."

"Yeah, well, whatever problems you have with the new government, let's keep them quiet, okay?" Han warned. "Just for once, I'd like to keep a low profile."

Lando chuckled. "Whatever you say."

The lighting in the bar area was lower than that in the casino proper, but not so low that seeing was difficult. Choosing a table near the gaming tables, they sat down. A holo of an attractive girl rose from the center of the table as they did so. "Good day, gentles," she said in pleasantly accented Basic. "How may I serve?"

"Do you have any Necr'ygor Omic wine?" Lando asked.

"We do, indeed: '47, '49, '50, and '52."

"We'll have a half carafe of the '49," Lando told her.

"Thank you, gentles," she said, and the holo vanished.

"Was that part of the countersign?" Han asked, letting his gaze drift around the casino. It was only the middle of the afternoon, local time, but even so over half the tables were occupied. The bar area, in contrast, was nearly empty, with only a handful of humans and aliens scattered around. Drinking, apparently, ranked much lower than gambling on the list of popular Gado vices.

"Actually, he didn't say anything about what we should order," Lando said. "But since I happen to like a good Necr'ygor Omic wine-"

"And since Coruscant will be picking up the tab for it?"

"Something like that."

The wine arrived on a tray delivered through a slidehatch in the center of the table. "Will there be anything else, gentles?" the holo girl asked.

Lando shook his head, picking up the carafe and the two glasses that had come with it. "Not right now, thank you."

"Thank you." She and the tray disappeared.

"So," Lando said, pouring the wine. "I guess we wait."

"Well, while you're busy waiting, do a casual one-eighty," Han said. "Third sabacc table back-five men and a woman. Tell me if the guy second from the right is who I think it is."

Lifting his wine glass, Lando held it up to the light, as if studying its color. In the process he turned halfway around- "Not Fynn Torve?"

"Sure looks like him to me," Han agreed. "I figured you'd probably seen him more recently than I have."

"Not since the last Kessel run you and I did together." Lando cocked an eyebrow at Han. "Just before that other big sabacc table," he added dryly.

Han gave him an injured look. "You're not still sore about the Falcon, are you?"

"Now . . ." Lando considered. "No, probably not. No sorer than I was at losing the game to an amateur like you in the first place."

"Amateur?"

"-but I'll admit there were times right afterward when I lay awake at night plotting elaborate revenge. Good thing I never got around to doing any of it."

Han looked back at the sabacc table. "If it makes you feel any better . . . if you hadn't lost the Falcon to me, we probably wouldn't be sitting here right now. The Empire's first Death Star would have taken out Yavin and then picked the Alliance apart planet by planet. And that would have been the end of it."

Lando shrugged. "Maybe; maybe not. With people like Ackbar and Leia running things-"

"Leia would have been dead," Han cut him off. "She was already slated for execution when Luke, Chewie, and I pulled her out of the Death Star." A shiver ran through him at the memory. He'd been that close to losing her forever. And would never even have known what he'd missed.

And now that he knew . . . he might still lose her.

"She'll be okay, Han," Lando said quietly. "Don't worry." He shook his head. "I just wish we knew what the Imperials wanted with her."

"I know what they want," Han growled. "They want the twins."

Lando stared at him, a startled look on his face. "Are you sure?"

"As sure as I am of any of this," Han said. "Why else didn't they just use stun weapons on us in that Bpfassh ambush? Because the things have a better than fifty-fifty chance of sparking a miscarriage, that's why."

"Sounds reasonable," Lando agreed grimly. "Does Leia know?"

"I don't know. Probably."

He looked at the sabacc tables, the cheerful decadence of the whole scene suddenly grating against his mood. If Torve really was Karrde's contact man, he wished the other would quit this nonsense and get on with it. It wasn't like there were a lot of possibilities hanging around here to choose from.

His eyes drifted away from the casino, into the bar area . . . and stopped. There, sitting at a shadowy table at the far end, were three men.

There was an unmistakable air about a general freight port, a combination of sounds and smells and vibrations that every pilot who'd been in the business long enough knew instantly. There was an equally unmistakable air about planetary security officers. "Uh-oh," he muttered.

"What?" Lando asked, throwing a casual glance of his own around the room. The glance reached the far table- "Uh-oh, indeed," he agreed soberly. "Offhand, I'd say that explains why Torve's hiding at a sabacc table."

"And doing his best to ignore us," Han said, watching the security agents out of the corner of his eye and trying to gauge the focus of their attention. If they'd tumbled to this whole contact meeting there probably wasn't much he could do about it, short of hauling out his New Republic ID and trying to pull rank on them. Which might or might not work; and he could just hear the polite screaming fit Fey'lya would have over it either way.

But if they were just after Torve, maybe as part of that landing pit raid he and Lando had seen on the way in . . .

It was worth the gamble. Reaching over, he tapped the center of the table. "Attendant?"

The holo reappeared. "Yes, gentles?"

"Give me twenty sabacc chips, will you?"

"Certainly," she said, and vanished.

"Wait a minute," Lando said cautiously as Han drained his glass. "You're not going to go over there, are you?"

"You got a better idea?" Han countered, reaching down to resettle his blaster in its holster. "If he's our contact, I sure don't want to lose him now."

Lando gave a sigh of resignation. "So much for keeping a low profile. What do you want me to do?"

"Be ready to run some interference." The center of the table opened up and a neat stack of sabacc chips arrived. "So far it looks like they're just watching him-maybe we can get him out of here before their pals arrive in force."

"If not?"

Han collected the chips and got to his feet. "Then I'll try to create a diversion, and meet you back at the Falcon."

"Right. Good luck."

There were two seats not quite halfway across the sabacc table from Torve. Han chose one and sat down, dropping his stack of chips onto the table with a metallic thud. "Deal me in," he said.

The others looked up at him, their expressions varying from surprised to annoyed. Torve himself glanced up, came back for another look. Han cocked an eyebrow at him. "You the dealer, sonny? Come on, deal me in."

"Ah-no, it's not my deal," Torve said, his eyes flicking to the pudgy man on his right.

"And we've already started," the pudgy man said, his voice surly. "Wait until the next game."

"What, you haven't all even bet yet," Han countered, gesturing toward the handful of chips in the hand pot. The sabacc pot, in contrast, was pretty rich-the session must have been going for a couple of hours at least. Probably one reason the dealer didn't want fresh blood in the game who might conceivably win it all. "Come on, give me my cards," he told the other, tossing a chip into the hand pot.

Slowly, glaring the whole time, the dealer peeled the top two cards off the deck and slid them over. "That's more like it," Han said approvingly. "Brings back memories, this does. I used to drop the heavy end of the hammer on the guys back home all the time."

Torve looked at him sharply, his expression freezing to stone. "Did you, now," he said, his voice deliberately casual. "Well, you're playing with the big boys here, not the little people. You may not find the sort of rewards you're used to."

"I'm not exactly an amateur myself," Han said airily. The locals at the spaceport had been raiding landing pit sixty-three . . . "I've won-oh, probably sixty-three games in the last month alone."

Another flicker of recognition crossed Torve's face. So it was his landing pit. "Lot of rewards in numbers like that," he murmured, letting one hand drop beneath the level of the table. Han tensed, but the hand came back up empty. Torve's eyes flicked around the room once, lingering for a second on the table where Lando was sitting before turning back to Han. "You willing to put your money where your mouth is?"

Han met his gaze evenly. "I'll meet anything you've got."

Torve nodded slowly. "I may just take you up on it."

"This is all very interesting, I'm sure," one of the other players spoke up. "Some of us would like to play cards, though."

Torve raised his eyebrows at Han. "The bet's at four," he invited.

Han glanced at his cards: the Mistress of Staves and the four of Coins. "Sure," he said, lifting six chips from his stack and dropping them into the hand pot. "I'll see the four, and raise you two." There was a rustle of air behind him-

"Cheater!" a deep voice bellowed in his ear.

Han jumped and spun around, reaching reflexively toward his blaster, but even as he did so a large hand shot over his shoulder to snatch the two cards from his other hand. "You are a cheater, sir," the voice bellowed again.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Han said, craning his neck up to get a look at his assailant.

He was almost sorry he had. Towering over him like a bushy-bearded thundercloud twice his own size, the man was glaring down at him with an expression that could only be described as enflamed with religious fervor. "You know full well what I'm talking about," the man said, biting out each word. "This card-" he waved one of Han's cards "-is a skifter."

Han blinked. "It is not," he protested. A crowd was rapidly gathering around the table: casino security and other employees, curious onlookers, and probably a few who were hoping to see a little blood. "It's the same card I was dealt."

"Oh, is it?" The man cupped the card in one massive hand, held it in front of Han's face, and touched the corner with a fingertip.

The Mistress of Staves abruptly became the six of Sabres. The man tapped the corner again and it became the Moderation face card. And then the eight of Flasks . . . and then the Idiot face card . . . and then the Commander of Coins . . .

"That's the card I was dealt," Han repeated, feeling sweat starting to collect under his collar. So much, indeed, for keeping a low profile. "If it's a skifter, it's not my fault."

A short man with a hard-bitten face elbowed past the bearded man. "Keep your hands on the table," he ordered Han in a voice that matched his face. "Move aside, Reverend-we'll handle this."

Reverend? Han looked up at the glowering thundercloud again, and this time he saw the black, crystal-embedded band nestled against the tufts of hair at the other's throat. "Reverend, huh?" he said with a sinking feeling. There were extreme religious groups all over the galaxy, he'd found, whose main passion in life seemed to be the elimination of all forms of gambling. And all forms of gamblers.

"Hands on the table, I said," the security man snapped, reaching over to pluck the suspect card from the Reverend's hand. He glanced at it, tried it himself, and nodded. "Cute skifter, con," he said, giving Han what was probably his best scowl.

"He must have palmed the card he was dealt," the Reverend put in. He hadn't budged from his place at Han's side. "Where is it, cheater?"

"The card I was dealt is right there in your friend's hand," Han snapped back. "I don't need a skifter to win at sabacc. If I had one, it's because it was dealt to me."

"Oh, really?" Without warning, the Reverend abruptly turned to face the pudgy sabacc dealer, still sitting at the table but almost lost in the hovering crowd. "Your cards, sir, if you don't mind," he said, holding out his hand.

The other's jaw dropped. "What are you talking about? Why would I give someone else a skifter? Anyway, it's a house deck-see?"

"Well, there's one way to be sure, isn't there?" the Reverend said, reaching over to scoop up the deck. "And then you-and you-" he leveled fingers at the dealer and Han "-can be scanned to see who's hiding an extra card. I dare say that would settle the issue, wouldn't you, Kampl?" he added, looking down at the scowling security man.

"Don't tell us our job, Reverend," Kampl growled. "Cyru-get that scanner over here, will you?"

The scanner was a small palm-fitting job, obviously designed for surreptitious operation. "That one first," Kampl ordered, pointing at Han.

"Right." Expertly, the other circled Han with the instrument. "Nothing."

The first touch of uncertainty cracked through Kampl's scowl. "Try it again."

The other did so. "Still nothing. He's got a blaster, comlink, and ID, and that's it."

For a long moment Kampl continued staring at Han. Then, reluctantly, he turned to the sabacc dealer. "I protest!" the dealer sputtered, pushing himself to his feet. "I'm a Class Double-A citizen-you have no right to put me through this sort of totally unfounded accusation."

"You do it here or down at the station," Kampl snarled. "Your choice."

The dealer threw a look at Han that was pure venom, but he stood in stiff silence while the security tech scanned him down. "He's clean, too," the other reported, a slight frown on his face.

"Scan around the floor," Kampl ordered. "See if someone ditched it."

"And count the cards still in the deck," the Reverend spoke up.

Kampl spun to face him. "For the last time-"

"Because if all we have here are the requisite seventy-six cards," the Reverend cut him off, his voice heavy with suspicion, "perhaps what we're really looking at is a fixed deck."

Kampl jerked as if he'd been stung. "We don't fix decks in here," he insisted.

"No?" the Reverend glared. "Not even when special people are sitting in on the game? People who might know to look for a special card when it comes up?"

"That's ridiculous," Kampl snarled, taking a step toward him. "The LoBue is a respectable and perfectly legal establishment. None of these players has any connection with-"

"Hey!" the pudgy dealer said suddenly. "The guy who was sitting next to me-where'd he go?"

The Reverend snorted. "So. None of them has any connection with you, do they?"

Someone swore violently and started pushing his way through the crowd-one of the three planetary security types who'd been watching the table. Kampl watched him go, took a deep breath, and turned to glare at Han. "You want to tell me your partner's name?"

"He wasn't my partner," Han said. "And I was not cheating. You want to make a formal accusation, take me down to the station and do it there. If you don't-" he got to his feet, scooping up his remaining chips in the process "-then I'm leaving."

For a long moment he thought Kampl was going to call his bluff. But the other had no real evidence, and he knew it; and apparently he had better things to do than indulge in what would be really nothing more than petty harassment. "Sure-get out of here," the other snarled. "Don't ever come back."

"Don't worry," Han told him.

The crowd was starting to dissolve, and he had no trouble making his way back to his table. Lando, not surprisingly, was long gone. What was surprising was that he'd settled the bill before he had left.

"That was quick," Lando greeted him from the top of the Falcon's entry ramp. "I wasn't expecting them to turn you loose for at least an hour."

"They didn't have much of a case," Han said, climbing up the ramp and slapping the hatch button. "I hope Torve didn't give you the slip."

Lando shook his head. "He's waiting in the lounge." He raised his eyebrows. "And considers himself in our debt."

"That could be useful," Han agreed, heading down the curved corridor.

Torve was seated at the lounge holo board, three small data pads spread out in front of him. "Good to see you again, Torve," Han said as he stepped in.

"You, too, Solo," the other said gravely, getting to his feet and offering Han his hand. "I've thanked Calrissian already, but I wanted to thank you, too. Both for the warning and for helping me get out of there. I'm in your debt."

"No problem," Han waved the thanks away. "I take it that is your ship in pit sixty-three?"

"My employer's ship, yes," Torve said, grimacing. "Fortunately, there's nothing contraband in it at the moment-I've already off-loaded. They obviously suspect me, though."

"What kind of contraband were you running?" Lando asked, coming up behind Han. "If it's not a secret, that is?"

Torve cocked an eyebrow. "No secret, but you're not going to believe it. I was running food."

"You're right," Lando said. "I don't believe it."

Torve nodded vaguely off to one side. "I didn't either, at first. Seems there's a clan of people living off in the southern hills who don't find much about the new government to appreciate."

"Rebels?"

"No, and that's what's strange about it," Torve said. "They're not rebelling or making trouble or even sitting on vital resources. They're simple people, and all they want is to be left alone to continue living that way. The government's apparently decided to make an example of them, and among other things has cut off all food and medical supplies going that way until they agree to fall into step like everyone else."

"That sounds like this government," Lando agreed heavily. "Not much into regional autonomy of any kind."

"Hence, we smuggle in food," Torve concluded. "Crazy business. Anyway, it's nice to see you two again. Nice to see you're still working together, too. So many teams have broken up over the past few years, especially since Jabba bought the really heavy end of the hammer."

Han exchanged glances with Lando. "Well, it's actually more like we're back together," he corrected Torve. "We sort of wound up on the same side during the war. Up till then . . ."

"Up till then I wanted to kill him," Lando explained helpfully. "No big deal, really."

"Sure," Torve said guardedly, looking back and forth between them. "Let me guess: the Falcon, right? I remember hearing rumors that you stole it."

Han looked at Lando, eyebrows raised. "Stole it?"

"Like I said, I was mad," Lando shrugged. "It wasn't an out-and-out theft, actually, though it came pretty close. I had a little semilegit clearinghouse for used ships at the time, and I ran short of money in a sabacc game Han and I were playing. I offered him his pick of any of my ships if he won." He threw Han a mock glare. "He was supposed to go for one of the flashy chrome-plate yachts that had been collecting dust on the front row, not the freighter I'd been quietly upgrading on the side for myself."

"You did a good job, too," Han said. "Though Chewie and I wound up pulling a lot of the stuff out and redoing it ourselves."

"Nice," Lando growled. "Another crack like that and I may just take it back."

"Chewie would probably take great exception to that," Han said. He fixed Torve with a hard look. "Of course, you knew all this already, didn't you."

Torve grinned. "No offense, Solo. I like to feel out my customers before we do business-get an idea of whether I can expect 'em to play straight with me. People who lie about their history usually lie about the job, too."

"I trust we passed?"

"Like babes in the tall grass," Torve nodded, still grinning. "So. What can Talon Karrde do for you?"

Han took a careful breath. Finally. Now all he had to worry about was fouling this up. "I want to offer Karrde a deal: the chance to work directly with the New Republic."

Torve nodded. "I'd heard that you were going around trying to push that scheme with other smuggling groups. The general feeling is that you're trying to set them up for Ackbar to take down."

"I'm not," Han assured him. "Ackbar's not exactly thrilled at the idea, but he's accepted it. We need to get more shipping capacity from somewhere, and smugglers are the logical supply to tap."

Torve pursed his lips. "From what I've heard it sounds like an interesting offer. 'Course, I'm not the one who makes decisions like that."

"So take us to Karrde," Lando suggested. "Let Han talk to him directly."

"Sorry, but he's at the main base at the moment," Torve said, shaking his head. "I can't take you there."

"Why not?"

"Because we don't let strangers just flit in and out," Torve said patiently. "We don't have anything like the kind of massive, overbearing security Jabba had on Tatooine, for starters."

"We're not exactly-" Lando began.

Han cut him off with a gesture. "All right, then," he said to Torve. "How are you going to get back there?"

Torve opened his mouth, then closed it again. "I guess I'll have to figure out a way to get my ship out of impoundment, won't I?"

"That'll take time," Han pointed out. "Besides which, you're known here. On the other hand, someone who showed up with the proper credentials could probably pry it loose before anyone knew what had happened."

Torve cocked an eyebrow. "You, for instance?"

Han shrugged. "I might be able to. After that thing at the LoBue I probably should lie low, too. But I'm sure I could set it up."

"I'm sure," Torve said, heavily sardonic. "And the catch . . . ?"

"No catch," Han told him. "All I want in return is for you to let us give you a lift back to your base, and then have fifteen minutes to talk with Karrde."

Torve gazed at him, his mouth tight. "I'll get in trouble if I do this. You know that."

"We're not exactly random strangers," Lando reminded him. "Karrde met me once, and both Han and I kept major military secrets for the Alliance for years. We've got a good record of people being able to trust us."

Torve looked at Lando. Looked again at Han. "I'll get in trouble," he repeated with a sigh. "But I guess I really do owe you. One condition, though: I do all the navigation on the way in, and set it up in a coded, erasable module. Whether you have to do the same thing on the way out will be up to Karrde."

"Good enough," Han agreed. Paranoia was a common enough ailment among smugglers. Anyway, he had no particular interest in knowing where Karrde had set up shop. "When can we leave?"

"As soon as you're ready." Torve nodded at the sabacc chips cupped in Han's hand. "Unless you want to go back to the LoBue and play those," he added.

Han had forgotten he was still holding the chips. "Forget it," he growled, dropping the stack onto the holo board. "I try not to play sabacc when there are fanatics breathing down my neck."

"Yes, the Reverend put on a good show, didn't he?" Torve agreed. "Don't know what we would have done without him."

"Wait a minute," Lando put in. "You know him?"

"Sure," Torve grinned. "He's my contact with the hill clan. He couldn't have made nearly so much fuss without a stranger like you there for him to pick on, though."

"Why, that rotten-" Han clamped his teeth together. "I suppose that was his skifter, huh?"

"Sure was." Torve looked innocently at Han. "What are you complaining about? You got what you wanted-I'm taking you to see Karrde. Right?"

Han thought about it. Torve was right, of course. But still . . . "Right," he conceded. "So much for heroics, I guess."

Torve snorted gently. "Tell me about it. Come on, let's get into your computer and start coding up a nav module."

Chapter 21

Mara stepped up to the comm room door, wondering uneasily what this sudden summons was all about. Karrde hadn't said, but there had been something in his voice that had set her old survival instincts tingling. Checking the tiny blaster hanging upside down in its sleeve sheath, she slapped at the door release.

She'd expected to find at least two people already in the room: Karrde plus the comm room duty man plus whoever else had been called in on this. To her mild surprise, Karrde was alone. "Come in, Mara," he invited, looking up from his data pad. "Close the door behind you."

She did so. "Trouble?" she asked.

"A minor problem only," he assured her. "A bit of an awkward one, though. Fynn Torve just called to say he was on his way in . . . and he has guests. Former New Republic generals Lando Calrissian and Han Solo."

Mara felt her stomach tighten. "What do they want?"

Karrde shrugged fractionally. "Apparently, just to talk to me."

For a second, Mara's thoughts flicked to Skywalker, still locked away in his barracks room across the compound. But, no-there was no way anyone in the New Republic could possibly know he was here. Most of Karrde's own people didn't know it, including the majority of those right here on Myrkr. "Did they bring their own ship?" she asked.

"Theirs is the only one coming in, actually," Karrde nodded. "Torve's riding with them."

Mara's eyes flicked to the comm equipment behind him. "A hostage?"

Karrde shook his head. "I don't think so. He gave all the proper all-clear passwords. The Etherway's still on Abregado-been impounded by the local authorities or some such. Apparently, Calrissian and Solo helped Torve avoid a similar fate."

"Then thank them, have them put Torve down, and tell them to get off the planet," she said. "You didn't invite them here."

"True," Karrde agreed, watching her closely. "On the other hand, Torve seems to think he's under a certain obligation to them."

"Then let him pay it back on his own time."

The skin around Karrde's eyes seemed to harden. "Torve is one of my associates," he said, his voice cold. "His debts are the organization's. You should know that by now."

Mara's throat tightened as a sudden, horrible thought occurred to her. "You're not going to give Skywalker to them, are you?" she demanded.

"Alive, you mean?" Karrde countered.

For a long moment Mara just stared at him; at that small smile and those slightly heavy eyelids and the rest of that carefully constructed expression of complete disinterest in the matter. But it was all an act, and she knew it. He wanted to know why she hated Skywalker, all right-wanted it with as close to genuine passion as the man ever got.

And as far as she was concerned, he could go right on wanting it. "I don't suppose it's occurred to you," she bit out, "that Solo and Calrissian might have engineered this whole thing, including the Etherway's impoundment, as a way of finding this base."

"It's occurred to me, yes," Karrde said. "I dismissed it as somewhat farfetched."

"Of course," Mara said sardonically. "The great and noble Han Solo would never do something so devious, would he? You never answered my question."

"About Skywalker? I thought I'd made it clear, Mara, that he stays here until I know why Grand Admiral Thrawn is so interested in acquiring him. At the very least, we need to know what he's worth, and to whom, before we can set a fair market price for him. I have some feelers out; with luck, we should know in a few more days."

"And meanwhile, his allies will be here in a few more minutes."

"Yes," Karrde agreed, his lips puckering slightly. "Skywalker will have to be moved somewhere a bit more out of the way-we obviously can't risk Solo and Calrissian stumbling over him. I want you to move him to the number four storage shed."

"That's where we're keeping that droid of his," Mara reminded him.

"The shed's got two rooms; put him in the other one." Karrde waved toward her waist. "And do remember to lose that before our guests arrive. I doubt they'd fail to recognize it."

Mara glanced down at Skywalker's lightsaber hanging from her belt. "Don't worry. If it's all the same to you, I'd just as soon not have much to do with them."

"I wasn't planning for you to," Karrde assured her. "I'd like you here when I greet them, and possibly to join us for dinner, as well. Other than that, you're excused from all social activities."

"So they're staying the day?"

"And possibly the night, as well." He eyed her. "Requirements of a proper host aside, can you think of a better way for us to prove to the Republic, should the need arise, that Skywalker was never here?"

It made sense. But that didn't mean she had to like it. "Are you warning the rest of the Wild Karrde's crew to keep quiet?"

"I'm doing better than that," Karrde said, nodding back toward the comm equipment. "I've sent everyone who knows about Skywalker off to get the Starry Ice prepped. Which reminds me-after you move Skywalker, I want you to run his X-wing farther back under the trees. No more than half a kilometer-I don't want you to go through any more of the forest alone than you have to. Can you fly an X-wing?"

"I can fly anything."

"Good," he said, smiling slightly. "You'd better be off, then. The Millennium Falcon will be landing in less than twenty minutes."

Mara took a deep breath. "All right," she said. Turning, she left the room.

The compound was empty as she walked across it to the barracks building. By Karrde's design, undoubtedly; he must have shifted people around to inside duties to give her a clear path for taking Skywalker to the storage shed. Reaching his room, she keyed off the lock and slid open the door.

He was standing by the window, dressed in that same black tunic, pants, and high boots that he'd worn that day at Jabba's palace.

That day she'd stood silently by and watched . . . and let him destroy her life.

"Get your case and let's go," she growled, gesturing with the blaster. "It's moving day."

His eyes stayed on her as he stepped over to the bed. Not on the blaster in her hand, but on her face. "Karrde's made a decision?" he asked calmly as he picked up the case.

For a long moment she was tempted to tell him that, no, this was on her own initiative, just to see if the implications would crack that maddening Jedi serenity. But even a Jedi would probably fight if he thought he was going to his death, and they were on a tight enough schedule as it was. "You're moving to one of the storage sheds," she told him. "We've got company coming, and we don't have any formal wear your size. Come on, move."

She walked him past the central building to the number four shed, a two-room structure tucked conveniently back out of the compound's major traffic patterns. The room on the left, normally used for sensitive or dangerous equipment, was also the only one of the storage areas with a lock, undoubtedly the reason Karrde had chosen it to serve the role of impromptu prison. Keeping one eye on Skywalker, she keyed open the lock, wondering as she did so whether Karrde had had time to disable the inside mechanism. A quick look as the door slid open showed that he hadn't.

Well, that could easily be corrected. "In here," she ordered, flicking on the inside light and gesturing for him to enter.

He complied. "Looks cozy," he said, glancing around the windowless room and the piled shipping boxes that took up perhaps half the floor space to the right. "Probably quiet, too."

"Ideal for Jedi meditation," she countered, stepping over to an open box marked Blasting Disks and taking a look inside. No problem; it was being used for spare coveralls at the moment. She gave the rest of the box markings a quick check, confirmed that there was nothing here he could possibly use to escape. "We'll get a cot or something in for you later," she said, moving back to the door. "Food, too."

"I'm all right for now."

"Ask me if I care." The inner lock mechanism was behind a thin metal plate. Two shots from her blaster unsealed one end of the plate and curled it back; a third vaporized a selected group of wires. "Enjoy the quiet," she said, and left.

The door closed behind her, and locked . . . and Luke was once again alone.

He looked around him. Piled boxes, no windows, a single locked door. "I've been in worse places," he muttered under his breath. "At least there's no Rancor here."

For a moment he frowned at the odd thought, wondering why the Rancor pit at Jabba's palace should suddenly have flashed to mind. But he only gave it a moment. The lack of proper preparation and facilities in his new prison strongly suggested that moving him here had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, possibly precipitated by the imminent arrival of whoever the visitors were Mara had mentioned.

And if so, there was a good possibility that somewhere in the mad scramble they might finally have made a mistake.

He went over to the door, easing the still-warm metal plate a little farther back and kneeling down to peer inside at the lock mechanism. Han had spent a few idle hours once trying to teach him the finer points of hot-wiring locks, and if Mara's shot hadn't damaged it too badly, there was a chance he might be able to persuade it to disengage.

It didn't look promising. Whether by design or accident, Mara's shot had taken out the wires to the inside control's power supply, vaporizing them all the way back into the wall conduit, where there was no chance at all of getting hold of them.

But if he could find another power supply . . .

He got to his feet again, brushed off his knees, and headed over to the neatly piled boxes. Mara had glanced at their labels, but she'd actually looked inside only one of them. Perhaps a more complete search would turn up something useful.

The search, unfortunately, took even less time than his examination of the ruined lock. Most of the boxes were sealed beyond his capability to open without tools, and the handful that weren't held such innocuous items as clothing or replacement equipment modules.

All right, then, he told himself, sitting down on the edge of one of the boxes and looking around for inspiration. I can't use the door. There aren't any windows. But there was another room in this shed-he'd seen the other door while Mara was opening this one. Perhaps there was some kind of half-height doorway or crawl space between them, hidden out of sight behind the stacked boxes.

It wasn't likely, of course, that Mara would have missed anything that obvious. But he had time, and nothing else to occupy it. Getting up from his seat, he began unstacking the boxes and moving them away from the wall.

He'd barely begun when he found it. Not a doorway, but something almost as good: a multisocket power outlet, set into the wall just above the baseboard.

Karrde and Mara had made their mistake.

The metal doorplate, already stressed by the blaster fire Mara had used to peel it back, was relatively easy to bend. Luke kept at it, bending it back and forth, until a roughly triangular piece broke off in his hand. It was too soft to be of any use against the sealed equipment boxes, but it would probably be adequate for unscrewing the cover of a common power outlet.

He returned to the outlet and lay down in the narrow gap between wall and boxes. He was just trying to wedge his makeshift screwdriver against the first screw when he heard a quiet beep.

He froze, listening. The beep came again, followed by a series of equally soft warbles. Warbles that sounded very familiar . . . "Artoo?" he called softly. "Is that you?"

For a pair of heartbeats there was silence from the other room. Then, abruptly, the wall erupted with a minor explosion of electronic jabbering. Artoo, without a doubt. "Steady, Artoo," Luke called back. "I'm going to try and get this power outlet open. There's probably one on your side, too-can you get it open?"

There was a distinctly disgusted-sounding gurgle. "No, huh? Well, just hang on, then."

The broken metal triangle wasn't the easiest thing to work with, particularly in the cramped space available. Still, it took Luke only a couple of minutes to get the cover plate off and pull the wires out of his way. Hunching forward, he could see through the hole to the back of the outlet in Artoo's room. "I don't think I can get your outlet open from here," he called to the droid. "Is your room locked?"

There was a negative beep, followed by an odd sort of whining, as if Artoo was spinning his wheels. "Restraining bolt?" Luke asked. The spinning/whine came again- "Or a restraint collar?"

An affirmative beep, with frustrated overtones. It figured, in retrospect: a restraining bolt would leave a mark, whereas a collar snugged around Artoo's lower half would do nothing but let him wear out his wheels a little. "Never mind," Luke reassured him. "If there's enough wire in here to reach to the door, I should be able to unlock it. Then we can both get out of here."

Carefully, mindful of the possibility of shock from the higher-current lines nearby, he found the low-voltage wire and started easing it gently toward him out of the conduit. There was more than he'd expected; he got nearly one and a half meters coiled on the floor by his head before it stopped coming.

More than he'd expected, but far less than he needed. The door was a good four meters away in a straight line, and he would need some slack to get it spliced into the lock mechanism. "It's going to be a few more minutes," he called to Artoo, trying to think. The low-power line had a meter and a half of slack to it, which implied the other lines probably did, as well. If he could cut that much length off two of them, he should have more than enough to reach the lock.

Which left only the problem of finding something to cut them with. And, of course, managing to not electrocute himself along the way.

"What I wouldn't give to have my lightsaber back for a minute," he muttered, examining the edge of his makeshift screwdriver. It wasn't very sharp; but then, the superconducting wires weren't very thick, either.

It was the work of a couple of minutes to pull the other wires as far out of the conduit as they would go. Standing up, he took off his tunic, wrapped one of the sleeves twice around the metal, and started sawing.

He was halfway through the first of the wires when his hand slipped off the insulating sleeve and for a second touched the bare metal. Reflexively he jerked back, banging his hand against the wall.

And then his brain caught up with him. "Uh-oh," he murmured, staring at the half-cut wire.

There was an interrogative whistle from the other room. "I just touched one of the wires," he told the droid, "and I didn't get a shock."

Artoo whistled. "Yeah," Luke agreed. He tapped at the wire . . . touched it again . . . held his finger against it.

So Karrde and Mara hadn't made a mistake, after all. They'd already cut the power to the outlet.

For a moment he knelt there, holding the wire, wondering what he was going to do now. He still had all this wire, but no power supply for it to connect with. Conversely, there were probably any number of small power sources in the room, attached to the stored replacement modules, but they were all packed away in boxes he couldn't get into. Could he somehow use the wire to get into the boxes? Use it to slice through the outer sealant layer, perhaps?

He got a firm grip on the wire and pulled on it, trying to judge its tensile strength. His fingers slipped along the insulation; shifting his grip, he wrapped it firmly around his right hand-

And stopped, a sudden prickly feeling on the back of his neck. His right hand. His artificial right hand. His artificial, dual-power-supply right hand . . . "Artoo, you know anything about cybernetic limb replacements?" he called, levering the wrist access port open with his metal triangle.

There was a short pause, then a cautious and ambiguous-sounding warble. "It shouldn't take too much," he reassured the droid, peering at the maze of wiring and servos inside his hand. He'd forgotten how incredibly complex the whole thing was. "All I need to do is get one of the power supplies out. Think you can walk me through the procedure?"

The pause this time was shorter, and the reply more confident. "Good," Luke said. "Let's get to it."

Chapter 22

Han finished his presentation, sat back in his chair, and waited. "Interesting," Karrde said, that faintly amused, totally noncommittal expression of his hiding whatever it was he was really thinking.

"Interesting, indeed. I presume the Provisional Council would be willing to record legal guarantees of all this."

"We'll guarantee what we can," Han told him. "Your protection, legality of operation, and so forth. Naturally, we can't guarantee particular profit margins or anything like that."

"Naturally," Karrde agreed, his gaze shifting to Lando. "You've been rather quiet, General Calrissian. How exactly do you fit into all of this?"

"Just as a friend," Lando said. "Someone who knew how to get in touch with you. And someone who can vouch for Han's integrity and honesty."

A slight smile touched Karrde's lips. "Integrity and honesty," he repeated. "Interesting words to use in regard to a man with Captain Solo's somewhat checkered reputation."

Han grimaced, wondering which particular incident Karrde might be referring to. There were, he had to admit, a fair number to choose from. "Any checkering that existed is all in the past," he said.

"Of course," Karrde agreed. "Your proposal is, as I said, very interesting. But not, I think, for my organization."

"May I ask why not?" Han asked.

"Very simply, because it would look to certain parties as if we were taking sides," Karrde explained, sipping from the cup at his side. "Given the extent of our operations, and the regions in which those operations take place, that might not be an especially politic thing to do."

"I understand," Han nodded. "I'd like the chance to convince you that there are ways to keep your other clients from knowing about it."

Karrde smiled again. "I think you underestimate the Empire's intelligence capabilities, Captain Solo," he said. "They know far more about Republic movements than you might think."

"Tell me about it," Han grimaced, glancing at Lando. "That reminds me of something else I wanted to ask you. Lando said you might know a slicer who was good enough to crack diplomatic codes."

Karrde cocked his head slightly to the side. "Interesting request," he commented. "Particularly coming from someone who should already have access to such codes. Is intrigue beginning to form among the New Republic hierarchy, perhaps?"

That last conversation with Winter, and her veiled warnings, flashed through Han's mind. "This is purely personal," he assured Karrde. "Mostly personal, anyway."

"Ah," the other said. "As it happens, one of the best slicers in the trade will be at dinner this afternoon. You'll join us, of course?"

Han glanced at his watch in surprise. Between business and small talk, the fifteen-minute interview that Torve had promised him with Karrde had now stretched out into two hours. "We don't want to impose on your time-"

"It's no imposition at all," Karrde assured him, setting his cup down and standing. "With the press of business and all, we tend to miss the midday meal entirely and compensate by pushing the evening dinner up to late afternoon."

"I remember those wonderful smuggler schedules," Han nodded wryly, memories flashing through his mind. "You're lucky to get even two meals."

"Indeed," Karrde agreed. "If you'll follow me . . . ?"

The main building, Han had noted on the way in, seemed to be composed of three or four circular zones centering on the greatroom with the strange tree growing through it. The room Karrde took them to now was in the layer just outside the greatroom, taking perhaps a quarter of that circle. A number of round tables were set up, with several of them already occupied. "We don't stand on protocol regarding meals here," Karrde said, leading the way to a table in the center of the room. Four people were already sitting there: three men and a woman.

Karrde steered them to three vacant seats. "Good evening, all," he nodded to the others at the table. "May I present Calrissian and Solo, who'll be dining with us tonight." He gestured to each of the men in turn. "Three of my associates: Wadewarn, Chin, and Ghent. Ghent is the slicer I mentioned; possibly the best in the business." He waved to the woman. "And of course you've already met Mara Jade."

"Yes," Han agreed, nodding to her and sitting down, a small shiver running up his back. Mara had been with Karrde when he'd first welcomed them into that makeshift throne room of his. She hadn't stayed long; but for the whole of that brief time she'd glowered darkly at Lando and him with those incredible green eyes of hers.

Almost exactly the same way she was glowering at them right now.

"So you're Han Solo," the slicer, Ghent, said brightly. "I've heard a lot about you. Always wanted to meet you."

Han shifted his attention away from Mara to Ghent. He wasn't much more than a kid, really, barely out of his teens. "It's nice to be famous," Han told him. "Just remember that whatever you've heard has been hearsay. And that hearsay stories grow an extra leg every time they're told."

"You're too modest," Karrde said, signaling to the side. In response, a squat droid rolled toward them from around the room's curve, a tray of what looked like rolled leaves perched on top of it. "It would be difficult to embellish that Zygerrian slaver incident, for example."

Lando looked up from the droid's tray. "Zygerrian slavers?" he echoed. "You never told me that one."

"It wasn't anything important," Han said, warning Lando with a look to drop the subject.

Unfortunately, Ghent either missed the look or was too young to know what it meant. "He and Chewbacca attacked a Zygerrian slaver ship," the kid explained eagerly. "Just the two of them. The Zygerrians were so scared they abandoned ship."

"They were more pirates than slavers," Han said, giving up. "And they weren't afraid of me-they abandoned ship because I told them I had twenty stormtroopers with me and was coming aboard to check their shipping licenses."

Lando raised his eyebrows. "And they bought that?"

Han shrugged. "I was broadcasting a borrowed Imperial ID at the time."

"But then you know what he did?" Ghent put in. "He gave the ship over to the slaves they found locked up in the hold. Gave it to them-just like that! Including all the cargo, too."

"Why, you old softie," Lando grinned, taking a bite from one of the rolled leaves. "No wonder you never told me that one."

With an effort, Han held onto his patience. "The cargo was pirate plunder," he growled. "Some of it extremely traceable. We were off Janodral Mizar-they had a strange local law at the time that pirate or slaver victims got to split up the proceeds if the pirates were taken or killed."

"That law's still in force, as far as I know," Karrde murmured.

"Probably. Anyway, Chewie was with me . . . and you know Chewie's opinion of slavers."

"Yeah," Lando said dryly. "They'd have had a better chance with the twenty stormtroopers."

"And if I hadn't just given away the ship-" Han broke off as a quiet beep sounded.

"Excuse me," Karrde said, pulling a comlink from his belt. "-Karrde here."

Han couldn't hear what was being said . . . but abruptly Karrde's face seemed to tighten. "I'll be right there."

He got to his feet and slipped the comlink back onto his belt. "Excuse me again," he said. "A small matter needs my attention."

"Trouble?" Han asked.

"I hope not." Karrde glanced across the table, and Han turned in time to see Mara stand up. "Hopefully, this will only take a few minutes. Please enjoy your meal."

They left the table, and Han looked back at Lando. "I've got a bad feeling about this," he muttered.

Lando nodded, his eyes still following Mara and Karrde, a strange expression on his face. "I've seen her before, Han," he murmured back. "I don't know where, but I know I've seen her and I don't think she was a smuggler at the time."

Han looked around the table at the others, at the wariness in their eyes and the guarded murmuring back and forth between them. Even Ghent had noticed the sudden tension and was studiously eating away at his appetizers. "Well, figure it out fast, buddy," he told Lando quietly. "We might be about to wear out our welcome."

"I'm working on it. What do we do until then?" Another droid was trundling up, his tray laden with filled soup bowls. "Until then," Han said, "I guess we enjoy our meal."

"He came in from lightspeed about ten minutes ago," Aves said tightly, tapping the mark on the sensor display. "Captain Pellaeon signaled two minutes later. Asking for you personally."

Karrde rubbed a finger gently across his lower lip. "Any signs of landing craft or fighters?" he asked.

"Not yet," Aves shook his head. "But from his insertion angle, I'd guess he'll be dropping some soon-downpoint probably somewhere in this part of the forest."

Karrde nodded thoughtfully. Such propitious timing . . . for someone. "Where did we wind up putting the Millennium Falcon?"

"It's over on pad eight," Aves said.

Back in under the edge of the forest, then. That was good-the high metal content of Myrkr's trees would help shield it from the Chimera's sensors. "Take two men and go throw a camo net over it," he told the other. "There's no point in taking chances. And do it quietly-we don't want to alarm our guests."

"Right." Aves pulled off his headset and headed out of the room at a brisk trot.

Karrde looked at Mara. "Interesting timing, this visit."

She met his gaze without flinching. "If that's a subtle way of asking whether or not I called them, don't bother. I didn't."

He cocked his head. "Really. I'm a little surprised."

"So am I," she countered. "I should have thought of it days ago." She nodded toward the headset. "You going to talk to him or not?"

"I don't suppose I have much choice." Mentally bracing himself, Karrde sat down in the seat Aves had just vacated and touched a switch. "Captain Pellaeon, this is Talon Karrde," he said. "My apologies for the delay. What can I do for you?"

The distant image of the Chimaera disappeared, but it wasn't Pellaeon's face that replaced it. This face was a nightmare image: long and lean, with pale blue skin and eyes that glittered like two bits of red-hot metal. "Good afternoon, Captain Karrde," the other said, his voice clear and smooth and very civilized. "I'm Grand Admiral Thrawn."

"Good afternoon, Admiral," Karrde nodded in greeting, taking it in stride. "This is an unexpected honor. May I ask the purpose of your call?"

"Part of it I'm sure you've already guessed," Thrawn told him. "We find ourselves in need of more ysalamiri, and would like your permission to harvest some more of them."

"Certainly," Karrde said, a funny feeling starting to tug at the back of his mind. There was something strange about Thrawn's posture . . . and the Imperials hardly needed his permission to come pull ysalamiri off their trees. "If I may say so, you seem to be running through them rather quickly. Are you having trouble keeping them alive?"

Thrawn raised an eyebrow in polite surprise. "None of them has died, Captain. We simply need more of them."

"Ah," Karrde said. "I see."

"I doubt that. But no matter. It occurred to me, Captain, that as long as we were coming here, it might be a good time for us to have a little talk."

"What sort of talk?"

"I'm sure we can find some topics of mutual interest," Thrawn said. "For example, I'm in the market for new warships."

Long practice kept any guilty reaction from leaking out through Karrde's face or voice. But it was a near thing. "Warships?" he asked carefully.

"Yes." Thrawn favored him with a thin smile. "Don't worry-I'm not expecting you to actually have any capital starships in stock. But a man with your contacts may possibly be able to acquire them."

"I doubt that my contacts are quite that extensive, Admiral," Karrde told him, trying hard to read that not-quite-human face. Did he know? Or was the question merely an exquisitely dangerous coincidence? "I don't think we'll be able to help you."

Thrawn's expression didn't change . . . but abruptly there was an edge of menace to his smile. "You'll try anyway. And then there's the matter of your refusal to help in our search for Luke Skywalker."

Some of the tightness in Karrde's chest eased. This was safer territory. "I'm sorry we were also unable to help there, Admiral. As I explained before to your representative, we were under several tight scheduling deadlines at the time. We simply couldn't spare the ships."

Thrawn's eyebrows lifted slightly. "At the time, you say? But the search is still going on, Captain."

Silently, Karrde cursed himself for the slip. "Still going on?" he echoed, frowning. "But your representative said Skywalker was flying an Incom X-wing starfighter. If you haven't found him by now, his life support will surely have given out."

"Ah," Thrawn said, nodding. "I see the misunderstanding. Normally, yes, you'd be correct. But Skywalker is a Jedi; and among a Jedi's bag of tricks is the ability to go into a sort of comatose state." He paused, and the image on the screen flickered momentarily. "So there's still plenty of time for you to join in the hunt."

"I see," Karrde said. "Interesting. I suppose that's just one of the many things the average person never knew about Jedi."

"Perhaps we'll have time to discuss such things when I arrive on Myrkr," Thrawn said.

Karrde froze, a horrible realization shooting through him like an electric shock. That brief flickering of Thrawn's image-

A glance at the auxiliary sensor display confirmed it: three Lambda-class shuttles and a full TIE fighter escort had left the Chimaera, heading toward the surface. "I'm afraid we don't have much to entertain you with," he said between suddenly stiff lips. Certainly not on such short notice."

"No need for entertainment," Thrawn assured him. "As I said, I'm simply coming for a talk. A brief talk, of course; I know how busy you are."

"I appreciate your consideration," Karrde said. "If you'll excuse me, Admiral, I need to begin the preparations to receive you."

"I look forward to our meeting," Thrawn said. His face vanished, and the display returned to its distant view of the Chimaera.

For a long moment Karrde just sat there, the possibilities and potential disasters flipping through his mind at top speed. "Get on the comlink to Chin," he told Mara. "Tell him we have Imperial guests coming, and he's to begin preparations to receive them properly. Then go to pad eight and have Aves move the Millennium Falcon farther back under cover. Go there in person-the Chimaera and its shuttles might be able to tap into our comlink transmissions."

"What about Solo and Calrissian?"

Karrde pursed his lips. "We'll have to get them out, of course. Move them into the forest, perhaps at or near their ship. I'd better deal with that myself."

"Why not turn them over to Thrawn?"

He looked up at her. At those burning eyes and that rigid, tightly controlled face . . . "With no offer of a bounty?" he asked. "Relying on the Grand Admiral's generosity after the fact?"

"I don't find that a compelling reason," Mara said bluntly.

"Neither do I," he countered coldly. "What I do find compelling is that they're our guests. They've sat at our table and eaten our food . . . and like it or not, that means they're under our protection."

Mara's lip twitched. "And do these rules of hospitality apply to Skywalker, too?" she asked sardonically.

"You know they don't," he said. "But now is not the time or the place to turn him over to the Empire, even if that's the way the decision ultimately goes. Do you understand?"

"No," she growled. "I don't."

Karrde eyed her, strongly tempted to tell her that she didn't need to understand, only to obey. "It's a matter of relative strength," he told her instead. "Here on the ground, with an Imperial Star Destroyer orbiting overhead, we have no bargaining position at all. I wouldn't do business under such circumstances even if Thrawn was the most trustworthy client in the galaxy. Which he's not. Now do you understand?"

She took a deep breath, let it out. "I don't agree," she gritted. "But I'll accept your decision."

"Thank you. Perhaps after the Imperials leave, you can ask General Calrissian about the perils of making bargains while stormtroopers are strolling around your territory." Karrde looked back at the display. "So. Falcon moved; Solo and Calrissian moved. Skywalker and the droid should be all right where they are-the four shed has enough shielding to keep out anything but a fairly determined probe."

"And if Thrawn is determined?"

"Then we may have trouble," Karrde agreed calmly. "On the other hand, I doubt that Thrawn would be coming down himself if he thought there was the possibility of a firefight. The upper military ranks don't achieve that status by risking their own lives unnecessarily." He nodded at the door. "Enough talk. You have your job; I have mine. Let's get to them."

She nodded and turned to the door; and as she did so, a sudden thought struck him. "Where did you put Skywalker's lightsaber?" he asked.

"It's in my room," she said, turning back. "Why?"

"Better get it and put it somewhere else. Lightsabers aren't supposed to be highly detectable, but there's no point in taking chances. Put it in with the resonator cavities in three shed; they ought to provide adequate shielding from stray sensor probes."

"Right." She regarded him thoughtfully. "What was all that business about capital starships?"

"You heard everything that was said."

"I know. I was talking about your reaction to it."

He grimaced to himself. "I'd hoped it wasn't that obvious."

"It wasn't." She waited expectantly.

He pursed his lips. "Ask me again later. Right now, we have work to do."

For another second she studied him. Then, without a word, she nodded and left.

Taking a deep breath, Karrde got to his feet. First thing to do would be to get back to the dining room and inform his guests of the sudden change in plans. And after that, to prepare himself for a face-to-face confrontation with the most dangerous man in the Empire. With Skywalker and spare warships as two of the topics of conversation.

It was going to be a most interesting afternoon.

"Okay, Artoo," Luke called as he made the last of the connections. "I think we're ready to try it. Cross your fingers."

From the next room came a complicated series of electronic jabbers. Probably, Luke decided, the droid reminding him that he didn't have any fingers to cross.

Fingers. For a moment Luke looked down at his right hand, flexing his fingers and feeling the unpleasant pins-and-needles tingling/numbness there. It had been five years since he'd really thought of the hand as being a machine attached to his arm. Now, suddenly, it was impossible to think of it as anything but that.

Artoo beeped impatiently. "Right," Luke agreed, forcing his attention away from his hand as best he could and moving the end of the wire toward what he hoped was the proper contact point. It could have been worse, he realized: the hand could have been designed with only a single power supply, in which case he wouldn't have even this much use of it. "Here goes," he said, and touched the wire.

And with no fuss or dramatics whatsoever, the door slid quietly open.

"Got it," Luke hissed. Carefully, trying not to lose the contact point, he leaned over and peered outside.

The sun was starting to sink behind the trees, throwing long shadows across the compound. From his position Luke could see only a little of the grounds, but what he could see seemed to be deserted. Setting his feet, he let go of the wire and dived for the doorway.

With the contact broken, the door slid shut again, nearly catching his left ankle as he hit the ground and rolled awkwardly into a crouch. He froze, waiting to see if the noise would spark any reaction. But the silence continued; and after a few seconds, he got to his feet and ran to the shed's other door.

Artoo had been right: there was indeed no lock on this half of the shed. Luke hit the release, threw one last glance around, and slipped inside.

The droid beeped an enthusiastic greeting, bobbing back and forth awkwardly in the restraint collar, a torus-shaped device that fit snugly around his legs and wheels. "Quiet, Artoo," Luke warned the other, kneeling down to examine the collar. "And hold still."

He'd been worried that the collar would be locked or intertwined into Artoo's wheel system in some way, requiring special tools to disengage. But the device was much simpler than that-it merely held enough of the droid's weight off the floor so that he couldn't get any real traction. Luke released a pair of clasps and pushed the hinged halves apart, and Artoo was free. "Come on," he told the droid, and headed back to the door.

As far as he could see, the compound was still deserted. "The ship's around that way," he whispered, pointing toward the central building. "Looks like the best approach would be to circle to the left, keeping inside the trees as much as we can. Can you handle the terrain?"

Artoo raised his scanner, beeped a cautious affirmative. "Okay. Keep an eye out for anyone coming out of the buildings."

They'd made it into the woods, and were perhaps a quarter of the way around the circle, when Artoo gave a warning chirp. "Freeze," Luke whispered, stopping dead beside a large tree trunk and hoping they were enough in the shadows. His own black outfit should blend adequately into the darkening forest background, but Artoo's white and blue were another matter entirely.

Fortunately, the three men who came out of the central building never looked in their direction, but headed straight toward the edge of the forest.

Headed there at a fast, determined trot . . . and just before they disappeared into the trees, all three drew their blasters.

Artoo moaned softly. "I don't like it, either," Luke told him. "Let's hope it doesn't have anything to do with us. All clear?"

The droid beeped affirmation, and they started off again. Luke kept half an eye on the forest behind them, remembering Mara's veiled hints about large predators. It could have been a lie, of course, designed to discourage him from trying to escape. For that matter, he'd never spotted any real evidence that the window of his previous room had had an alarm on it.

Artoo beeped again. Luke twisted his attention back to the compound . . . and froze.

Mara had stepped out of the central building.

For what seemed like a long time she just stood there on the doorstep, looking distractedly up into the sky. Luke watched her, not daring even to look down to see how well concealed Artoo might be. If she turned in their direction-or if she went to the shed to see how he was doing . . .

Abruptly, she looked down again, a determined expression on her face. She turned toward the second barracks building and headed off at a brisk walk.

Luke let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. They were far from being out of danger-all Mara had to do was turn her head 90 degrees to her left and she'd be looking directly at them. But something about her posture seemed to indicate that her attention and thoughts were turned inward.

As if she'd suddenly made a hard decision . . .

She went into the barracks, and Luke made a quick decision of his own. "Come on, Artoo," he murmured. "It's getting too crowded out here. We're going to cut farther into the forest, come up on the ships from behind."

It was, fortunately, a short distance to the maintenance hangar and the group of ships parked alongside it. They arrived after only a few minutes-to discover their X-wing gone.

"No, I don't know where they've moved it to," Luke gritted, looking around as best he could while still staying under cover. "Can your sensors pick it up?"

Artoo beeped a negative, adding a chirping explanation Luke couldn't even begin to follow. "Well, it doesn't matter," he reassured the droid. "We'd have had to put down somewhere else on the planet and find something with a working hyperdrive, anyway. We'll just skip that step and take one of these."

He glanced around, hoping to find a Z-95 or Y-wing or something else he was at least marginally familiar with. But the only ships he recognized were a Corellian Corvette and what looked like a downsized bulk freighter. "Got any suggestions?" he asked Artoo.

The droid beeped a prompt affirmative, his little sensor dish settling on a pair of long, lean ships about twice the length or Luke's X-wing. Fighters, obviously, but not like anything the Alliance had ever used. "One of those?" he asked doubtfully.

Artoo beeped again, a distinct note of impatience to the sound. "Right; we're a little pressed for time," Luke agreed.

They made it across to one of the fighters without incident. Unlike the X-wing design, the entrance was a hinged hatchway door in the side-possibly one reason Artoo had chosen it, Luke decided as he manhandled the droid inside. The pilot's cockpit wasn't much roomier than an X-wing's, but directly behind it was a three-seat tech/weapons area. The seats weren't designed for astromech droids, of course, but with a little ingenuity on Luke's part and some stretch on the restraints', he managed to get Artoo wedged between two of the seats and firmly strapped in place. "Looks like everything's already on standby," he commented, glancing at the flickering lights on the control boards. "There's an outlet right there-give everything a quick check while I strap in. With a little luck, maybe we can be out of here before anyone even knows we're gone."

She had delivered the open comlink message to Chin, and the quieter ones to Aves and the others at the Millennium Falcon; and as she stalked her way glowering across the compound toward the number three shed, Mara decided once more that she hated the universe.

She'd been the one who'd found Skywalker. She, by herself, alone. There was no question about that; no argument even possible. It should be she, not Karrde, who had the final say on his fate.

I should have left him out there, she told herself bitterly as she stomped across the beaten ground. Should have just let him die in the cold of space. She'd considered that, too, at the time. But if he'd died out there, all alone, she might never have known for sure that he was, in fact, dead.

And she certainly wouldn't have had the satisfaction of killing him herself.

She looked down at the lightsaber clenched in her hand, watching the afternoon sunlight glint from the silvery metal as she hefted its weight. She could do it now, she knew. Could go in there to check on him and claim he had tried to jump her. Without the Force to call on, he would be an easy target, even for someone like her who hadn't picked up a lightsaber more than a handful of times in her life. It would be easy, clean, and very fast.

And she didn't owe Karrde anything, no matter how well his organization might have treated her. Not about something like this.

And yet . . .

She was coming up on four shed, still undecided, when she heard the faint whine of a repulsorlift.

She peered up into the sky, shading her eyes with her free hand as she tried to spot the incoming ship. But nothing was visible . . . and as the whine grew louder, she realized abruptly that it was the sound of one of their own vehicles. She spun around and looked over toward the maintenance hangar-

Just in time to see one of their two Skipray blastboats rise above the treetops.

For a pair of heartbeats she stared at the ship, wondering what in the Empire Karrde thought he was doing. Sending an escort or pilot ship for the Imperials, perhaps?

And then, abruptly, it clicked.

She twisted back and sprinted for the four shed, pulling her blaster from its forearm sheath as she ran. The lock on the room inexplicably refused to open; she tried it twice and then blasted it.

Skywalker was gone.

She swore, viciously, and ran out into the compound. The Skipray had shifted to forward motion now, disappearing behind the trees to the west. Jamming her blaster back into its sheath, she grabbed the comlink off her belt-

And swore again. The Imperials could be here at any minute, and any mention of Skywalker's presence would land them all in very deep trouble indeed.

Which left her with exactly one option.

She reached the second Skipray at a dead run and had it in the air within two minutes. Skywalker would not-would not-get away now.

Kicking the drive to full power, she screamed off in pursuit.

Chapter 23

They showed up almost simultaneously on the scopes: the other of Karrde's fighter ships pursuing him from behind, and the Imperial Star Destroyer in orbit far overhead. "I think," Luke called back to Artoo, "that we're in trouble."

The droid's reply was almost swallowed up in the roar as Luke gingerly eased the drive up as high as he dared. The strange fighter's handling wasn't even remotely like anything he'd ever flown before; slightly reminiscent of the snowspeeders the Alliance had used on Hoth, but with the kind of sluggish response time that implied a great deal of armor and engine mass. With time, he was pretty sure he'd be able to master it.

But time was something he was rapidly running out of.

He risked a glance at the aft-vision display. The other fighter was coming up fast, with no more than a minute or two now separating the two ships. Obviously, the pilot had far more experience with the craft than Luke had. That, or else such a fierce determination to recapture Luke that it completely overrode normal common-sense caution.

Either way, it meant Mara Jade.

The fighter dipped a little too deep, scraping its ventral tail fin against the tops of the trees and drawing a sharp squeal of protest from Artoo. "Sorry," Luke called back, feeling a fresh surge of perspiration break out on his forehead as he again carefully eased the drive up a notch. Speaking of overriding common sense . . . But at the moment, sticking to the treetops was about the only option he had. The forest below, for some unknown reason, seemed to have a scattering or scrambling effect on sensor scans, both detection and navigational. Staying low forced his pursuer to stay low, too, lest she lose visual contact with him against the mottled forest backdrop, and also at least partially hid him from the orbiting Star Destroyer.

The Star Destroyer. Luke glanced at the image on his overhead scope, feeling his stomach tighten. At least he knew now who the company was Mara had mentioned. It looked like he'd gotten out just in the nick of time.

On the other hand, perhaps the move to that storage shed implied that Karrde had decided not to sell him to the Imperials after all. It might be worth asking Karrde about someday. Preferably from a great distance.

Behind him, Artoo suddenly trilled a warning. Luke jerked in his seat, eyes flickering across the scopes as he searched for the source of the trouble-

And jerked again. There, directly above his dorsal tail fin and less than a ship's length away, was the other fighter.

"Hang on!" Luke shouted at Artoo, clenching his teeth tightly together. His one chance now was to pull a drop-kick Koiogran turn, killing his forward momentum and loop-rolling into another direction. Twisting the control stick with one hand, he jammed the throttle forward with the other-

And abruptly, the cockpit canopy exploded into a slapping tangle of tree branches, and he was thrown hard against his restraints as the fighter spun and twisted and rolled out of control.

The last thing he heard before the darkness took him was Artoo's shrill electronic scream.

The three shuttles came to a perfectly synchronized landing as, overhead, the TIE fighter escort shot by in equally perfect formation. "The Empire's parade-ground expertise hasn't eroded, anyway," Aves murmured.

"Quiet," Karrde murmured back, watching the shuttle ramps lower to the ground. The center one, almost certainly, would be Thrawn's.

Marching with blaster rifles held ceremonially across their chests, a line of stormtroopers filed down each of the three ramps. Behind them, emerging not from the center but from the rightmost of the shuttles, came a handful of midranking officers. Following them came a short, wiry being of unknown race with dark gray skin, bulging eyes, a protruding jaw, and the look of a bodyguard. Following him came Grand Admiral Thrawn.

So much, Karrde thought, for him doing things the obvious way. It would be something to make a note of for future reference.

With his small reception committee beside him, he walked toward the approaching group of Imperials, trying to ignore the stares of the stormtroopers. "Grand Admiral Thrawn," he nodded in greeting. "Welcome to our little corner of Myrkr. I'm Talon Karrde."

"Pleased to meet you, Captain," Thrawn said, inclining his head slightly. Those glowing eyes, Karrde decided, were even more impressive in person than they were on a comm display. And considerably more intimidating.

"I apologize for our somewhat less than formal greeting," Karrde continued, waving a hand at his group. "We don't often entertain people of your status here."

Thrawn cocked a blue-black eyebrow. "Really. I'd have thought a man in your position would be used to dealing with the elite. Particularly high planetary officials whose cooperation, shall we say, you find you require?"

Karrde smiled easily. "We deal with the elite from time to time. But not here. This is-was, I should say," he added, glancing significantly at the stormtroopers, "-our private operations base."

"Of course," Thrawn said. "Interesting drama a few minutes ago out there to the west. Tell me about it."

With an effort, Karrde hid a grimace. He'd hoped the sensor-scrambling effect of Myrkr's trees would have hidden the Skipray chase from Thrawn's view. Obviously, it hadn't. "Merely a small internal problem," he assured the Grand Admiral. "A former and somewhat disgruntled employee broke into one of our storage sheds, stole some merchandise, and made off with one of our ships. Another of our people is in pursuit."

"Was in pursuit, Captain," Thrawn corrected lazily, those eyes seeming to burn into Karrde's face. "Or didn't you know they both went down?"

Karrde stared at him, a thin needle of ice running through him. "I didn't know that, no," he said. "Our sensors-the metallic content of the trees fouls them up badly."

"We had a higher observation angle," Thrawn said. "It looked as if the first ship hit the trees, with the pursuer getting caught in the slipstream." He regarded Karrde thoughtfully. "I take it the pursuer was someone special?"

Karrde let his face harden a bit. "All my associates are special," he said, pulling out his comlink. "Please excuse me a moment; I have to get a rescue team organized."

Thrawn took a long step forward, reaching two pale blue fingers to cover the top of the comlink. "Permit me," he said smoothly. "Troop commander?"

One of the stormtroopers stepped forward. "Sir?"

"Take a detail out to the crash site," Thrawn ordered, his eyes still on Karrde. "Examine the wreckage, and bring back any survivors. And anything that looks like it wouldn't normally belong in a Skipray blastboat."

"Yes, sir." The other gestured, and one of the columns of stormtroopers turned and retraced their steps up the ramp of the left-most shuttle.

"I appreciate your assistance, Admiral," Karrde said, his mouth suddenly a little dry. "But it really isn't necessary."

"On the contrary, Captain," Thrawn said softly. "Your assistance with the ysalamiri has left us in your debt. How better for us to repay you?"

"How better, indeed?" Karrde murmured. The ramp lifted into place, and with the hum of repulsorlifts, the shuttle rose into the air. The cards were dealt, and there was nothing he could do now to alter them. He could only hope that Mara somehow had things under control.

With anyone else, he wouldn't have bet on it. With Mara . . . there was a chance.

"And now," Thrawn said, "I believe you were going to show me around?"

"Yes," Karrde nodded. "If you'll come this way, please?"

"Looks like the stormtroopers are leaving," Han said quietly, pressing the macrobinoculars a little harder against his forehead. "Some of them, anyway. Filing back into one of the shuttles."

"Let me see," Lando muttered from the other side of the tree.

Keeping his movements slow and careful, Han handed the macrobinoculars over. There was no telling what kind of equipment they had on those shuttles and TIE fighters, and he didn't especially trust all this talk about how good the trees were at sensor shielding.

"Yes, it seems to be just the one shuttle that's going," Lando agreed.

Han half turned, the serrated, grasslike plants they were lying on top of digging into his shirt with the movement. "You get Imperial visitors here often?" he demanded.

"Not here," Ghent shook his head nervously, his teeth almost chattering with tension. "They've been to the forest once or twice to pick up some ysalamiri, but they've never come to the base. At least, not while I was here."

"Ysalamiri?" Lando frowned. "What are those?"

"Little furry snakes with legs," Ghent said. "I don't know what they're good for. Look, couldn't we get back to the ship now? Karrde told me I was supposed to keep you there, where you'd be safe."

Han ignored him. "What do you think?" he asked Lando.

The other shrugged. "Got to have something to do with that Skipray that went burning out of here just as Karrde was herding us out."

"There was some kind of prisoner," Ghent offered. "Karrde and Jade had him stashed away-maybe he got out. Now, can we please get back to-"

"A prisoner?" Lando repeated, frowning back at the kid. "When did Karrde start dealing with prisoners?"

"Maybe when he started dealing with kidnappers," Han growled before Ghent could answer.

"We don't deal with kidnappers," Ghent protested.

"Well, you're dealing with one now," Han told him, nodding toward the group of Imperials. "That little gray guy in there?-that's one of the aliens who tried to kidnap Leia and me."

"What?" Lando peered through the macrobinoculars again. "Are you sure?"

"It's one of the species, anyway. We didn't stop at the time to get names." Han looked back at Ghent. "This prisoner-who was he?"

"I don't know," Ghent shook his head. "They brought him back on the Wild Karrde a few days ago and put him in the shortterm barracks. I think they'd just moved him over to one of the storage sheds when we got the word that the Imperials were coming down for a visit."

"What did he look like?"

"I don't know!" Ghent hissed, what little was left of his composure going fast. Skulking around forests and spying on armed stormtroopers was clearly not the sort of thing an expert slicer was supposed to have to put up with. "None of us was supposed to go near him or ask any questions about him."

Lando caught Han's eye. "Could be someone they don't want the Imperials to get hold of. A defector, maybe, trying to get to the New Republic?"

Han felt his lip twist. "I'm more worried right now about them having moved him out of the barracks. That could mean the stormtroopers are planning to move in for a while."

"Karrde didn't say anything about that," Ghent objected.

"Karrde may not know it yet," Lando said dryly. "Trust me-I was on the short end of a stormtrooper bargain once." He handed the macrobinoculars back to Han. "Looks like they're going inside."

They were, indeed. Han watched as the procession set off: Karrde and the blue-skinned Imperial officer in front, their respective entourages following, the twin columns of stormtroopers flanking the whole parade. "Any idea who that guy with the red eyes is?" he asked Ghent.

"I think he's a Grand Admiral or something," the other said. "Took over Imperial operations a while back. I don't know his name."

Han looked at Lando, found the other sending the same look right back at him. "A Grand Admiral?" Lando repeated carefully.

"Yeah. Look, they're going-there's nothing else to see. Can we please-?"

"Let's get back to the Falcon," Han muttered, stowing the macrobinoculars in their belt pouch and starting a backwards elbows-and-knees crawl from their covering tree. A Grand Admiral. No wonder the New Republic had been getting the sky cut out from under them lately.

"I don't suppose you have any records on Imperial Grand Admirals back on the Falcon," Lando murmured, backing up alongside him.

"No," Han told him. "But they've got 'em on Coruscant."

"Great," Lando said, the words almost lost in the hissing of the sharp-bladed grass as they elbowed their way through it. "Let's hope we live long enough to get this tidbit back there."

"We will," Han assured him grimly. "We'll stick around long enough to find out what kind of game Karrde's playing, but then we're gone. Even if we have to blow out of here with that camo net still hanging off the ship."

The strangest thing about waking up this time, Luke decided dimly, was that he didn't actually hurt anywhere.

And he should have. From what he remembered of those last few seconds-and from the view of splintered trees outside the fighter's twisted canopy-he would have counted himself lucky even to be alive, let alone undamaged. Clearly, the restraints and crash balloons had been augmented by something more sophisticated-an emergency acceleration compensator, perhaps.

A shaky sort of gurgle came from behind him. "You okay, Artoo?" he called, levering himself out of his seat and climbing awkwardly across the canted floor. "Hang on, I'm coming."

The droid's information retrieval jack had been snapped off in the crash, but apart from that and a couple of minor dents, he didn't seem to have been damaged. "We'd better get moving," Luke told him, untangling him from his restraints. "That other ship could be back with a ground party any time."

With an effort, he got Artoo aft. The hatchway door popped open without serious complaint; hopping down, he looked around.

The second fighter would not be returning with any ground parties. It was right here. In worse shape, if possible, than Luke's.

From the hatchway, Artoo whistled in squeamish-sounding awe. Luke glanced up at him, looked back at the ruined craft. Given the fighters' safety equipment, it was unlikely that Mara was seriously injured. A backup flight was inevitable-she would probably be able to hold out until then.

But then again, she might not.

"Wait here, Artoo," he told the droid. "I'm going to take a quick look."

Even though the exterior of the fighter was in worse shape than Luke's, the interior actually seemed to be a little better off. Crunching his way across the bits of debris in the weapons/tech area, he stepped into the cockpit doorway.

Only the top of the pilot's head showed over the seat back, but that shimmering red-gold hair was all he needed to see to know that his earlier guess had been correct. It was indeed Mara Jade who'd been chasing him.

For a pair of heartbeats he stayed where he was, torn between the need for haste and the need to satisfy his internal sense of ethics. He and Artoo had to get out of here with all possible speed; that much was obvious. But if he turned his back on Mara now, without even pausing to check her condition . . .

His mind flashed back to Coruscant, to the night Ben Kenobi had said his final farewells. In other words, he'd told Threepio later up on the roof, a Jedi can't get so caught up in matters of galactic importance that it interferes with his concern for individual people. And it would, after all, only take a minute. Stepping into the room, he looked around the seat back.

Directly into a pair of wide-open, perfectly conscious green eyes. Green eyes that stared at him over the barrel of a tiny blaster.

"I figured you'd come," she said, her voice grimly satisfied. "Back up. Now."

He did as ordered. "Are you hurt at all?" he asked.

"None of your business," she retorted. She climbed out of the seat, pulling a small flat case from under the chair with her free hand as she stood up. Another glitter caught his eye: she was again wearing his lightsaber on her belt. "There's a case in that compartment just over the exit hatch," she told him. "Get it."

He found the release and got the compartment open. Inside was an unfamiliarly labeled metal case with the very familiar look of a survival kit to it. "I hope we're not going to have to walk the whole way back," he commented, pulling the bag out and dropping out the hatchway.

"I won't," she countered. She seemed to hesitate, just a little, before following him down to the ground. "Whether you make the trip back at all is another question."

He locked gazes with her. "Finishing what you started with this?" he asked, nodding at his wrecked ship.

She snorted. "Listen, buddy boy, it was you who took us down, not me. My only mistake was being stupid enough to be sitting too close to your tail when you hit the trees. Put the bag down and get that droid out of there."

Luke did as he was told. By the time Artoo was down beside him she had the survival kit's lid open and was fiddling one-handed with something inside. "Just stay right there," she told him. "And keep your hands where I can see them."

She paused, cocking her head slightly to the side as if listening. A moment later, in the distance, Luke could hear the faint sound of an approaching ship. "Sounds like our ride back is already on the way," Mara said. "I want you and the droid-" She stopped in midsentence, her eyes going strangely unfocused, her throat tight with concentration. Luke frowned, eyes and ears searching for the problem . . .

Abruptly, she slammed the survival kit lid shut and scooped it up. "Move!" she snapped, gesturing away from the wrecked fighters. With her blaster hand she picked up the flat box she'd been carrying and wedged it under her left arm. "Into the trees-both of you. I said move!"

There was something in her voice-command, or urgency, or both-that stifled argument or even question. Within a handful of seconds Luke and Artoo were under cover of the nearest trees. "Farther in," she ordered. "Come on, move it."

Belatedly, it occurred to Luke that this might all be some macabre joke-that all Mara really wanted was to shoot him in the back and be able to claim afterward that he'd been running away. But she was right behind him, close enough that he could hear her breathing and occasionally feel the tip of her blaster as it brushed his back. They made it perhaps ten meters farther in-Luke leaned down to help Artoo across a particularly wide root-

"Far enough," Mara hissed in his ear. "Hide the droid and then hit dirt."

Luke got Artoo over the root and behind a tree . . . and as he dropped down beside Mara, he suddenly understood.

Hanging in midair over the wrecked fighters, rotating slowly like a hovering raptor searching for prey, was an Imperial shuttle.

A small motion caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head to look directly into the muzzle of Mara's blaster. "Not a move," she whispered, her breath warm on his cheek. "Not a sound."

He nodded understanding and turned back to watch the shuttle. Mara slid her arm over his shoulders, pressed her blaster into the hinge of his jaw, and did the same.

The shuttle finished its circle and settled gingerly to the torn-up ground between the ruined fighters. Even before it was completely down, the ramp dropped and began disgorging stormtroopers.

Luke watched as they split up and headed off to search the two ships, the strangeness of the whole situation adding an unreal tinge to the scene. There, less than twenty meters away, was Mara's golden opportunity to turn him over to the Imperials . . . and yet, here they both lay, hiding behind a tree root and trying not to breathe too loudly. Had she suddenly changed her mind?

Or was it simply that she didn't want any witnesses nearby when she killed him?

In which case, Luke realized abruptly, his best chance might actually be to find some way of surrendering to the stormtroopers. Once away from this planet, with the Force as his ally again, he would at least have a fighting chance. If he could just find a way to distract Mara long enough to get rid of her blaster . . .

Lying pressed against his side, her arm slung across his shoulders, she must have sensed the sudden tensing of muscles. "Whatever you're thinking about trying, don't," she breathed in his ear, digging her blaster a little harder into his skin. "I can easily claim you were holding me prisoner out here and that I managed to snatch the blaster away from you."

Luke swallowed, and settled in to wait.

The wait wasn't very long. Two groups of stormtroopers disappeared into the fighters, while the rest walked around the edge of the newly created clearing, probing with eyes and portable sensors into the forest. After a few minutes those inside the fighters emerged, and what seemed to be a short meeting was held between them at the base of the shuttle ramp. At an inaudible command the outer ring of searchers came back in to join them, and the whole crowd trooped into their ship. The ramp sealed, and the shuttle disappeared once more into the sky, leaving nothing but the hum of its repulsorlifts behind. A minute later, even that was gone.

Luke got his hands under him, started to get up. "Well-"

He broke off at another jab of the blaster. "Quiet," Mara muttered. "They'll have left a sensor behind, just in case someone comes back."

Luke frowned. "How do you know?"

"Because that's standard stormtrooper procedure in a case like this," she growled. "Real quiet, now; we get up and grab some more distance. And keep the droid quiet, too."

They were completely out of sight of the wrecked fighters, and probably another fifty meters past that, before she called a halt. "What now?" Luke asked.

"We sit down," she told him.

Luke nodded and eased to the ground. "Thank you for not turning me in to the stormtroopers."

"Save it," she said shortly, sitting down carefully herself and laying her blaster on the ground beside her. "Don't worry, there wasn't anything altruistic about it. The incoming shuttles must have seen us and sent a group over to investigate. Karrde's going to have to spin them some sort of sugar story about what happened, and I can't just walk into their arms until I know what that story is." She set the small flat box on her lap and opened it.

"You could call him," Luke reminded her.

"I could also call the Imperials directly and save myself some time," she retorted. "Unless you don't think they've got the equipment to monitor anything I send. Now shut up; I've got work to do."

For a few minutes she worked at the flat box in silence, fiddling with a tiny keyboard and frowning at something Luke couldn't see from his angle. At irregular intervals she looked up, apparently to make sure he wasn't trying anything. Luke waited; and abruptly she grunted in satisfaction. "Three days," she said aloud, closing the box.

"Three days to what?" Luke asked.

"The edge of the forest," she told him, gazing at him with unblinking eyes. "Civilization. Well, Hyllyard City, anyway, which is about as close as this part of the planet gets to it."

"And how many of us will be going there?" Luke asked quietly.

"That's the question, isn't it?" she agreed, her tone icy. "Can you give me any reason why I should bother taking you along?"

"Sure." Luke inclined his head to the side. "Artoo."

"Don't be absurd." Her eyes flicked to the droid, back at Luke, "Whatever happens, the droid stays here. In pieces."

Luke stared at her. "In pieces?"

"What, you need it spelled out?" she retorted. "The droid knows too much. We can't leave it here for the stormtroopers to find."

"Knows too much about what?"

"You, of course. You, Karrde, me-this whole stupid mess." Artoo moaned softly. "He won't tell them anything," Luke insisted.

"Not after it's in pieces, no," Mara agreed.

With an effort, Luke forced himself to calm down. Logic, not fervor, was the only way to change her mind. "We need him," he told her. "You told me yourself the forest was dangerous. Artoo has sensors that can spot predators before they get close enough to strike."

"Maybe; maybe not," she countered. "The vegetation here limits sensor ranges down to practically zero."

"It'll still be better than you or I could do," Luke said. "And he'll also be able to watch while we're sleeping."

She raised her eyebrows slightly. "We?"

"We," Luke said. "I don't think he'll be willing to protect you unless I'm along."

Mara shook her head. "No good," she said, picking up her blaster. "I can get along without him. And I certainly don't need you."

Luke felt his throat tighten. "Are you sure you're not letting your emotions get in the way of your judgment?" he asked.

He hadn't thought her eyes could get any harder than they already were. He was wrong. "Let me tell you something, Skywalker," she said in a voice almost too soft for him to hear. "I've wanted to kill you for a long time. I dreamed about your death every night for most of that first year. Dreamed it, plotted it-I must have run through a thousand scenarios, trying to find exactly the right way to do it. You can call it a cloud on my judgment if you want to; I'm used to it by now. It's the closest thing I've got a permanent companion."

Luke looked back into those eyes, shaken right down to the core of his soul. "What did I do to you?" he whispered.

"You destroyed my life," she said bitterly. "It's only fair that I destroy yours."

"Will killing me bring your old life back?"

"You know better than that," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "But it's still something I have to do. For myself, and for-" She broke off.

"What about Karrde?" Luke asked. "What about him?"

"I thought he still wanted me kept alive."

She snorted. "We all want things we can't have."

But for just a second, there was something in her eyes. Something else that had flickered through the hatred . . .

But whatever it was, it wasn't enough. "I almost wish I could drag it out a little more," she said, glacially calm again as she lifted the blaster. "But I don't have the time to spare."

Luke stared at the muzzle of her blaster, his mind frantically searching for inspiration . . . "Wait a minute," he said suddenly. "You said you needed to find out what Karrde had told the Imperials. What if I could get you a secure comm channel to him?"

The muzzle of the blaster wavered. "How?" she asked suspiciously.

Luke nodded toward her survival kit. "Does the communicator in there have enough range to reach back to the base? I mean, without satellite boosting or anything."

She was still looking suspicious. "There's a sonde balloon included that can take the antenna high enough to get past most of the forest damping. But it's nondirectional, which means the Imperials and anyone else in this hemisphere will be able to listen in."

"That's okay," Luke said. "I can encrypt it so that no one else will be able to get anything out of it. Or rather, Artoo can."

Mara smiled thinly. "Wonderful. Except for one minor detail: if the encrypt is that good, how is Karrde supposed to decrypt it?"

"He won't have to," Luke told her. "The computer in my X-wing will do it for him."

The thin smile vanished from Mara's face. "You're stalling," she snarled. "You can't do a counterpart encrypt between an astromech droid and a ship computer."

"Why not? Artoo's the only droid who's worked with that computer in more than five years, with close to three thousand hours of flight time. He's bound to have molded it to his own personality by now. In fact, I know he has-the ground maintenance people have to run diagnostics through him to make any sense out of them."

"I thought standard procedure was to wipe and reload droid memories every six months to keep that from happening."

"I like Artoo the way he is," Luke said. "And he and the X-wing work better together this way."

"How much better?"

Luke searched his memory. Maintenance had run that test just a few months ago. "I don't remember the exact number. It was something like thirty percent faster than a baseline astromech/X-wing interface. Maybe thirty-five."

Mara was staring hard at Artoo. "That's counterpart-level speed, all right," she agreed reluctantly. "The Imperials could still crack it, though."

"Eventually. But it would take some specialized equipment to do it. And you said yourself we'd be out of here in three days."

For a long minute she stared at him, her jaw tight with clenched teeth, her face a mirror of fiercely battling emotions. Bitterness, hatred, desire for survival . . . and something else. Something that Luke could almost believe might be a touch of loyalty. "Your ship's sitting all alone out in the forest," she growled at last. "How are you going to get the message back to Karrde?"

"Someone's bound to check on the ship eventually," he pointed out. "All we have to do is dump the message into storage and leave some kind of signal flashing that it's there. You have people who know how to pull a dump, don't you?"

"Any idiot knows how to pull a dump." Mara glared at him. "Funny, isn't it, how this scheme just happens to require that I keep both of you alive a while longer."

Luke remained silent, meeting that bitter gaze without flinching . . . and then, abruptly, Mara's internal battle seemed to end. "What about the droid?" she demanded. "It'll take forever to get it across this terrain."

"Artoo's made it through forests before. However . . ." Luke looked around, spotted a tree with two low branches just the right size. "I should be able to rig up a dragging frame to carry him on-a travois, or something like that." He started to get up. "If you'll give me my lightsaber for a minute I can cut a couple of those branches off."

"Sit down," she ordered, standing up. "I'll do it."

Well, it had been worth a try. "Those two," he told her, pointing. "Be careful-lightsabers are tricky to handle."

"Your concern for my welfare is touching," she said, her voice dripping sarcasm. She drew the lightsaber and stepped over to the indicated tree, keeping an eye on Luke the whole time. She raised the weapon, ignited it-

And in a handful of quick, sure swipes trimmed, shortened, and cut the branches from the tree.

She closed down the weapon and returned it to her belt in a single smooth motion. "Help yourself," she said, moving away.

"Right," Luke said mechanically, his mind tingling with astonishment as he stumbled over to collect the branches. The way she'd done that . . . "You've used a lightsaber before."

She gazed at him coldly. "Just so you know I can handle it. In case you should feel tempted to try and make a grab for my blaster." She glanced upward at the darkening sky. "Come on-get busy with that travois. We'll need to find some kind of clearing to put the sonde balloon up, and I want to get that done before nightfall."

Chapter 24

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

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

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

"Ah," Han said. "So you're working directly for the Empire now?"

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

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

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

"I'm used to taking risks," Han told him. "You haven't answered my question."

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

"What did you get in return?"

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

"And what did they want with them?"

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

"I see. But you do know their commander personally."

Karrde smiled faintly. "That's information again."

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

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

"Thanks, but I don't think there's going to be a later," Han growled, stopping. "If you don't mind, we'll just say our goodbyes here and get back to the ship."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You took everything apart?" Lando asked.

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

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

Karrde's eyes narrowed slightly. "But you will be back."

Han gave him an innocent smile. "Trust me."

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

"We'll be careful," Han promised. "Come on, Lando."

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

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

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

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

"Right." Han peered through the darkness. "That one over there-the one with two doors?"

"Could be," Lando agreed. "Let's take a look."

The left-most of the two doors did indeed have a lock. Or, rather, it had had a lock. "It's been shot off," Lando said, poking at it with a finger. "Strange."

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

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

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

"Someone's been even busier over here," Lando commented from behind him. "Come have a look."

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

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

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

The door didn't open. "Uh-oh," he muttered, trying again.

"Wait a second-I see the problem," Lando said, fiddling with something behind the plate. "There's a power supply been half spliced into the works . . ."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Karrde's eyes flashed. "I don't deal in slaves, Solo. Slaves or kidnapping. Never."

"What was this one, then? An accident?"

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

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

"As a matter of fact, that's very nearly the way it happened," Karrde said stiffly.

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

"That information's not for sale."

"Maybe we don't need to buy it," Lando said from behind him.

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

"Yeah, we don't stay lost very long," Han assured him. "What'd you find, Lando?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He what?"

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

"You don't sound sure of that," Han prompted.

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

Han threw a startled glance at Lando. "Why?"

Karrde shook his head. "I don't know."

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

"As I said, purely by accident," Karrde said. "No-I take that back. It wasn't an accident for Mara-she led us directly to his crippled starfighter."

"How?"

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

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

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

"Because he escaped first."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They've tried all the known Rebellion encrypts, I presume."

"Yes, sir, as per your orders."

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

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

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

Pellaeon blinked. "Stormtroopers, sir?"

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

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

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

"I . . . don't think I follow, sir."

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

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

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

Pellaeon felt his jaw drop. "You mean . . . that was Skywalker in that Skipray?"

"An interesting speculation, isn't it?" Thrawn agreed. "Unlikely, I'll admit. But likely enough to be worth following up on."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Strange," he murmured. "Karrde's pet vornskrs seemed wide enough awake in late afternoon."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then he'd have Karrde put to death.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Forget it," she grunted.

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

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

"They seemed pretty domestic," he agreed. "Even friendly."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The mystery message?"

"Yeah. What in the worlds was Mara thinking of?"

"I don't know," Karrde admitted. "Something clever, though."

"Probably," Aves conceded. "I just hope we're going to be clever enough to decrypt it."

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

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

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

"Yeah. Are we?"

Karrde pursed his lips. "We don't really have a choice anymore, Aves. They're our guests."

Aves umphed. "The Grand Admiral isn't going to be happy."

Karrde shrugged. "They're our guests," he repeated.

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

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

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

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

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

"Sounds reasonable," Aves said. "What if we don't get to them first?"

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

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

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

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

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

Aves shook his head. "I don't like it."

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

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

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

"Right. Good night."

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

Meaningless sounds . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 25

The room was quiet and dark, the faint nighttime sounds of Rwookrrorro floating in through the mesh window with the cool night breeze. Staring at the curtains, Leia gripped her blaster with a sweaty hand, and wondered what had awakened her.

She lay there for several minutes, heart thudding in her chest. But there was nothing. No sounds, no movements, no threats that her limited Jedi senses could detect. Nothing but a creepy feeling in the back of her mind that she was no longer safe here. She took a deep breath, let it out silently as she continued to listen. It wasn't any fault of her hosts, or at least nothing she could blame them for. The city's leaders had been on incredibly tight alert the first couple of days, providing her with over a dozen Wookiee bodyguards while other volunteers combed through the city like hairy Imperial Walkers, searching for the alien she'd spotted that first day here. The whole thing had been carried out with a speed, efficiency, and thoroughness that Leia had seldom seen even in the top ranks of the Rebel Alliance.

But as the days passed without anyone finding a trace of the alien, the alert had gradually softened. By the time the negative reports also began coming in from other Kashyyyk cities, the number of searchers had dwindled to a handful and the dozen bodyguards had been reduced to three.

And now even those three were gone, returning to their regular jobs and lives. Leaving her with just Chewbacca, Ralrra, and Salporin to watch over her.

It was a classic strategy. Lying alone in the dark, with the advantage of hindsight, she could see that. Sentient beings, human and Wookiee alike, simply could not maintain a continual state of vigilance when there was no visible enemy to be vigilant toward. It was a tendency they'd had to fight hard against in the Alliance.

As they'd also had to fight against the too-often lethal inertia that seduced a person into staying too long in one place.

She winced, memories of the near disaster on the ice world of Hoth coming back to haunt her. She and Chewbacca should have left Rwookrrorro days ago, she knew. Probably should have left Kashyyyk entirely, for that matter. The place had become too comfortable, too familiar-her mind no longer really saw everything that went on around her, but merely saw some of it and filled in the rest from memory. It was the kind of psychological weakness that a clever enemy could easily exploit, simply by finding a way to fit himself into her normal routine.

It was time for that routine to be broken.

She peered over at the bedside chrono, did a quick calculation. About an hour until dawn. There was a repulsorlift sled parked just outside; if she and Chewbacca got going now, they should be able to get the Lady Luck into space a little after sunrise. Sitting halfway up, she slid across the bed, set her blaster down on the nightstand, and picked up her comlink.

And in the darkness, a sinewy hand reached out to seize her wrist.

There was no time to think; but for that first half second there was no need. Even as her mind froze, stunned by the unexpectedness of the attack, old self-defense reflexes were already swinging into action. Falling away from her assailant, using the pull on her arm for balance, she swiveled on her hip, tucked her right leg under her, and kicked out with all her strength.

The edge of her foot thudded against something unyielding-body armor of some kind. Reaching back over her shoulder with her free hand, she grabbed the corner of her pillow and hurled it at the shadowy outline of his head.

Under the pillow was her lightsaber.

It was doubtful that he ever saw the blow coming. He was still in the process of scooping the pillow away from his face when the ignited lightsaber lit up the room. She got just a glimpse of huge black eyes and protruding jaw before the blazing blade sliced him almost in half.

The grip on her arm was abruptly gone. Closing down the lightsaber, she rolled out of bed and back to her feet, igniting the weapon again as she looked around-

And with a sudden, numbing blow to her wrist, the lightsaber was knocked across the room. It shut down in midflight, plunging the room again into darkness.

She dropped instantly into combat stance, but even as she did so she knew it was a useless gesture. The first alien had perhaps been lulled by the apparent helplessness of his victim; the second had obviously learned the lesson. She hadn't even turned all the way toward the attacker before her wrist was again captured and twisted around behind her. Another hand snaked around to cover her mouth, at the same time jamming her neck hard against the attacker's muzzle. One leg twined somehow around her knees, blocking any attempt she might make to kick him. She tried anyway, struggling to free at least one leg, while at the same time trying to get a clear shot at those eyes with her free hand. His breath was hot on her neck, and she could feel the shapes of needle teeth through the jaw skin pressing against her. The alien's body went abruptly rigid-

And suddenly, without any warning at all, she was free.

She spun around to face the alien, fighting to regain her balance in the sudden loss of anything solid to lean against and wondering what this new game was he was playing. Her eyes searched frantically in the dim light, trying to locate the weapon he was surely now bringing to bear on her-

But there was no weapon pointed at her. The alien just stood there, his back to the door, his empty hands splayed off to the sides as if preparing to protect himself from a backwards fall. "Mal'ary'ush," he hissed, his voice soft and gravelly. Leia took a step backwards, wondering if she could get to the window before he launched his next attack.

The attack never came. Behind the alien, the door slammed open; and with a roar, Chewbacca boiled into the room.

The attacker didn't turn. He made no move at all, in fact, as the Wookiee leaped toward him, massive hands reaching for his neck-

"Don't kill him!" Leia snapped.

The words probably startled Chewbacca almost as much as they startled her. But the Wookiee's reflexes were equal to the task. Passing up the alien's throat, he swung a hand instead to cuff him solidly across the side of the head.

The blow sent the alien flying halfway across the room and up against the wall. He slid down and remained still.

"Come on," Leia said, rolling across her bed to retrieve her lightsaber. "There may be more of them."

[Not any morre,] a Wookiee voice rumbled, and she looked up to see Ralrra leaning against the doorway. [The otherr three have been dealt with.]

"Are you sure?" Leia asked, taking a step toward him. He was still leaning against the doorjamb-

Leaning hard against it, she suddenly realized. "You're hurt," she exclaimed, flicking on the room light and giving him a quick examination. There were no marks she could see. "Blaster?"

[Stun weapon,] he corrected. [A quieterr weapon, but it was set too low forr Wookiees. I am only a little weak. Chewbacca it is who is wounded.]

Startled, Leia looked over at Chewbacca . . . and for the first time saw the small patch of matted brown hair midway down his torso. "Chewie!" she breathed, starting toward him.

He waved her away with an impatient growl. [He is right,] Ralrra agreed. [We must get you away from herre, beforre the second attack comes.]

From somewhere outside a Wookiee began howling an alert. "There won't be a second attack," she told Ralrra. "They've been noticed-there'll be people converging on this house in minutes."

[Not on this house,] Ralrra rumbled, a strange grimness to his voice. [Therre is a firre fourr houses away.]

Leia stared at him, a chill running up her back. "A diversion," she murmured. "They set a house on fire to mask any alert you try to make."

Chewbacca growled an affirmative. [We must get you away from herre,] Ralrra repeated, easing himself carefully upright.

Leia glanced past him through the doorway to the darker hallway beyond, a strange dread suddenly twisting into her stomach. There had been three Wookiees in the house with her. "Where's Salporin?" she asked.

Ralrra hesitated, just long enough for her suspicions to become a terrible certainty. [He did not survive the attack,] the Wookiee said, almost too softly for her to hear.

Leia swallowed hard. "I'm sorry," she said, the words sounding painfully trite and meaningless in her ears.

[As arre we. But the time forr mourning is not now.]

Leia nodded, blinking back sudden tears as she turned to the window. She'd lost many friends and companions in the midst of battle through the years, and she knew that Ralrra was right. But all the logic in the universe didn't make it any easier.

There were no aliens visible outside. But they were there- that much she was sure of. Both of the previous teams she and Han had tangled with had consisted of considerably more than five members, and there was no reason to expect this one to be any different. Chances were that any attempt to escape overland would meet with a quick ambush.

Worse, as soon as the hue and cry over the burning house really got going, the aliens could likely launch a second attack with impunity, counting on the commotion down the street to cover up any noise they made in the process.

She glanced at the burning house, feeling a brief pang of guilt for the Wookiees who owned it. Resolutely, she forced the emotion out of her mind. There, too, there was nothing she could do for now. "The aliens seem to want me alive," she said, dropping the edge of the curtain and turning back to Chewbacca and Ralrra. "If we can get the sled into the sky, they probably won't try to shoot us down."

[Do you trust the sled?] Ralrra asked pointedly.

Leia stopped short, lips pressed tightly together in annoyance with herself. No, of course she didn't trust the sled-the first thing the aliens would have done would have been to disable any escape vehicle within reach. Disable it, or worse: they could have modified it to simply fly her directly into their arms.

She couldn't stay put; she couldn't go sideways; and she couldn't go up. Which left exactly one direction.

"I'll need some rope," she said, scooping up an armful of clothes and starting to get dressed. "Strong enough to hold my weight. As much as you've got."

They were fast, all right. A quick glance between them- [You cannot be serious,] Ralrra told her. [The dangerr would be great even forr a Wookiee. Forr a human it would be suicide.]

"I don't think so," Leia shook her head, pulling on her boots. "I saw how the branches twist together, when we looked at the bottom of the city. It should be possible for me to climb along between them."

[You will neverr reach the landing platform alone,] Ralrra objected. [We will come with you.]

"You're in no shape to travel down the street, let alone underneath it," Leia countered bluntly. She picked up her blaster, bolstered it, and stepped to the doorway. "Neither is Chewbacca. Get out of my way, please."

Ralrra didn't budge. [You do not fool us, Leiaorrganasolo. You believe that if we stay herre the enemy will follow you and leave us in peace.]

Leia grimaced. So much for the quiet, noble self-sacrifice. "There's a good chance they will," she insisted. "It's me they want. And they want me alive."

[Therre is no time to argue,] Ralrra said. [We will stay togetherr. Herre, orr underr the city.]

Leia took a deep breath. She didn't like it, but it was clear she wasn't going to be able to talk them out of it. "All right, you win," she sighed. The alien Chewbacca had hit was still lying unconscious, and for a moment she debated whether or not they dared take the time to tie him up. The need for haste won. "Let's find some rope and get moving."

And besides, a small voice in the back of her head reminded her, even if she went alone, the aliens might still attack the house. And might prefer leaving no witnesses behind.

The flat, somewhat spongy material that formed the "ground" of Rwookrrorro was less than a meter thick. Leia's lightsaber cut through both it and the house's floor with ease, dropping a roughly square chunk between the braided branches to vanish into the darkness below.

[I will go first,] Ralrra said, dropping into the hole before anyone could argue the point. He was still moving a little slowly, but at least the stun-induced dizzy spells seemed to have passed.

Leia looked up as Chewbacca stepped close to her and flipped Ralrra's baldric around her shoulders. "Last chance to change your mind about this arrangement," she warned him.

His answer was short and to the point. By the time Ralrra's quiet [All clearr] floated up, they were ready.

And with Leia strapped firmly to his torso, Chewbacca eased his way through the hole.

Leia had fully expected the experience to be unpleasant. She hadn't realized that it was going to be terrifying, as well. The Wookiees didn't crawl across the tops of the plaited branches, the way she'd anticipated doing. Instead, using the climbing claws she'd seen her first day here, they hung by all fours underneath the branches to travel.

And then they traveled.

The side of her face pressed against Chewbacca's hairy chest, Leia clenched her teeth tightly together, partly to keep them from chattering with the bouncing, but mostly to keep moans of fear from escaping. It was like the acrophobia she'd felt in the liftcar, multiplied by a thousand. Here, there wasn't even a relatively thick vine between her and the nothingness below-only Wookiee claws and the thin rope connecting them to another set of Wookiee claws. She wanted to say something-to plead that they stop and at least belay the end of their rope to something solid-but she was afraid to make even a sound lest it break Chewbacca's concentration. The sound of his breathing was like the roar of a waterfall in her ears, and she could feel the warm wetness of his blood seeping through the thin material of her undertunic. How badly had he been hurt? Huddled against him, listening to his heart pounding, she was afraid to ask.

Abruptly, he stopped.

She opened her eyes, unaware until that moment that she'd closed them. "What's wrong?" she asked, her voice trembling.

[The enemy has found us,] Ralrra growled softly from beside her.

Bracing herself, Leia turned her head as far as she could, searching the dark predawn gray behind them. There it was: a small patch of darker black set motionlessly against it. A repulsorlift airspeeder of some kind, staying well back out of bowcaster range. "It couldn't be a Wookiee rescue ship, I don't suppose," she offered hopefully.

Chewbacca growled the obvious flaw: the airspeeder wasn't showing even running lights. [Yet it does not approach,] Ralrra pointed out.

"They want me alive," Leia said, more to reassure herself than to remind them. "They don't want to spook us." She looked around, searching the void around them and the matted branches above them for inspiration.

And found it. "I need the rest of the rope," she told Ralrra, peering back at the hovering airspeeder. "All of it."

Steeling herself, she twisted partway around in her makeshift harness, taking the coil he gave her and tying one end securely to one of the smaller branches. Chewbacca growled an objection. "No, I'm not belaying us," she assured him. "So don't fall. I've got something else in mind. Okay, let's go."

They set off again, perhaps a shade faster than before . . . and as she bounced along against Chewbacca's torso, Leia realized with mild surprise that while she was still frightened, she was no longer terrified. Perhaps, she decided, because she was no longer simply a pawn or excess baggage, with her fate totally in the hands of Wookiees or gray-skinned aliens or the forces of gravity. She was now at least partially in control of what happened.

They continued on, Leia playing out the rope as they traveled. The dark airspeeder followed, still without lights, still keeping well back from them. She kept an eye on it as they bounced along, knowing that the timing and distance on this were going to be crucial. Just a little bit farther . . .

There were perhaps three meters of rope left in the coil. Quickly, she tied a firm knot and peered back at their pursuer. "Get ready," she said to Chewbacca. "Now . . . stop."

Chewbacca came to a halt. Mentally crossing her fingers, Leia ignited her lightsaber beneath the Wookiee's back, locked it on, and let it drop.

And like a blazing chunk of wayward lightning, it fell away, swinging down and back on the end of the rope in a long pendulum arc. It reached bottom and swung back up the other direction-

And into the underside of the airspeeder.

There was a spectacular flash as the lightsaber blade sliced through the repulsorlift generator. An instant later the airspeeder was dropping like a stone, two separate blazes flaring from either side. The craft fell into the mists below, and for a long moment the fires were visible as first two, and then as a single diffuse spot of light. Then even that faded, leaving only the lightsaber swinging gently in the darkness.

Leia took a shuddering breath. "Let's go retrieve the lightsaber," she told Chewbacca. "After that, I think we can probably just cut our way back up. I doubt there are any of them left now."

[And then directly to yourr ship?] Ralrra asked as they headed back to the branch where she'd tied the rope.

Leia hesitated, the image of that second alien in her room coming back to mind. Standing there facing her, an unreadable emotion in face and body language, so stunned or enraptured or frightened that he didn't even notice Chewbacca's entry . . . "Back to the ship," she answered Ralrra. "But not directly."

The alien was sitting motionless in a low seat in the tiny police interrogation room, a small bandage on the side of his head the only external evidence of Chewbacca's blow. His hands were resting in his lap, the fingers laced intricately together. Stripped of all clothing and equipment, he'd been given a loose Wookiee robe to wear. On someone else the effect of the outsized garment might have been comical. But not on him. Neither the robe nor his inactivity did anything to hide the aura of deadly competence that he wore like a second skin. He was-probably always would be-a member of a dangerous and persistent group of trained killing machines.

And he'd asked specifically to see Leia. In person.

Towering beside her, Chewbacca growled one final objection. "I don't much like it either," Leia conceded, gazing at the monitor display and trying to screw up her courage. "But he let me go back at the house, before you came in. I want to know-I need to know-what that was all about."

Briefly, her conversation with Luke on the eve of the Battle of Endor flashed to mind. His quiet firmness, in the face of all her fears, that confronting Darth Vader was something he had to do. That decision had nearly killed him . . . and had ultimately brought them victory.

But Luke had felt some faint wisps of good still buried deep inside Vader. Did she feel something similar in this alien killer? Or was she driven merely by morbid curiosity?

Or perhaps by mercy?

"You can watch and listen from here," she told Chewbacca, handing him her blaster and stepping to the door. The lightsaber she left hooked onto her belt, though what use it would be in such close quarters she didn't know. "Don't come in unless I'm in trouble." Taking a deep breath, she unlocked the door and pressed the release.

The alien looked up as the door slid open, and it seemed to Leia that he sat up straighter as she stepped inside. The door slid shut behind her, and for a long moment they just eyed each other. "I'm Leia Organa Solo," she said at last. "You wanted to talk to me?"

He gazed at her for another moment. Then, slowly, he stood up and reached out a hand. "Your hand," he said, his voice gravelly and strangely accented. "May I have it?"

Leia took a step forward and offered him her hand, acutely aware that she had just committed an irrevocable act of trust. From here, if he so chose, he could pull her to him and snap her neck before anyone outside could possibly intervene.

He didn't pull her toward him. Leaning forward, holding her hand in an oddly gentle grip, he raised it to his snout and pressed it against two large nostrils half hidden beneath strands of hair.

And smelled it.

He smelled it again, and again, taking long, deep breaths. Leia found herself staring at his nostrils, noticing for the first time their size and the soft flexibility of the skin folds around them. Like those of a tracking animal, she realized. A memory flashed to mind: how, as he'd held her helpless back at the house, those same nostrils had been pressed into her neck.

And right after that was when he'd let her go . . .

Slowly, almost tenderly, the alien straightened up. "It is then true," he grated, releasing her hand and letting his own fall to his side. Those huge eyes stared at her, brimming with an emotion whose nature her Jedi skills could vaguely sense but couldn't begin to identify. "I was not mistaken before."

Abruptly, he dropped to both knees. "I seek forgiveness, Leia Organa Solo, for my actions," he said, ducking his head to the floor, his hands splayed out to the sides as they had been in that encounter back at the house. "Our orders did not identify you, but gave only your name."

"I understand," she nodded, wishing she did. "But now you know who I am?"

The alien's face dropped a couple of centimeters closer to the floor. "You are the Mal'ary'ush," he said. "The daughter and heir of the Lord Darth Vader."

"He who was our master."

Leia stared down at him, feeling her mouth fall open as she struggled to regain her mental balance. The right-angle turns were all coming too quickly. "Your master?" she repeated carefully.

"He who came to us in our desperate need," the alien said, his voice almost reverent. "Who lifted us from our despair, and gave us hope."

"I see," she managed. This whole thing was rapidly becoming unreal . . . but one fact already stood out. The alien prostrating himself before her was prepared to treat her as royalty.

And she knew how to behave like royalty.

"You may rise," she told him, feeling her voice and posture and manner settling into the almost-forgotten patterns of the Alderaanian court. "What is your name?"

"I am called Khabarakh by our lord," the alien said, getting to his feet. "In the language of the Noghri-" He made a long, convoluted roiling noise that Leia's vocal cords didn't have a hope of imitating.

"I'll call you Khabarakh," she said. "Your people are called the Noghri?"

"Yes." The first hint of uncertainty seemed to cross the dark eyes. "But you are the Mal'ary'ush," he added, with obvious question.

"My father had many secrets," she told him grimly. "You, obviously, were one of them. You said he brought you hope. Tell me how."

"He came to us," the Noghri said. "After the mighty battle. After the destruction."

"What battle?"

Khabarakh's eyes seemed to drift into memory. "Two great starships met in the space over our world," he said, his gravelly voice low. "Perhaps more than two; we never knew for certain. They fought all the day and much of the night . . . and when the battle was over, our land was devastated."

Leia winced, a pang of sympathetic ache running through her. Of ache, and of guilt. "We never hurt non-Imperial forces or worlds on purpose," she said softly. "Whatever happened, it was an accident."

The dark eyes fixed again on her. "The Lord Vader did not think so. He believed it was done on purpose, to drive fear and terror into the souls of the Emperor's enemies."

"Then the Lord Vader was mistaken," Leia said, meeting that gaze firmly. "Our battle was with the Emperor, not his subjugated servants."

Khabarakh drew himself up stiffly. "We were not the Emperor's servants," he grated. "We were a simple people, content to live our lives without concern for the dealings of others."

"You serve the Empire now," Leia pointed out.

"In return for the Emperor's help," Khabarakh said, a hint of pride showing through his deference. "Only he came to our aid when we so desperately needed it. In his memory, we serve his designated heir-the man to whom the Lord Vader long ago entrusted us."

"I find it difficult to believe the Emperor ever really cared about you," Leia told him bluntly. "That's not the sort of man he was. All he cared about was obtaining your service against us."

"Only he came to our aid," Khabarakh repeated.

"Because we were unaware of your plight," Leia told him.

"So you say."

Leia raised her eyebrows. "Then give me a chance to prove it. Tell me where your world is."

Khabarakh jerked back. "That is impossible. You would seek us out and complete the destruction-"

"Khabarakh," Leia cut him off. "Who am I?"

The folds around the Noghri's nostrils seemed to flatten. "You are the Lady Vader. The Mal'ary'ush."

"Did the Lord Vader ever lie to you?"

"You said he did."

"I said he was mistaken," Leia reminded him, perspiration starting to collect beneath her collar as she recognized the knife edge she was now walking along here. Her newfound status with Khabarakh rested solely on the Noghri's reverence for Darth Vader. Somehow, she had to attack Vader's words without simultaneously damaging that respect. "Even the Lord Vader could be deceived . . . and the Emperor was a master of deception."

"The Lord Vader served the Emperor," Khabarakh insisted. "The Emperor would not have lied to him."

Leia gritted her teeth. Stalemate. "Is your new lord equally honest with you?"

Khabarakh hesitated. "I don't know."

"Yes, you do-you said yourself he didn't tell you who it was you'd been sent to capture."

A strange sort of low moan rumbled in Khabarakh's throat. "I am only a soldier, my lady. These matters are far beyond my authority and ability. My duty is to obey my orders. All of my orders."

Leia frowned. Something about the way he'd said that . . . and abruptly, she knew what it was. For a captured commando facing interrogation, there could be only one order left to follow. "Yet you now know something none of your people are aware of," she said quickly. "You must live, to bring this information to them."

Khabarakh had brought his palms to face each other, as if preparing to clap them together. Now he froze, staring at her. "The Lord Vader could read the souls of the Noghri," he said softly. "You are indeed his Mal'ary'ush."

"Your people need you, Khabarakh," she told him. "As do I. Your death now would only hurt those you seek to help."

Slowly, he lowered his hands. "How is it you need me?"

"Because I need your help if I'm to do anything for your people," she said. "You must tell me the location of your world."

"I cannot," he said firmly. "To do so could bring ultimate destruction upon my world. And upon me, if it were learned I had given you such information."

Leia pursed her lips. "Then take me there."

"I cannot!"

"Why not?"

"I . . . cannot."

She fixed him with her best regal stare. "I am the daughter-the Mal'ary'ush-of the Lord Darth Vader," she said firmly. "By your own admission, he was the hope of your world. Have matters improved since he delivered you to your new leader?"

He hesitated. "No. He has told us there is little more that he or anyone else can do."

"I would prefer to judge that for myself," she told him loftily. "Or would your people consider a single human to be such a threat?"

Khabarakh twitched. "You would come alone? To a people seeking your capture?"

Leia swallowed hard, a shiver running down her back. No, she hadn't meant to imply that. But then, she hadn't been sure of why she'd wanted to talk to Khabarakh in the first place. She could only hope that the Force was guiding her intuition in all this. "I trust your people to be honorable," she said quietly. "I trust them to grant me a hearing."

She turned and stepped to the door. "Consider my offer," she told him. "Discuss it with those whose counsel you value. Then, if you choose, meet me in orbit above the world of Endor in one month's time."

"You will come alone?" Khabarakh asked, apparently still not believing it.

She turned and looked him straight in that nightmare face. "I will come alone. Will you?"

He faced her stare without flinching. "If I come," he said, "I will come alone."

She held his gaze a moment longer, then nodded. "I hope to see you there. Farewell."

"Farewell . . . Lady Vader."

He was still staring at her as the door opened and she left.

The tiny ship shot upward through the clouds, vanishing quickly from the Rwookrrorro air-control visual monitor. Beside Leia, Chewbacca growled angrily. "I can't say I'm really happy with it, either," she confessed. "But we can't dodge them forever. If we have even a chance of getting them out from under Imperial control . . ." She shook her head.

Chewbacca growled again. "I know," she said softly, some of his pain finding its way into her own heart. "I wasn't as close to Salporin as you were, but he was still my friend."

The Wookiee turned away from the monitors and stomped across the room. Leia watched him, wishing there was something she could do to help. But there wasn't. Caught between conflicting demands of honor, he would have to work this out in the privacy of his own mind.

Behind her, someone stirred. [It is time,] Ralrra said. [The memorial period has begun. We must join the otherrs.]

Chewbacca growled an acknowledgment and went over to join him. Leia looked at Ralrra- [This period is forr Wookiees only,] he rumbled. [Laterr, you will be permitted to join us.]

"I understand," Leia said. "If you need me, I'll be on the landing platform, getting the Lady Luck ready to fly."

[If you truly feel it is safe to leave,] Ralrra said, still sounding doubtful.

"It is," Leia told him. And even if it wasn't, she added silently to herself, she would still have no choice. She had a species name now-Noghri-and it was vital that she return to Coruscant and get another records search underway.

[Very well. The mourning period will begin in two hourrs.]

Leia nodded, blinking back tears. "I'll be there," she promised.

And wondered if this war would ever truly be over.

Chapter 26

The mass of vines hung twisted around and between half a dozen trees, looking like the web of a giant spider gone berserk. Fingering Skywalker's lightsaber, Mara studied the tangle, trying to figure out the fastest way to clear the path.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Skywalker fidgeting. "Just keep your shirt on," she told him. "This'll only take a minute."

"You really don't have to go for finesse, you know," he offered. "It's not like the lightsaber's running low on power."

"Yes, but we're running low on forest," she retorted. "You have any idea how far the hum of a lightsaber can carry in woods like this?"

"Not really."

"Me, neither. I'd like to keep it that way." She shifted her blaster to her left hand, ignited the lightsaber with her right, and made three quick cuts. The tangle of vines dropped to the ground as she closed the weapon down. "That wasn't so hard, now, was it?" she said, turning to face Skywalker and hooking the lightsaber back onto her belt. She started to turn away-

The droid's warning squeal came a fraction of a second before the sudden rustle of leaves. She whirled back, flipping her blaster into her right hand as the vornskr leaped toward Skywalker from a branch three trees away.

Even after two long days of travel, Skywalker's reflexes were still adequate to the task. He let go the handles of the travois and dropped to the ground just ahead of the vornskr's trajectory. Four sets of claws and a whip tail took a concerted swipe at him as the predator shot by overhead. Mara waited until it had landed, and as it spun back around toward its intended prey, she shot it.

Cautiously, Skywalker got back to his feet and looked warily around. "I wish you'd change your mind about giving me back my lightsaber," he commented as he bent down to pick up the travois handles again. "You must be getting tired of shooting vornskrs off me."

"What, you afraid I'm going to miss?" she retorted, stepping over to prod the vornskr with her foot. It was dead, all right.

"You're an excellent shot," he conceded, dragging the travois toward the tangle of vines she'd just cleared out. "But you've also gone two nights without any sleep. That's going to catch up with you eventually."

"You just worry about yourself," she snapped. "Come on, get moving-we need to find someplace clear enough to send up the sonde balloon."

Skywalker headed off, the droid strapped to the travois behind him beeping softly to itself. Mara brought up the rear, watching to make sure the travois wasn't leaving too clear a trail and scowling hard at the back of Skywalker's head.

The really irritating part was that he was right. That pass from left to right hand a minute ago-a technique she'd done a thousand times before-she'd come within a hair of missing the catch completely. Her heart thudded constantly now, not quieting down even during rest. And there were long periods during their march where her mind simply drifted, instead of focusing on the task at hand.

Once, long ago, she'd gone six days without sleep. Now, after only two, she was already starting to fall apart.

She clenched her teeth and scowled a little harder. If he was hoping to see the collapse, he was going to be sorely disappointed. If for no other reason than professional pride, she was going to see this through.

Ahead, Skywalker stumbled slightly as he crossed a patch of rough ground. The right travois handle slipped out of his grip, nearly dumping the droid off the travois and eliciting a squeal of protest from the machine. "So who's getting tired now?" Mara growled as he stooped to pick up the stick again. "That's the third time in the past hour."

"It's just my hand," he replied calmly. "It seems to be permanently numb this afternoon."

"Sure," she said. Ahead, a small patch of blue sky winked down through the tree branches. "There's our hole," she said, nodding to it. "Put the droid in the middle."

Skywalker did as he was instructed, then went and sat down against one of the trees edging the tiny clearing. Mara got the small sonde balloon filled and sent it aloft on its antenna wire, running a line from the receiver into the socket where the droid's retrieval jack had once been. "All set," she said, glancing over at Skywalker.

Leaning back against his tree, he was sound asleep.

Mara snorted with contempt. Jedi! she threw the epithet at him as she turned back to the droid. "Come on, let's get going," she told it, sitting down carefully on the ground. Her twisted ankle seemed to be largely healed, but she knew better than to push it.

The droid beeped questioningly, its dome swiveling around to look briefly at Skywalker. "I said let's get going," she repeated harshly.

The droid beeped again, a resigned sort of sound. The communicator's pulse indicator flashed once as the droid requested a message dump from the distant X-wing's computer; flashed again as the dump came back.

Abruptly the droid squealed in obvious excitement. "What?" Mara demanded, snatching out her blaster and giving the area a quick scan. Nothing seemed out of place. "What, there's finally a message?"

The droid beeped affirmatively, its dome again turning toward Skywalker. "Well, let's have it," Mara growled. "Come on-if there's anything in it he needs to hear, you can play it for him later."

Assuming-she didn't add-there wasn't anything in the message that suggested she needed to come out of the forest alone. If there was . . .

The droid bent forward slightly, and a holographic image appeared on the matted leaves.

But not an image of Karrde, as she'd expected. It was, instead, an image of a golden-skinned protocol droid. "Good day, Master Luke," the protocol droid said in a remarkably prissy voice. "I bring greetings to you from Captain Karrde-and, of course, to you as well, Mistress Mara," it added, almost as an afterthought. "He and Captain Solo are most pleased to hear you are both alive and well after your accident."

Captain Solo? Mara stared at the holograph, feeling totally stunned. What in the Empire did Karrde think he was doing?- he'd actually told Solo and Calrissian about Skywalker?

"I trust you'll be able to decrypt this message, Artoo," the protocol prissy continued. "Captain Karrde suggested that I be used to add a bit more confusion to the counterpart encrypt. According to him, there are Imperial stormtroopers waiting in Hyllyard City for you to make your appearance."

Mara clenched her teeth, throwing a look at her sleeping prisoner. So Thrawn hadn't been fooled. He knew Skywalker was here, and was waiting to take them both.

With a vicious effort, she stifled the fatigue-fed panic rising in her throat. No. Thrawn didn't know-at least, not for sure. He only suspected. If he'd known for sure, there wouldn't have been anyone left back at the camp to send her this message.

"The story Captain Karrde told the Imperials was that a former employee stole valuable merchandise and tried to escape, with a current employee named Jade in pursuit. He suggests that, since he never specified Jade as being a woman, that perhaps you and Mistress Mara could switch roles when you leave the forest."

"Right," Mara muttered under her breath. If Karrde thought she was going to cheerfully hand her blaster over for Skywalker to stick in her back, he'd better try thinking again.

"At any rate," the protocol droid continued, "he says he and Captain Solo are working out a plan to try to intercept you before the stormtroopers do. If not, they will do their best to rescue you from them. I'm afraid there's nothing more I can say at the moment-Captain Karrde has put a one-minute real-time limit on this message, to prevent anyone from locating the transmission point. He wishes you good luck. Take good care of Master Luke, Artoo . . . and yourself, too."

The image vanished and the droid's projector winked out. Mara shut down the communicator, setting the antenna spool to begin winding the balloon back down.

"It's a good idea," Skywalker murmured.

She looked sharply at him. His eyes were still closed. "I thought you were faking," she spat, not really truthfully.

"Not faking," he corrected her sleepily. "Drifting in and out. It's still a good idea."

She snorted. "Forget it. We'll try going a couple of kilometers north instead, circling out and back to Hyllyard from the plains." She glanced at her chrono, then up through the trees. Dark clouds had moved in over the past few minutes, covering the blue sky that had been there. Not rain clouds, she decided, but they would still cut rather strongly into what was left of the available daylight. "We might as well save that for tomorrow," she said, favoring her ankle again as she got back to her feet. "You want to get-oh, never mind," she interrupted herself. If his breathing was anything to go by, he'd drifted off again.

Which left the task of putting camp together up to her. Terrific. "Stay put," she growled to the droid. She turned back to where she'd dropped the survival kit-

The droid's electronic shriek brought her spinning back around again, hand clawing for her blaster, eyes flicking around for the danger-

And then a heavy weight slammed full onto her shoulders and back, sending hot needles of pain into her skin and throwing her face-first to the ground.

Her last thought, before the darkness took her, was to wish desperately that she'd killed Skywalker when she'd had the chance.

Artoo's warbling alert jerked Luke out of his doze. His eyes snapped open, just as a blur of muscle and claw launched itself through space onto Mara's back.

He bounded to his feet, sleepiness abruptly gone. The vornskr was standing over Mara, its front claws planted on her shoulders, its head turned to the side as it prepared to sink its teeth into her neck. Mara herself lay unmoving, the back of her head toward Luke-dead or merely stunned, it was impossible to tell. Artoo, clearly too far away to reach her in time, was nevertheless moving in that direction as fast as his wheels could manage, his small electric arc welder extended as if for battle.

Taking a deep breath, Luke screamed.

Not an ordinary scream; but a shivering, booming, inhuman howl that seemed to fill the entire clearing and reverberate back from the distant hills. It was the blood-freezing call of a krayt dragon, the same call Ben Kenobi had used to scare the sand people away from him all those years ago on Tatooine.

The vornskr wasn't scared away. But it was clearly startled, its prey temporarily forgotten. Shifting its weight partially off Mara's back, it turned, crouching, to stare toward the sound.

For a long moment Luke locked gazes with the creature, afraid to move lest he break the spell. If he could distract it long enough for Artoo to get there with his welder . . .

And then, still pinned to the ground, Mara twitched. Luke cupped his hands around his mouth and howled again. Again, the vornskr shifted its weight in response.

And with a sound that was half grunt and half combat yell, Mara twisted around onto her back beneath the predator, her hands snaking past the front claws to grip its throat.

It was the only opening Luke was going to get; and with a vornskr against an injured human, it wasn't going to last for long. Pushing off from the tree trunk behind him, Luke charged, aiming for the vornskr's flank.

He never got there. Even as he braced himself for the impact, the vornskr's whip tail whistled out of nowhere to catch him solidly along shoulder and face and send him sprawling sideways to the ground.

He was on his feet again in an instant, dimly aware of the line of fire burning across cheek and forehead. The vornskr hissed as he came toward it again, slashing razor-sharp claws at him to ward him back. Artoo reached the struggle and sent a spark into the predator's left front paw; almost casually, the vornskr swung at the welder, snapping it off and sending the pieces flying. Simultaneously, the tail whipped around, the impact lifting Artoo up on one set of wheels. It swung again and again, each time coming closer to knocking the droid over.

Luke gritted his teeth, mind searching furiously for a plan. Shadowboxing at the creature's head like this wasn't anything more than a delaying tactic; but the minute the distraction ceased, Mara was as good as dead. The vornskr would either slash her arms with its claws or else simply overwhelm her grip by brute force. With the loss of his welder, Artoo had no fighting capability left; and if the vornskr kept at him with that whip tail . . .

The tail. "Artoo!" Luke snapped. "Next time that tail hits you, try to grab it."

Artoo beeped a shaky acknowledgment and extended his heavy grasping arm. Luke watched out of the corner of his eye, still trying to keep the vornskr's head and front paws busy. The tail whipped around again, and with a warble of triumph, Artoo caught it.

A warble that turned quickly into a screech. Again with almost casual strength, the vornskr ripped its tail free, taking most of the grasping arm with it.

But it had been pinned out of action for a pair of heartbeats, and that was all the time Luke needed. Diving around Artoo's bulk and under the trapped whip tail, he darted his hand to Mara's side and snatched back his lightsaber.

The whip tail slashed toward him as he rolled back to his feet, but by the time it got there Luke was out of range around Artoo's side again. Igniting the lightsaber, he reached the blazing blade past the flailing claws and brushed the vornskr's nose.

The predator screamed, in anger or pain, shying back from this bizarre creature that had bit it. Luke tapped it again and again, trying to drive it away from Mara where he could safely deliver a killing blow.

Abruptly, in a single smooth motion, the vornskr leaped backwards onto solid ground, then sprang straight at Luke. Also in a single smooth motion, Luke cut it in half.

"About time," a hoarse voice croaked from beneath his feet. He looked down to see Mara push half the dead vornskr off her chest and raise herself up on one elbow. "What in blazes was that stupid game you were playing?"

"I didn't think you'd like your hands cut off if I missed," Luke told her, breathing hard. He took a step back as she sat up and offered her a helping hand.

She waved the hand away. Rolling slowly onto hands and knees, she pushed herself tiredly to her feet and turned back to face him.

With her blaster back in her hand.

"Just drop the lightsaber and move back," she panted, gesturing with the weapon for emphasis.

Luke sighed, shaking his head. "I don't believe you," he said, shutting down the lightsaber and dropping it onto the ground. The adrenaline was receding from his system now, leaving both face and shoulder aching like fury. "Or didn't you notice that Artoo and I just saved your life?"

"I noticed. Thanks." Keeping her blaster trained on him, Mara stooped to retrieve the lightsaber. "I figure that's my reward for not shooting you two days ago. Get over there and sit down."

Luke looked over at Artoo, who was moaning softly to himself. "Do you mind if I look at Artoo first?"

Mara looked down at the droid, her lips compressed into a thin line. "Sure, go ahead." Moving clear of both of them, she picked up the survival pack and trudged off to one of the trees at the edge of the clearing.

Artoo wasn't in as bad a shape as Luke had feared. Both the welder and the grasping arm had broken off cleanly, leaving no trailing wires or partial components that might get caught on something else. Speaking quiet encouragement to the droid, Luke got the two compartments sealed.

"Well?" Mara asked, sitting with her back to a tree and gingerly applying salve to the oozing claw marks on her arms.

"He's okay for now," Luke told her as he went back over to his own tree and sat down. "He's been damaged worse than this before."

"I'm so glad to hear it," she said sourly. She glanced at Luke, took a longer look. "He got you good, didn't he?"

Carefully, Luke touched the welt running across his cheek and forehead. "I'll be all right."

She snorted. "Sure you will," she said, her voice laced with sarcasm as she went back to treating her gashes. "I forgot-you're a hero, too."

For a long minute Luke watched her, trying once more to understand the complexities and contradictions of this strange woman. Even from three meters away he could see that her hand was shaking as she applied the salve: with reaction, perhaps, or muscle fatigue. Almost certainly with fear-she'd escaped a bloody death by a bare handful of centimeters, and she would have to be a fool not to recognize that.

And yet, whatever she was feeling inside, she was clearly determined not to let any of it out past that rock-hard surface she'd so carefully built up around herself. As if she was afraid to let weakness of any sort show through . . .

Abruptly, as if feeling his eyes on her, Mara looked up. "I said thanks already," she growled. "What do you want, a medal?"

Luke shook his head. "I just want to know what happened to you."

For a moment those green eyes flashed again with the old hatred. But only for a moment. The vornskr attack, coming on top of two days of laborious travel and no sleep, had taken a severe toll on her emotional strength. The anger faded from her eyes, leaving only a tired coldness behind. "You happened to me," she told him, her voice more fatigued than embittered. "You came out of a grubby sixth-rate farm on a tenth-rate planet, and destroyed my life."

"How?"

Contempt briefly filled her face. "You don't have the faintest idea who I am, do you?"

Luke shook his head. "I'm sure I'd remember you if we'd met."

"Oh, right," she said sardonically. "The great, omniscient Jedi. See all, hear all, know all, understand all. No, we didn't actually meet; but I was there, if you'd bothered to notice me. I was a dancer at Jabba the Hutt's palace the day you came for Solo."

So that was it. She'd worked for Jabba; and when he'd killed Jabba, he'd ruined her life . . .

Luke frowned at her. No. Her slim figure, her agility and grace-those certainly could belong to a professional dancer. But her piloting skills, her expert marksmanship, her inexplicable working knowledge of lightsabers-those most certainly did not.

Mara was still waiting, daring him with her expression to figure it out. "You weren't just a dancer, though," he told her. "That was only a cover."

Her lip twisted. "Very good. That vaunted Jedi insight, no doubt. Keep going; you're doing so well. What was I really doing there?"

Luke hesitated. There were all sorts of possibilities for this one: bounty hunter, smuggler, quiet bodyguard for Jabba, spy from some rival criminal organization . . .

No. Her knowledge of lightsabers . . . and suddenly, all the pieces fell together with a rush. "You were waiting for me," he said. "Vader knew I'd go there to try and rescue Han, and he sent you to capture me."

"Vader?" She all but spat the name. "Don't make me laugh. Vader was a fool, and skating on the edge of treason along with it. My master sent me to Jabba's to kill you, not recruit you."

Luke stared at her, an icy shiver running up his back. It couldn't be . . . but even as he gazed into that tortured face, he knew with sudden certainty that it was. "And your master," he said quietly, "was the Emperor."

"Yes," she said, her voice a snake's hiss. "And you destroyed him."

Luke swallowed hard, the pounding of his own heart the only sound. He hadn't killed the Emperor-Darth Vader had done that-but Mara didn't seem inclined to worry over such subtleties. "You're wrong, though," he said. "He did try to recruit me."

"Only because I failed," she ground out, her throat muscles tight. "And only when Vader had you standing right there in front of him. What, you don't think he knew Vader had offered to help you overthrow him?"

Unconsciously, Luke flexed the fingers of his numbed artificial hand. Yes, Vader had indeed suggested such an alliance during their Cloud City duel. "I don't think it was a serious offer," he murmured.

"The Emperor did," Mara said flatly. "He knew. And what he knew, I knew."

Her eyes filled with distant pain. "I was his hand, Skywalker," she said, her voice remembering. "That's how I was known to his inner court: as the Emperor's Hand. I served him all over the galaxy, doing jobs the Imperial Fleet and stormtroopers couldn't handle. That was my one great talent, you see-I could hear his call from anywhere in the Empire, and report back to him the same way. I exposed traitors for him, brought down his enemies, helped him keep the kind of control over the mindless bureaucracies that he needed. I had prestige, and power, and respect."

Slowly, her eyes came back from the past. "And you took it all away from me. If only for that, you deserve to die."

"What went wrong?" Luke forced himself to ask.

Her lip twisted. "Jabba wouldn't let me go with the execution party. That was it-pure and simple. I tried begging, cajoling, bargaining-I couldn't change his mind."

"No," Luke said soberly. "Jabba was highly resistant to the mind-controlling aspects of the Force."

But if she had been on the Sail Barge . . .

Luke shivered, seeing in his mind's eye that terrifying vision in the dark cave on Dagobah. The mysterious silhouetted woman standing there on the Sail Barge's upper deck, laughing at him as she held his captured lightsaber high.

The first time, years ago, the cave had spun him an image of a possible future. This time, he knew now, it had shown him a possible past. "You would have succeeded," he said quietly.

Mara looked sharply at him. "I'm not asking for understanding or sympathy," she bit out. "You wanted to know. Fine; now you know."

He let her tend her wounds in silence for a moment. "So why are you here?" he asked. "Why not with the Empire?"

"What Empire?" she countered. "It's dying-you know that as well as I do."

"But while it's still there-"

She cut him off with a withering glare. "Who would I go to?" she demanded. "They didn't know me-none of them did. Not as the Emperor's Hand, anyway. I was a shadow, working outside the normal lines of command and protocol. There were no records kept of my activities. Those few I was formally introduced to thought of me as court-hanging froth, a minor bit of mobile decoration kept around the palace to amuse the Emperor."

Her eyes went distant again with memory. "There was nowhere for me to go after Endor," she said bitterly. "No contacts, no resources-I didn't even have a real identity anymore. I was on my own."

"And so you linked up with Karrde."

"Eventually. First I spent four and a half years sloshing around the rotten underfringes of the galaxy, doing whatever I could." Her eyes were steady on him, with a trace of hatred fire back in them. "I worked hard to get where I am, Skywalker. You're not going to ruin it for me. Not this time."

"I don't want to ruin anything for you," Luke told her evenly. "All I want is to get back to the New Republic."

"And I want the old Empire back," she retorted. "We don't always get what we want, do we?"

Luke shook his head. "No. We don't."

For a moment she glared at him. Then, abruptly, she scooped up a tube of salve and tossed it at him. "Here-get that welt fixed up. And get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a busy day."

Chapter 27

The battered A-Class bulk freighter drifted off the Chimera's starboard side: a giant space-going box with a hyperdrive attached, its faded plating glistening dully in the glare of the Star Destroyer's floodlights. Sitting at his command station, Thrawn studied the sensor data and nodded. "It looks good, Captain," he said to Pellaeon. "Exactly the way it should. You may proceed with the test when ready."

"It'll be a few more minutes yet, sir," Pellaeon told him, studying the readouts on his console. "The technicians are still having some problems getting the cloaking shield tuned."

He held his breath, half afraid of a verbal explosion. The untested cloaking shield and the specially modified freighter it was mounted to had cost hideous amounts of money-money the Empire really didn't have to spare. For the technology to now suddenly come up finicky, particularly with the whole of the Sluis Van operation hanging squarely in the balance . . .

But the Grand Admiral merely nodded. "There's time," he said calmly. "What word from Myrkr?"

"The last regular report came in two hours ago," Pellaeon told him. "Still negative."

Thrawn nodded again. "And the latest count from Sluis Van?"

"Uh . . ." Pellaeon checked the appropriate file. "A hundred twelve transient warships in all. Sixty-five being used as cargo carriers, the others on escort duty."

"Sixty-five," Thrawn repeated with obvious satisfaction. "Excellent. It means we get to pick and choose."

Pellaeon stirred uncomfortably. "Yes, sir."

Thrawn turned away from his contemplation of the freighter to look at Pellaeon. "You have a concern, Captain?"

Pellaeon nodded at the ship. "I don't like sending them into enemy territory without any communications."

"We don't have much choice in the matter," Thrawn reminded him dryly. "That's how a cloaking shield works-nothing gets out, nothing gets in." He cocked an eyebrow. "Assuming, of course, that it works at all," he added pointedly.

"Yes, sir. But . . ."

"But what, Captain?"

Pellaeon braced himself and took the plunge. "It seems to me, Admiral, that this is the sort of operation we ought to use C'baoth on."

Thrawn's gaze hardened, just a bit. "C'baoth?"

"Yes, sir. He could give us communications with-"

"We don't need communications, Captain," Thrawn cut him off. "Careful timing will be adequate for our purposes."

"I disagree, Admiral. Under normal circumstances, yes, careful timing would get them into position. But there's no way to anticipate how long it'll take to get clearance from Sluis Control."

"On the contrary," Thrawn countered coolly. "I've studied the Sluissi very carefully. I can anticipate exactly how long it will take them to clear the freighter."

Pellaeon gritted his teeth. "If the controllers were all Sluissi, perhaps. But with the Rebellion funneling so much of their own material through the Sluis Van system, they're bound to have some of their own people in Control, as well."

"It's of no consequence," Thrawn told him. "The Sluissi will be in charge. Their timing will determine events."

Pellaeon exhaled and conceded defeat. "Yes, sir," he muttered.

Thrawn eyed him. "It's not a question of bravado, Captain. Or of proving that the Imperial Fleet can function without him. The simple fact of the matter is that we can't afford to use C'baoth too much or too often."

"Because we'll start depending on him," Pellaeon growled. "As if we were all borg-implanted into a combat computer."

Thrawn smiled. "That still bothers you, doesn't it? No matter. That's part of it, but only a very small part. What concerns me more is that we don't give Master C'baoth too much of a taste for this kind of power."

Pellaeon frowned at him. "He said he doesn't want power."

"Then he lies," Thrawn returned coldly. "All men want power. And the more they have, the more they want."

Pellaeon thought about that. "But if he's a threat to us . . ." He broke off, suddenly aware of the other officers and men working all around them.

The Grand Admiral had no such reticence. "Why not dispose of him?" he finished the question. "It's very simple. Because we'll soon have the ability to fill his taste for power to the fullest . . . and once we've done so, he'll be no more of a threat than any other tool."

"Leia Organa Solo and her twins?"

"Exactly," Thrawn nodded, his eyes glittering. "Once C'baoth has them in his hand, these little excursions with the Fleet will be no more to him than distracting interludes that take him away from his real work."

Pellaeon found himself looking away from the intensity of that gaze. The theory seemed good enough; but in actual practice . . . "That assumes, of course, that the Noghri are ever able to connect with her."

"They will." Thrawn was quietly confident. "She and her guardians will eventually run out of tricks. Certainly long before we run out of Noghri."

In front of Pellaeon, the display cleared. "They're ready, sir," he said.

Thrawn turned back to the freighter. "At your convenience, Captain."

Pellaeon took a deep breath and tapped the comm switch. "Cloaking shield: activate."

And outside the view window, the battered freighter-

Stayed exactly as it was.

Thrawn gazed hard at the freighter. Looked at his command displays, back at the freighter . . . and then turned to Pellaeon, a satisfied smile on his face. "Excellent, Captain. Precisely what I wanted. I congratulate you and your technicians."

"Thank you, sir," Pellaeon said, relaxing muscles he hadn't realized were tense. "Then I take it the light is green?"

The Grand Admiral's smile remained unchanged, his face hardening around it. "The light is green, Captain," he said grimly. "Alert the task force; prepare to move to the rendezvous point.

"The Sluis Van shipyards are ours."

Wedge Antilles looked up from the data pad with disbelief. "You've got to be kidding," he told the dispatcher. "Escort duty?"

The other gave him an innocent look. "What's the big deal?" he asked. "You guys are X-wings-you do escort all the time."

"We escort people," Wedge retorted. "We don't watchdog cargo ships."

The dispatcher's innocent look collapsed into thinly veiled disgust, and Wedge got the sudden impression that he'd gone through this same argument a lot lately. "Look, Commander, don't dump it on me," he growled back. "It's a standard Frigate escort-what's the difference whether the Frigate's got people or a break-down reactor aboard?"

Wedge looked back at the data pad. It was a matter of professional pride, that's what the difference was. "Sluis Van's a pretty long haul for X-wings," he said instead.

"Yeah, well, the spec line says you'll be staying aboard the Frigate until you actually hit the system," the dispatcher said, reaching over his desk to tap the paging key on Wedge's data pad. "You'll just ride him in from there."

Wedge scanned the rest of the spec line. They'd then have to sit there in the shipyards and wait for the rest of the convoy to assemble before finally taking the cargo on to Bpfassh. "We're going to be a long time away from Coruscant with this," he said.

"I'd look on that as a plus if I were you, Commander," the dispatcher said, lowering his voice. "Something here's coming to a head. I think Councilor Fey'lya and his people are about to make their move."

Wedge felt a chill run through him. "You don't mean . . . a coup?"

The dispatcher jumped as if scalded. "No, of course not. What do you think Fey'lya is-?"

He broke off, his eyes going wary. "Oh, I got it. You're one of Ackbar's diehards, huh? Face it, Commander; Ackbar's lost whatever touch he ever had with the common fighting man of the Alliance. Fey'lya's the only one on the Council who really cares about our welfare." He gestured at the data pad. "Case in point. All this garbage came down from Ackbar's office."

"Yeah, well, there's still an Empire out there," Wedge muttered, uncomfortably aware that the dispatcher's verbal attack on Ackbar had neatly shifted him to the other side of his own argument. He wondered if the other had done that on purpose . . . or whether he really was one of the growing number of Fey'lya supporters in the military.

And come to think of it, a little vacation away from Coruscant might not be such a bad idea, after all. At least it would get him away from all this crazy political stuff. "When do we leave?"

"Soon as you can get your people together and aboard," the dispatcher said. "They're already loading your fighters."

"Right." Wedge turned away from the desk and headed down the corridor toward the ready rooms. Yes, a quiet little run back out to Sluis Van and Bpfassh would be just the thing right now. Give him some breathing space to try to sort out just what was happening to this New Republic he'd risked so much to help build.

And if the Imperials took a poke at them along the way . . . well, at least that was a threat he could fight back against.

Chapter 28

It was just before noon when they began to notice the faint sounds wafting occasionally to them through the forest. It was another hour after that before they were close enough for Luke to finally identify them.

Speeder bikes.

"You're sure that's a military model?" Mara muttered as the whine/drone rose and fell twice more before fading again into the distance.

"I'm sure," Luke told her grimly. "I nearly ran one of them into a tree on Endor."

She didn't reply, and for a moment Luke wondered if the mention of Endor might not have been a good idea. But a glance at Mara's face relieved that fear. She was not brooding, but listening. "Sounds like they're off to the south, too," she said after a minute. "North . . . I don't hear anything from that direction."

Luke listened. "Neither do I," he said. "I wonder . . . Artoo, can you make up an audio map for us?"

There was an acknowledging beep. A moment later the droid's holo projector came on and a two-color map appeared, hovering a few centimeters over the matted leaves underfoot.

"I was right," Mara said, pointing. "A few units directly ahead of us, the rest off to the south. Nothing at all north."

"Which means we must have veered to the north," Luke said.

Mara frowned at him. "How do you figure that?"

"Well, they must know we'll make for Hyllyard City," he said. "They're bound to center their search on the direct approach."

Mara smiled thinly. "Such wonderful Jedi naivete," she said. "I don't suppose you considered the fact that just because we can't hear them doesn't mean they aren't there."

Luke frowned down at the holographic map. "Well, of course they could have a force lying in wait there," he agreed. "But what would it gain them?"

"Oh, come on, Skywalker-it's the oldest tactical trick in the book. If the perimeter looks impossible to crack, the quarry goes to ground and waits for a better opportunity. You don't want him to do that, so you give him what looks like a possible way through." She squatted down, ran a finger through the "quiet" section on the map. "In this case, they get a bonus: if we swing north to avoid the obvious speeder bikes, it's instant proof that we've got something to hide from them."

Luke grimaced. "Not that they really need any proof."

Mara shrugged and straightened up again. "Some officers are more legal-minded than others. The question is, what do we do now?"

Luke looked back down at the map. By Mara's reckoning, they were no more than four or five kilometers from the edge of the forest-two hours, more or less. If the Imperials had this much organization already set up in front of them . . . "They're probably going to try to ring us," he said slowly. "Move units around to the north and south, and eventually behind us."

"If they haven't done so already," Mara said. "No reason we would have heard them-they don't know exactly how fast we're moving, so they'll have made it a big circle. Probably using a wide ring of Chariot assault vehicles or hoverscouts with a group of speeder bikes working around each focal point. It's the standard stormtrooper format for a web."

Luke pursed his lips. But what the Imperials didn't know was that one of the quarry knew exactly what they were up to. "So how do we break out?" he asked.

Mara hissed between her teeth. "We don't," she said flatly. "Not without a lot more equipment and resources than we've got."

The faint whine/drone came again from somewhere ahead of them, rising and then fading as it passed by in the distance. "In that case," Luke said, "we might as well go straight up the middle. Call to them before they see us, maybe."

Mara snorted. "Like we were casual tourists out here with nothing to hide?"

"You have a better idea?"

She glared at him. But it was a reflexive glare, without any real argument behind it. "Not really," she conceded at last. "I suppose you're also going to want to do that role-switch thing Karrde suggested."

Luke shrugged. "We're not going to be able to blast our way through them," he reminded her. "And if you're right about that pincer movement, we're not going to sneak through them, either. All that's left is a bluff, and the better a bluff it is, the better chance we've got."

Mara's lip twisted. "I suppose so." With only a slight hesitation, she dropped the power pack from her blaster and handed it and the forearm holster to him.

Luke took them, hefted the blaster in his hand. "They may check to see if it's loaded," he pointed out mildly. "I would."

"Look, Skywalker, if you think I'm going to give you a loaded weapon-"

"And if another vornskr finds us before the Imperials do," Luke cut her off quietly, "you'll never get it reloaded fast enough."

"Maybe I don't care," she shot back.

Luke nodded. "Maybe you don't."

She glared at him again, but again, the glare lacked conviction. Teeth visibly grinding together, she slapped the power pack into his hand. "Thank you," Luke said, reloading the blaster and fastening it to his left forearm. "Now. Artoo?"

The droid understood. One of the trapezoidal sections at the top of his upper dome, indistinguishable from all the other segments, slid open to reveal a long, deep storage compartment beneath it. Turning back to Mara, Luke held out his hand.

She looked at the open hand, then at the storage compartment. "So that's how you did it," she commented sourly, unhooking his lightsaber and handing it over. "I always wondered how you smuggled that thing into Jabba's."

Luke dropped the lightsaber in, and Artoo slid the door shut behind it. "I'll call for it if I need it," he told the droid.

"Don't count on being very good with it," Mara warned. "The ysalamiri effect is supposed to extend several kilometers past the edge of the forest-none of those little attack-anticipation tricks will work anywhere near Hyllyard City."

"I understand," Luke nodded. "I guess we're ready to go, then."

"Not quite," Mara said, eyeing him. "There's still that face of yours."

Luke cocked an eyebrow. "I don't think Artoo's got anywhere to hide that."

"Funny. I had something else in mind." Mara glanced around, then headed off toward a stand of odd-looking bushes a few meters away. Reaching it, she pulled the end of her tunic sleeve down to cover her hand and carefully picked a few of the leaves. "Pull up your sleeve and hold out your arm," she ordered as she returned with them.

He did so, and she brushed his forearm lightly with the tip of one of the leaves. "Now. Let's see if this works."

"What exactly is it supposed to-aah!" The last of Luke's air came out in an explosive burst as a searing pain lanced through his forearm.

"Perfect," Mara said with grim satisfaction. "You're allergic as anything to them. Oh, relax-the pain will be gone in a few seconds."

"Oh, thanks," Luke gritted back. The pain was indeed receding. "Right. Now, what about this-mmm!-this blasted itch?"

"That'll hang on a little longer," she said, gesturing at his arm. "But never mind that. What do you think?"

Luke gritted his teeth. The itching was not-so-subtle torture . . . but she was right. Where she'd brushed the leaf the skin had turned dark and puffy, sprinkled with tiny pustules. "Looks disgusting," he said.

"Sure does," she agreed. "You want to do it yourself, or you want me to do it for you?"

Luke gritted his teeth. This was not going to be pleasant. "I can do it."

It was indeed unpleasant; but by the time he finished brushing his chin with the leaves the pain had already begun to recede from his forehead. "I hope I didn't get it too close to my eyes," he commented between clenched teeth, throwing the leaves away into the forest and fighting hard against the urge to dig into his face with both sets of fingernails. "It'd be handy to be able to see the rest of the afternoon."

"I think you'll be all right," Mara assured him, studying the result. "The rest of your face is pretty horrendous, though. You won't look anything like whatever pictures they have, that's for sure."

"Glad to hear it." Luke took a deep breath and ran through the Jedi pain suppression exercises. Without the Force they weren't all that effective, but they seemed to help a little. "How long will I look like this?"

"The puffiness should start going down in a few hours. It won't be completely gone until tomorrow."

"Good enough. We ready, then?"

"As ready as we'll ever be." Turning her back to Artoo, she took the travois handles and started walking. "Come on."

They made good time, despite the lingering tenderness of Mara's ankle and the distractions inherent in a faceful of itch. To Luke's relief, the itching began to fade after about half an hour, leaving only puffy numbness behind it.

Mara's ankle was another story, however, and as he walked behind her and Artoo he could see clearly how she was having to favor it. The added burden of Artoo's travois wasn't helping, and twice he almost suggested that they give up on the role switching. But he resisted the urge. It was their best chance of getting out of this, and they both knew it.

Besides which, she had far too much pride to agree.

They'd gone perhaps another kilometer, with the whine/drone of the speeder bikes rising and falling in the distance, when suddenly they were there.

There were two of them: biker scouts in glistening white armor, swooping up to them and braking to a halt almost before Luke's ears had registered the sound of their approach. Which meant a very short ride, with target position already known.

Which meant that the entire search party must have had them located and vectored for at least the past few minutes. It was just as well, Luke reflected, that he hadn't tried switching roles with Mara.

"Halt!" one of the scouts called unnecessarily as they hovered there, both swivel blaster cannons trained and ready. "Identify yourselves, in the name of the Empire."

And it was performance time. "Boy, am I glad you showed up," Luke called back, putting as much relief into his voice as the puffy cheeks allowed. "You don't happen to have some sort of transport handy, do you? I'm about walked off my feet."

There was just the slightest flicker of hesitation. "Identify yourself," the scout repeated.

"My name's Jade," Luke told him. He gestured at Mara. "Got a gift here for Talon Karrde. I don't suppose he sent some transport, did he?"

There was a short pause. The scouts conferring privately between themselves, Luke decided, or else calling back to base for instructions. The fact that the prisoner was a woman did indeed seem to have thrown them. Whether it would be enough, of course, was another question entirely.

"You'll come with us," the scout ordered. "Our officer wants to talk to you. You-woman-put the droid down and move away from it."

"Fine with me," Luke said as the second scout maneuvered his speeder bike to a position in front of Artoo's travois. "But I want both of you to witness, for the record, that I had her fair and square before you showed up. Karrde weasels his way out of these capture fees too often; he's not going to weasel out of this one."

"You're a bounty hunter?" the scout asked, a clear note of disdain in his voice.

"That's right," Luke said, putting some professional dignity in his voice as a counter to the scout's contempt. Not that he minded their distaste. He was, in fact, counting on it. The more firmly the Imperials had the wrong image of him set in their minds, the longer it would take them to see through the deception.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, though, he couldn't help but wonder if this was the sort of trick a Jedi should use.

The second scout had dismounted and fastened the handles of Artoo's travois to the rear of his speeder bike. Remounting, he headed off at about the speed of a brisk walk. "You two follow him," the first scout ordered, swinging around to take up the rear. "Drop your blaster on the ground first, Jade."

Luke complied, and they set off. The first scout put down just long enough to scoop up the abandoned blaster and then followed.

It took another hour to reach the edge of the forest. The two speeder bikes stayed with them the whole time; but as they traveled, the party began to grow. More speeder bikes swept in from both sides, falling into close formation on either side of Luke and Mara or else joining up with the guards to both front and rear. As they neared the forest's edge, fully armored stormtroopers began to appear, too, moving in with blaster rifles held ready across their chests to take up positions around the two prisoners. As they did so, the scouts began drifting away, ranging farther out to form a kind of moving screen.

By the time they finally stepped out from under the forest canopy, their escort numbered no fewer than ten biker scouts and twenty stormtroopers. It was an impressive display of military power . . . and more even than the fact of the search itself, it drove home to Luke the seriousness with which the mysterious man in charge of the Empire was treating this incident. Even at the height of their power, the Imperials hadn't spent stormtroopers lightly.

Three more people were waiting for them in the fifty-meter strip of open land between the forest and the nearest structures of Hyllyard City: two more stormtroopers and a hard-faced man wearing a major's insignia on his dusty brown Imperial uniform. "About time," the latter muttered under his breath as Mara and Luke were nudged in his direction. "Who are they?"

"The male says his name is Jade," one of the stormtroopers in front reported in that slightly filtered voice they all seemed to have. "Bounty hunter; works for Karrde. He claims the female is his prisoner."

"Was his prisoner," the major corrected, looking at Mara. "What's your name, thief?"

"Senni Kiffu," Mara said, her voice surly. "And I'm not a thief. Talon Karrde owes me-he owes me big. I didn't take any more than I had coming."

The major looked at Luke, and Luke shrugged. "Karrde's other dealings aren't any of my business. He said bring her back. I brought her back."

"And her theft, too, I see." He looked at Artoo, still tied to his travois and dragging behind the speeder bike. "Get that droid off your bike," he ordered the scout. "The ground's flat enough here, and I want you on perimeter. Put it with the prisoners. Cuff them, too-they're hardly likely to fall over tree roots out here."

"Wait a minute," Luke objected as one of the stormtroopers stepped toward him. "Me, too?"

The major raised his eyebrows slightly. "You got a problem with that, bounty hunter?" he asked, his voice challenging.

"Yeah, I got a problem with it," Luke shot back. "She's the prisoner here, not me."

"For the moment you're both prisoners," the other countered. "So shut up." He frowned at Luke's face. "What in the Empire happened to you, anyway?"

So they weren't going to be able to pass the puffiness off as Luke's natural features. "Ran into some kind of bush while I was chasing her," he growled as the stormtrooper roughly cuffed his hands in front of him. "It itched like blazes for a while."

The major smiled thinly. "How very inconvenient for you," he said dryly. "How fortunate that we have a fully qualified medic back at HQ. He should be able to bring that swelling down in no time." He held Luke's gaze a moment longer, then shifted his attention to the stormtrooper leader. "You disarmed him, of course."

The stormtrooper gestured, and the first of the biker scouts swooped close to hand Mara's blaster to the major. "Interesting weapon," the major murmured, turning it over in his hands before sliding it into his belt. From overhead came a soft hum, and Luke looked up to see a repulsorlift craft settle into place overhead. A Chariot assault vehicle, just as Mara had predicted. "Ah," the major said, glancing up at it. "All right, Commander. Let's go."

In many ways, Hyllyard City reminded Luke of Mos Eisley: small houses and commercial buildings crammed fairly tightly together, with relatively narrow streets running between them. The troop headed around the perimeter, clearly aiming for one of the wider avenues that seemed to radiate, spokelike, from the center of town. Looking into the city as they passed by the outer buildings, Luke was able to catch occasional glimpses of what seemed to be an open area a few blocks away. The town square, possibly, or else a spacecraft landing area.

The vanguard had just reached the target street when, in perfect synchronization, the stormtroopers abruptly changed formation. Those in the inner circle pulled in closer to Luke and Mara while those in the outer circle moved farther away, the whole crowd coming to a halt and gesturing to their prisoners to do the same. A moment later, the reason for the sudden maneuver came around the corner: four scruffy-looking men walking briskly toward them with a fifth man in the center of their square, his hands chained behind him.

They had barely emerged from the street when they were intercepted by a group of four stormtroopers. A short and inaudible conversation ensued, which concluded with the strangers handing their blasters over to the stormtroopers with obvious reluctance. Escorted now by the Imperials, they continued on toward the main group . . . and as they walked, Luke finally got a clear look at the prisoner. It was Han Solo.

The stormtroopers opened their ranks slightly to let the newcomers through. "What do you want?" the major demanded as they stopped in front of him.

"Name's Chin," one of them said. "We caught this ratch snooping around the forest-maybe looking for your prisoners there. Figured you might want to have a talk with him, hee?"

"Uncommonly generous of you," the major said sardonically, giving Han a quick, measuring glance. "You come to this conclusion all by yourself?"

Chin drew himself up. "Just because I don't live in a big flashy city doesn't mean I'm stupid," he said stiffly. "What hai-you think we don't know what it means when Imperial stormtroopers start setting up a temporary garrison?"

The major gave him a long, cool look. "You'd best just hope that the garrison is temporary." He glanced at the stormtrooper beside him, jerked his head toward Han. "Check him for weapons."

"We already-" Chin began. The major looked at him, and he fell silent.

The frisking took only a minute, and came up empty. "Put him in the pocket with the others," the major ordered. "All right, Chin, you and your friends can go. If he turns out to be worth anything, I'll see you get a piece of it."

"Uncommonly generous of you," Chin said with an expression that was just short of a sneer. "Can we have our guns back now?"

The major's expression hardened. "You can pick them up later at our HQ," he said. "Hyllyard Hotel, straight across the square-but I'm sure a sophisticated citizen like yourself already knows where it is."

For a moment Chin seemed inclined to argue the point. But a glance at the stormtroopers clustered around evidently changed his mind for him. Without a word he turned, and he and his three companions strode back toward the city.

"Move out," the major ordered, and they started up again.

"Well," Han muttered, falling into step beside Luke. "Together again, huh?"

"I wouldn't miss it," Luke muttered back. "Your friends there seem in a hurry to get away."

"Probably don't want to miss the party," Han told him. "A little something they threw together to celebrate my capture."

Luke threw him a sideways look. "Shame we weren't invited."

"Real shame," Han agreed with a straight face. "You never know, though."

They had turned into the avenue now, moving toward the center of town. Just visible over the heads of the stormtroopers, he could see something gray and rounded directly ahead of them. Craning his neck for a better view, he saw that the structure was in fact a freestanding archway, rising from the ground near the far end of the open village square he had noticed earlier.

A fairly impressive archway, too, especially for a city this far outside the mainstream of the galaxy. The upper part was composed of different types of fitted stone, the crown flaring outward like a cross between an umbrella and a section of sliced mushroom. The lower part curved in and downward, to end in a pair of meter-square supporting pillars on each side. The entire arch rose a good ten meters into the sky, with the distance between the pillars perhaps half that. Lying directly in front of it was the village square, a fifteen-meter expanse of empty ground.

The perfect place for an ambush.

Luke felt his stomach tighten. The perfect place for an ambush . . . except that if it was obvious to him, it must be obvious to the stormtroopers, as well.

And it was. The vanguard of the party had reached the square now, and as the stormtroopers moved out of the confines of the narrow avenue, each lifted his blaster rifle a little higher and moved a little farther apart from his fellows. They were expecting an ambush, all right. And they were expecting it right here.

Gritting his teeth, Luke focused again on the archway. "Is Threepio here?" he muttered to Han.

He sensed Han's frown, but the other didn't waste time with unnecessary questions. "He's with Lando, yeah."

Luke nodded and glanced down to his right. Beside him, Artoo was rolling along the bumpy street, trying hard to keep up. Bracing himself, Luke took a step in that direction-

And with a squeal, Artoo tripped over Luke's outstretched foot and fell flat with a crash.

Luke was crouched beside him in an instant, leaning over him as he struggled with his manacled hands to get the little droid upright again. He sensed some of the stormtroopers moving forward to assist, but for that single moment, there was no one else close enough to hear him. "Artoo, call to Threepio," he breathed into the droid's audio receptor. "Tell him to wait until we're at the archway to attack."

The droid complied instantly, its loud warble nearly deafening Luke as he crouched there beside him. Luke's head was still ringing when rough hands grabbed him under the arms and hauled him to his feet. He regained his balance-

To find the major standing in front of him, a suspicious scowl on his face. "What was that?" the other demanded.

"He fell over," Luke told him. "I think he tripped-"

"I meant that transmission," the major cut him off harshly. "What did he say?"

"He was probably telling me off for tripping him," Luke shot back. "How should I know what he said?"

For a long minute the major glared at him. "Move out, Commander," he said at last to the stormtrooper at his side. "Everyone stay alert."

He turned away, and they started walking again. "I hope," Han murmured from beside him, "you know what you're doing."

Luke took a deep breath and fixed his eyes on the archway ahead. "So do I," he murmured back.

In a very few minutes, he knew, they would both find out.

Chapter 29

"Oh, my!" Threepio gasped. "General Calrissian, I have-"

"Quiet, Threepio," Lando ordered, peering carefully around the edge of the window at the minor commotion going on across the square. "Did you see what happened, Aves?"

Crouched down beneath the windowsill, Aves shook his head. "Looked like Skywalker and his droid both fell over," he said. "Couldn't tell for sure-too many stormtroopers in the way."

"General Calrissian-"

"Quiet, Threepio." Lando watched tensely as two stormtroopers pulled Luke to his feet, then righted Artoo. "Looks like they're okay."

"Yeah." Aves reached down to the floor beside him, picked up the small transmitter. "Here we go. Let's hope everyone's ready."

"And that Chin and the others aren't still carrying their blasters," Lando added under his breath.

Aves snorted. "They aren't. Don't worry-stormtroopers are always confiscating other people's weapons."

Lando nodded, adjusting his grip on his blaster, wishing they could get this over with. Across the way, the Imperials seemed to have gotten themselves sorted out and were starting to move again. As soon as they were all inside the square, away from any possible cover . . .

"General Calrissian, I must speak to you," Threepio insisted. "I have a message from Master Luke."

Lando blinked at him. "From Luke?"

-but even as he said it he suddenly remembered that electronic wail from Artoo just after he'd fallen over. Could that have been-? "What is it?"

"Master Luke wants you to hold off the attack," Threepio said, obviously relieved that someone was finally listening to him. "He says you're to wait until the stormtroopers are at the arch before firing."

Aves twisted around. "What? That's crazy. They outnumber us three to one-we give them any chance at all at cover and they'll cut us to pieces."

Lando looked out the window, grinding his teeth together. Aves was right-he knew enough of ground tactics to realize that. But on the other hand . . . "They're awfully spread out out there," he said. "Cover or no cover, they're going to be hard to take out. Especially with those speeder bikes on their perimeter."

Aves shook his head. "It's crazy," he repeated. "I'm not going to risk my people that way."

"Luke knows what he's doing," Lando insisted. "He's a Jedi."

"He's not a Jedi now," Aves snorted. "Didn't Karrde explain about the ysalamiri?"

"Whether he has Jedi powers or not, he's still a Jedi," Lando insisted. His blaster, he realized suddenly, was pointed at Aves. But that was okay, because Aves's blaster was pointed at him, too. "Anyway, his life is more on the line here than any of yours-you can always abort and pull back."

"Oh, sure," Aves snorted, throwing a glance out the window. The Imperials were nearing the middle of the square now, Lando saw, the stormtroopers looking wary and alert as anything. "Except that if we leave any of them alive, they'll seal off the city. And what about that Chariot up there?"

"What about it?" Lando countered. "I still haven't heard how you're planning to take it out."

"Well, we sure as blazes don't want it on the ground," Aves retorted. "And that's what'll happen if we let the stormtroopers get to the arch. The Chariot'll put down right across the front of it, right between us and them. That, plus the arch itself, will give them all the cover they need to sit back and take us out at their leisure." He shook his head and shifted his grip on the transmitter. "Anyway, it's too late to clue in the others to any plan changes."

"You don't have to clue them in," Lando said, feeling sweat collecting under his collar. Luke was counting on him. "No one's supposed to do anything until you trigger the booby-trapped weapons."

Aves shook his head again. "It's too risky." He turned back to the window, raised the transmitter.

And here, Lando realized-right here-was where it all came down to the wire. Where you decided who or what it was you trusted. Tactics and abstract logic . . . or people. Lowering his blaster, he gently rested the tip of the muzzle against Aves's neck. "We wait," he said quietly.

Aves didn't move; but suddenly there was something in the way he crouched there that reminded Lando of a hunting predator. "I won't forget this, Calrissian," he said, his voice icy soft.

"I wouldn't want you to," Lando said. He looked out at the stormtroopers . . . and hoped that Luke did indeed know what he was doing.

The vanguard had already passed the archway, and the major was only a few steps away from it, when four of the stormtroopers abruptly blew up.

Quite spectacularly, too. The simultaneous flashes of yellow-white fire lit up the landscape to almost painful intensity; the thunderclap of the multiple detonations nearly knocked Luke over.

The sound was still ringing in his ears when the blasters opened up behind them.

The stormtroopers were good, all right. There was no panic that Luke could detect; no sudden freezing in astonishment or indecision. They were moving into combat position almost before the blaster fire had begun: those already at the archway hugging close to the stone pillars to return covering fire, the rest moving quickly to join them. Above the sound of the blasters, he could hear the increased whine of the speeder bikes kicking into high speed; overhead, he caught just a glimpse of the Chariot assault vehicle swiveling around to face the unseen attackers.

And then an armored hand caught him under each armpit, and suddenly he was being hauled toward the archway. A few seconds later he was dumped unceremoniously in the narrow gap between the two pillars supporting the north side of the arch. Mara was already crouched there; a second later, two more stormtroopers tossed Han in to join them. Four of the Imperials moved into position over them, using the pillars for cover as they began returning fire. Struggling to his knees, Luke leaned out for a look.

Out in the fire zone, looking small and helpless amid the deadly horizontal hail of blaster fire, Artoo was rolling toward them as fast as his little wheels would carry him.

"I think we're in trouble," Han muttered in his ear. "Not to mention Lando and the others."

"It's not over yet," Luke told him tightly. "Just stick close. How are you at causing distractions?"

"Terrific," Han said; and to Luke's surprise, he brought his hands out from behind his back, the chain and manacles he'd been wearing hanging loosely from his left wrist. "Trick cuffs," he grunted, pulling a concealed strip of metal from the inside of the open cuff and probing at Luke's restraints. "I hope this thing-ah." The pressure on Luke's wrists was suddenly gone; the cuffs opened and dropped to the ground. "You ready for your distraction?" Han asked, taking the loose end of his chain in his free hand.

"Hang on a minute," Luke told him, looking up. Most of the speeder bikes had taken refuge under the arch, looking like some strange species of giant birds hiding from a storm as they hovered close to the stone, their laser cannon spitting toward the surrounding houses. In front of them and just below their line of fire, the Chariot had swiveled parallel to the arch and was coming down. Once it was on the ground . . .

A hand gripped Luke's arm, fingernails digging hard into the skin. "Whatever you're going to do, do it!" Mara hissed viciously. "If the Chariot gets down, you'll never get them out from cover."

"I know," Luke nodded. "I'm counting on it."

The Chariot settled smoothly to the ground directly in front of the arch, blocking the last of the attackers' firing vectors. Crouched at the window, Aves swore violently. "Well, there's your Jedi for you," he bit out. "You got any other great ideas, Calrissian?"

Lando swallowed hard. "We've just got to give him-"

He never finished the sentence. From the arch a blaster bolt glanced off the window frame, and suddenly Lando's upper arm flashed with pain. The shock sent him stumbling backward, just as a second shot blew apart that whole section of the frame, driving wooden splinters and chunks of masonry like shrapnel across his chest and arm.

He hit the floor, landing hard enough to see stars. Blinking, gritting his teeth against the pain, he looked up-

To find Aves leaning over him.

Lando looked up into the other's face. I won't forget this, Aves had said, no more than three minutes ago. And from the look on his face, he wasn't anticipating any need to hold that memory for much longer. "He'll come through," Lando whispered through the pain. "He will."

But he could tell that Aves wasn't listening . . . and, down deep, Lando couldn't blame him. Lando Calrissian, the professional gambler, had gambled one last time. And he'd lost.

And the debt from that gamble-the last in a long line of such debts-had come due.

The Chariot settled smoothly to the ground directly in front of the arch, and Luke got his feet under him. This was it. "All right, Han," he muttered. "Go."

Han nodded and surged to his feet, coming up right in the middle of the four stormtroopers standing over them. With a bellow, he swung his former shackles full across the faceplate of the nearest guard, then threw the looped chain around the neck of the next and pulled backwards, away from the pillars. The other two reacted instantly, leaping after him and taking the whole group down in a tangle.

And for the next few seconds, Luke was free.

He stood up and leaned out to look around the pillar. Artoo was still in the middle of no-man's-land, hurrying to reach cover before he could be hit by a stray shot. He warbled plaintively as he saw Luke-

"Artoo!-now!" Luke shouted, holding out his hand and glancing across toward the southern end of the archway. Between the stone pillars and the grounded Chariot, the stormtroopers were indeed solidly entrenched. If this didn't work, Han was right: Lando and everyone else out there were dead. Gritting his teeth, hoping fervently that his counterattack wasn't already too late, he turned back to Artoo-

Just as, with a flicker of silver metal and perfect accuracy, his lightsaber dropped neatly into his outstretched hand.

Beside him, the guards had subdued Han's crazy attack and were getting back to their feet, leaving Han on his knees between them. Luke took them all in a single sweep, the blazing green lightsaber blade slicing through the glistening stormtrooper armor with hardly a tug to mark its passing. "Get behind me," he snapped to Han and Mara, stepping back to the gap between the two northern pillars and focusing on the mass of Imperials standing and crouching between him and the southern pillars. They were suddenly aware that they had an unexpected threat on their flank, and a few were already starting to bring their blasters to bear on him.

With the Force to guide his hand, he could have held out against them indefinitely, blocking their blaster shots with the lightsaber. Mara had been right, though: the ysalamiri effect did indeed extend this far outside the forest, and the Force was still silent.

But then, he'd never had any intention of fighting the stormtroopers anyway. Turning his back on the blasters tracking toward him, he slashed the lightsaber across and upward-

Neatly slicing one of the stone pillars in half.

There was a loud crack as suddenly released tension sent a shiver through the structure. Another stroke cut through the second pillar-

And the noise of the battle was abruptly drowned out by the awful grinding of stone on stone as the two fractured pillars began sliding apart.

Luke swung back around, peripherally aware of Han and Mara scrambling out from under the arch to safety behind him. The stormtroopers' expressions were hidden behind their masks, but the look of sudden horror on the major's face said it for all of them. Overhead, the mass of the arch creaked warningly; setting his teeth, Luke locked the lightsaber on and hurled it across the gap toward the pillars there. It cut through one of them and nicked the other-

And with a roar, the whole thing came crashing down.

Luke, standing at the edge, barely got out from under it in time. The stormtroopers, crouched in the center, didn't.

Chapter 30

Karrde walked around the mass of stone to where the crumpled nose of the Chariot assault vehicle poked out, a sense of slightly stunned disbelief coloring his vision. "One man," he murmured.

"Well, we helped some," Aves reminded him. But the sarcasm of the words faded beneath the grudging respect clearly there behind it.

"And without the Force, too," Karrde said.

He sensed Aves shrug uncomfortably. "That's what Mara said. Though of course Skywalker might have lied to her about it."

"Unlikely." A motion at the edge of the square caught his eye, and Karrde looked over to see Solo and Skywalker helping a distinctly shaky-looking Lando Calrissian to one of the airspeeders parked around the perimeter. "Took a shot, did he?"

Aves grunted. "Came close to taking one of mine, too," he said. "I thought he'd betrayed us-figured I'd make sure he didn't walk away from it."

"In restrospect, it's just as well you didn't." Karrde looked up, searching the skies. Wondering how long it would take the Imperials to respond to what had happened here today.

Aves looked up, too. "We might still be able to hunt down the other two Chariots before they get a chance to report," he suggested. "I don't think the headquarters people got any messages away before we took them out."

Karrde shook his head, feeling a deep surge of sadness rising through the sense of urgency within him. Not until now had he truly realized just how much he'd come to love this place-his base, the forest, the planet Myrkr itself. Now, when there was no choice but to abandon it. "No," he told Aves. "There's no way to cover up our part in what happened here. Not from a man like Thrawn."

"You're probably right," Aves said, his voice taking on a sense of urgency of its own. He understood the implications of that, all right. "You want me to head back and start the evacuation?"

"Yes. And take Mara with you. Make sure she keeps busy-somewhere away from the Millennium Falcon and Skywalker's X-wing."

He felt Aves's eyes on him. But if the other wondered, he kept his wonderings to himself. "Right. See you later."

He hurried away. The airspeeder with Calrissian aboard was lifting off now, heading back to where the Falcon was being prepped for flight. Solo and Skywalker were heading over toward a second airspeeder; with just a moment's hesitation, Karrde went over to intercept them.

They reached the craft at the same time, and for a moment eyed each other across its bow. "Karrde," Solo said at last. "I owe you one."

Karrde nodded. "Are you still going to get the Etherway out of impoundment for me?"

"I said I would," Solo told him. "Where do you want it delivered?"

"Just leave it on Abregado. Someone will pick it up." He turned his attention to Skywalker. "An interesting little trick," he commented, tilting his head back toward the mass of rubble. "Unorthodox, to say the least."

Skywalker shrugged. "It worked," he said simply.

"That it did," Karrde agreed. "Likely saving several of my people's lives in the bargain."

Skywalker looked him straight back in the eye. "Does that mean you've made your decision?"

Karrde gave him a slight smile. "I don't really see as I have much choice anymore." He looked back at Solo. "I presume you'll be leaving immediately?"

"As soon as we can get Luke's X-wing rigged for towing," Solo nodded, "Lando's doing okay, but he's going to need more specialized medical attention than the Falcon can handle."

"It could have been worse," Karrde said.

Solo gave him a knowing look. "A lot worse," he agreed, his voice hard.

"So could all of it," Karrde reminded him, putting an edge into his own voice. He could, after all, just as easily have turned the three of them over to the Imperials in the first place.

And Solo knew it. "Yeah," he conceded. "Well . . . so long."

Karrde watched as they got into the airspeeder. "One other thing," he said as they strapped in. "Obviously, we're going to have to pull out of here before the Imperials figure out what's happened. That means a lot of lifting capacity if we're going to do it quickly. You wouldn't happen to have any surplus cargo or stripped-down military ships lying around I could have, would you?"

Solo gave him a strange look. "We don't have enough cargo capacity for the New Republic's normal business," he said. "I think I might have mentioned that to you."

"Well, then, a loan, perhaps," Karrde persisted. "A stripped-down Mon Calamari Star Cruiser would do nicely."

"I'm sure it would," Solo returned with more than a hint of sarcasm. "I'll see what I can do."

The canopy dropped smoothly down over them and sealed in place. Karrde stepped back, and with a whine of repulsorlifts, the airspeeder rose into the sky. Orienting itself, it shot off toward the forest.

Karrde watched it go, wondering if that last suggestion had been too little too late. But perhaps not. Solo was the type to hold debts of honor sacred-something he'd probably picked up from his Wookiee friend somewhere along the line. If he could find a spare Star Cruiser, he'd likely send it along.

And once here, it would be easy enough to steal from whatever handlers Solo sent with it. Perhaps such a gift would help assuage Grand Admiral Thrawn's inevitable anger over what had happened here today.

But then, perhaps it wouldn't.

Karrde looked back at the ruins of the collapsed arch, a shiver running through him. No, a warship wasn't going to help. Not on this. Thrawn had lost too much here to simply shrug it off as the fortunes of war. He would be back . . . and he would be coming for blood.

And for perhaps the first time in his life, Karrde felt the unpleasant stirrings of genuine fear.

In the distance, the airspeeder disappeared over the forest canopy. Karrde turned and gave Hyllyard City one final, lingering look. One way or the other, he knew he would never see it again.

Luke got Lando settled into one of the Falcon's bunks while Han and a couple of Karrde's men busied themselves outside getting a tow cable attached to the X-wing. The Falcon's medical package was fairly primitive, but it was up to the task of cleaning and bandaging a blaster burn. A complete healing job would have to wait until they could get him to a bacta tank, but for the moment he seemed comfortable enough. Leaving Artoo and Threepio to watch over him-despite his protestations that he didn't need watching over and, furthermore, had had enough of Threepio-Luke returned to the cockpit just as the ship lifted off.

"Any problems with the tow cable?" he asked, sliding into the copilot's seat.

"Not so far," Han said, leaning forward and looking all around them as the Falcon cleared the trees. "The extra weight's not bothering us, anyway. We should be all right."

"Good. You expecting company?"

"You never know," Han said, giving the sky one last look before settling back into his seat and gunning the repulsorlifts. "Karrde said there were still a couple of Chariots and a few speeder bikes unaccounted for. One of them might have figured that a last-ditch suicide run was better than having to go back to the Grand Admiral and report."

Luke stared at him. "Grand Admiral?" he asked carefully.

Han's lip twisted. "Yeah. That's who seems to be running the show now for the Empire."

A cold chill ran up Luke's back. "I thought we'd accounted for all the Grand Admirals."

"Me, too. We must have missed one."

And abruptly, right in the middle of Han's last word, Luke felt a surge of awareness and strength fill him. As if he were waking up from a deep sleep, or stepping from a dark room into the light, or suddenly understanding the universe again.

The Force was again with him.

He took a deep breath, eyes flicking across the control board for the altimeter. Just over twelve kilometers. Karrde had been right-those ysalamiri did, indeed, reinforce one another. "I don't suppose you got a name," he murmured.

"Karrde wouldn't give it to me," Han said, throwing a curious frown in Luke's direction. "Maybe we can bargain the use of that Star Cruiser he wants for it. You okay?"

"I'm fine," Luke assured him. "I just-it's like being able to see again after having been blind."

Han snorted under his breath. "Yeah, I know how that is," he said wryly.

"I guess you would." Luke looked at him. "I didn't get a chance to say this earlier . . . but thanks for coming after me."

Han waved it away. "No charge. And I didn't get a chance to say it earlier-" he glanced at Luke again "-but you look like something the proom dragged in."

"My wonderful disguise," Luke told him, touching his face gingerly. "Mara assures me it'll wear off in a few more hours."

"Yeah-Mara," Han said. "You and she seemed to be hitting it off pretty well there."

Luke grimaced. "Don't count on it," he said. "A matter of having a common enemy, that's all. First the forest, then the Imperials."

He could sense Han casting around for a way to ask the next question, decided to save him the trouble. "She wants to kill me," he told the other.

"Any idea why?"

Luke opened his mouth . . . and, to his own surprise, closed it again. There wasn't any particular reason not to tell Han what he knew about Mara's past-certainly no reason he could think of. And yet, somehow, he felt a strangely compelling reluctance to do so. "It's something personal," he said at last.

Han threw him an odd look. "Something personal? How personal can a death mark get?"

"It's not a death mark," Luke insisted. "It's something-well, personal."

Han gazed at him a moment longer, then turned back to his piloting. "Oh," he said.

The Falcon had cleared the atmosphere now and was gunning for deep space. From this high up, Luke decided, the forest looked rather pleasant. "You know, I never did find out what planet this was," he commented.

"It's called Myrkr," Han told him. "And I just found out this morning. I think Karrde must have already decided to abandon the place, even before the battle-he had real tight security around it when Lando and I first got here."

A few minutes later a light flashed on the control board: the Falcon was far enough out of Myrkr's gravity well for the hyperdrive to function. "Good," Han nodded at it. "Course's already programmed in; let's get out of here." He wrapped his hand around the central levers and pulled; and with a burst of starlines, they were off.

"Where are we going?" Luke asked as the starlines faded into the familiar mottled sky. "Coruscant?"

"A little side trip first," Han said. "I want to swing by the Sluis Van shipyards, see if we can get Lando and your X-wing fixed up."

Luke threw him a sideways glance. "And maybe find a Star Cruiser to borrow for Karrde?"

"Maybe," Han said, a little defensively. "I mean, Ackbar's got a bunch of stripped-down warships ferrying stuff to the Sluis sector already. No reason why we can't borrow one of them for a couple of days, is there?"

"Probably not," Luke conceded with a sigh. Suddenly, it felt really good to just sit back and do nothing. "I suppose Coruscant can do without us for a few more days."

"I hope so," Han said, his voice abruptly grim. "But something's about to happen back there. If it hasn't happened already."

And his sense was as grim as his words. "Maybe we shouldn't bother with Sluis Van, then," Luke suggested, feeling a sympathetic shiver. "Lando's hurting, but he's not in any danger."

Han shook his head. "No. I want to get him taken care of-and you, buddy, need some downtime, too," he added, glancing at Luke. "I just wanted you to know that when we hit Coruscant, we're going to hit it running. So enjoy Sluis Van while you can. It'll probably be the last peace and quiet you'll get for a while."

In the blackness of deep space, three-thousandths of a light-year out from the Sluis Van shipyards, the task force assembled for battle.

"The Judicator has just reported in, Captain," the communications officer told Pellaeon. "They confirm battle ready, and request order update."

"Inform Captain Brandei that there have been no changes," Pellaeon told him, standing at the starboard viewport and gazing out at the shadowy shapes gathered around the Chimaera, all but the closest identifiable only by the distinctive patterns of their running lights. It was an impressive task force, one worthy of the old days: five Imperial Star Destroyers, twelve Strike-class cruisers, twenty-two of the old Carrack-class light cruisers, and thirty full squadrons of TIE fighters standing ready in their hangar bays.

And riding there in the middle of all that awesome firepower, like someone's twisted idea of a joke, sat the battered old A-class bulk freighter.

The key to this whole operation.

"Status, Captain?" Thrawn's voice came quietly from behind him.

Pellaeon turned to face the Grand Admiral. "All ships are on line, sir," he reported. "The freighter's cloaking shield has been checked out and primed; all TIE fighters are prepped and manned. I think we're ready."

Thrawn nodded, his glowing eyes sweeping the field of running lights around them. "Excellent," he murmured. "What word from Myrkr?"

The question threw Pellaeon off stride-he hadn't thought about Myrkr for days. "I don't know, Admiral," he confessed, looking over Thrawn's shoulder at the communications officer. "Lieutenant-the last report from the Myrkr landing force?"

The other was already calling up the record. "It was a routine report, sir," he said. "Time log . . . fourteen hours ten minutes ago."

Thrawn turned to face him. "Fourteen hours?" he repeated, his voice suddenly very quiet and very deadly. "I left orders for them to report every twelve."

"Yes, Admiral," the comm man said, starting to look a little nervous. "I have that order logged, right here on their file. They must have . . ." He trailed off, looking helplessly at Pellaeon.

They must have forgotten to report in, was Pellaeon's first, hopeful reaction. But it died stillborn. Stormtroopers didn't forget such things. Ever. "Perhaps they're having trouble with their transmitter," he suggested hesitantly.

For a handful of heartbeats Thrawn just stood there, silent. "No," he said at last. "They've been taken. Skywalker was indeed there."

Pellaeon hesitated, shook his head. "I can't believe that, sir," he said. "Skywalker couldn't have taken all of them. Not with all those ysalamiri blocking his Jedi power."

Thrawn turned those glittering eyes back on Pellaeon. "I agree," he said coldly. "Obviously, he had help."

Pellaeon forced himself to meet that gaze. "Karrde?"

"Who else was there?" Thrawn countered. "So much for his protestations of neutrality."

Pellaeon glanced at the status board. "Perhaps we should send someone to investigate. We could probably spare a Strike Cruiser; maybe even the Stormhawk."

Thrawn took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "No," he said, his voice steady and controlled again. "The Sluis Van operation is our primary concern at the moment-and battles have been lost before on the presence or absence of a single ship. Karrde and his betrayal will keep for later."

He turned back to the communications officer. "Signal the freighter," he ordered. "Have them activate the cloaking shield."

"Yes, sir."

Pellaeon turned back to the viewport. The freighter, bathed in the Chimera's lights, just sat there looking innocent. "Cloaking shield on, Admiral," the comm man reported.

Thrawn nodded. "Order them to proceed."

"Yes, sir." Moving rather sluggishly, the freighter maneuvered past the Chimaera, oriented itself toward the distant sun of the Sluis Van system, and with a flicker of pseudovelocity jumped to lightspeed.

"Time mark," Thrawn ordered.

"Time marked," one of the deck officers acknowledged.

Thrawn looked at Pellaeon. "Is my flagship ready, Captain?" he asked the formal question.

"The Chimaera is fully at your command, Admiral," Pellaeon gave the formal answer.

"Good. We follow the freighter in exactly six hours twenty minutes. I want a final check from all ships . . . and I want you to remind them one last time that our task is only to engage and pin down the system's defenses. There are to be no special heroics or risks taken. Make that clearly understood, Captain. We're here to gain ships, not lose them."

"Yes, sir." Pellaeon started toward his command station-

"And Captain . . . ?"

"Yes, Admiral?"

There was a tight smile on Thrawn's face. "Remind them, too," he added softly, "that our final victory over the Rebellion begins here."

Chapter 31

Captain Afyon of the Escort Frigate Larkhess shook his head with thinly disguised contempt, glaring at Wedge from the depths of his pilot's seat. "You X-wing hotshots," he growled. "You've really got it made-you know that?"

Wedge shrugged, trying hard not to take offense. It wasn't easy; but then, he'd had lots of practice in the past few days. Afyon had started out from Coruscant with a planetary-mass chip on his shoulder, and he'd been nursing it the whole way.

And looking out the viewport at the confused mass of ships crowding the Sluis Van orbit-dock area, it wasn't hard to figure out why. "Yeah, well, we're stuck out here, too," he reminded the captain.

The other snorted. "Yeah. Big sacrifice. You lounge around my ship like overpriced trampers for a couple of days, then flit around for two hours while I try to dodge bulk freighters and get this thing into a docking station designed for scavenger pickers. And then you pull your snubbies back inside and go back to lounging again. Doesn't exactly qualify as earning your pay, in my book."

Wedge clamped his teeth firmly around his tongue and stirred his tea a little harder. It was considered bad form to mouth back at senior officers, after all-even senior officers who'd long since passed their prime. For probably the first time since he had been given command of Rogue Squadron, he regretted having passed up all the rest of the promotions he'd been offered. A higher rank would at least have entitled him to snarl back a little.

Lifting his cup for a cautious sip, he gazed out the viewport at the scene around them. No, he amended-he wasn't sorry at all that he'd stayed with his X-wing. If he hadn't, he'd probably be in exactly the same position as Afyon was right now: trying to run a 920-crew ship with just fifteen men, hauling cargo in a ship meant for war.

And, like as not, having to put up with hotshot X-wing pilots who sat around his bridge drinking tea and claiming with perfect justification that they were doing exactly what they'd been ordered to do.

He hid a smile behind his mug. Yes, in Afyon's place, he'd probably be ready to spit bulkhead shavings, too. Maybe he ought to go ahead and let the other drag him into an argument, in fact, let him drain off some of that excess nervous energy of his. Eventually-within the hour, even, if Sluis Control's latest departure estimate was anywhere close-it would finally be the Larkhess's turn to get out of here and head for Bpfassh. It would be nice, when that time came, for Afyon to be calm enough to handle the ship.

Taking another sip of his tea, Wedge looked out the viewport. A couple of refitted passenger liners were making their own break for freedom now, he saw, accompanied by four Corellian Corvettes. Beyond them, just visible in the faint light of the space-lane marker buoys, was what looked like one of the slightly ovoid transports he used to escort during the height of the war, with a pair of B-wings following.

And off to the side, moving parallel to their departure vector, an A-class bulk freighter was coming into the docking pattern.

Without any escort at all.

Wedge watched it creep toward them, his smile fading as old combat senses began to tingle. Swiveling around in his seat, he reached over to the console beside him and punched for a sensor scan.

It looked innocent enough. An older freighter, probably a knockoff of the original Corellian Action IV design, with the kind of exterior that came from either a lifetime of honest work or else a short and spectacularly unsuccessful career of piracy. Its cargo bay registered completely empty, and there were no weapons emplacements that the Larkhess's sensors could pick up.

A totally empty freighter. How long had it been, he wondered uneasily, since he'd run across a totally empty freighter?

"Trouble?"

Wedge focused on the captain in mild surprise. The other's frustrated anger of a minute ago was gone, replaced by something calm, alert, and battle-ready. Perhaps, the thought strayed through Wedge's mind, Afyon wasn't past his prime after all. "That incoming freighter," he told the other, setting his cup down on the edge of the console and keying for a comm channel. "There's something about it that doesn't feel right."

The captain peered out the viewport, then at the sensor scan data Wedge had pulled up. "I don't see anything," he said.

"Me, either," Wedge had to admit. "There's just something . . . Blast."

"What?"

"Control won't let me in," Wedge told him as he keyed off. "Too much traffic on the circuits already, they say."

"Allow me." Afyon turned to his own console. The freighter was shifting course now, the kind of slow and careful maneuver that usually indicated a full load. But the cargo bay was still registering empty . . .

"There we go," Afyon said, glancing at Wedge with grim satisfaction. "I've got a tap into their records computer. Little trick you never learn flitting around in an X-wing. Let's see now . . . freighter Nartissteu, out of Nellac Kram. They were jumped by pirates, got their main drive damaged in the fight, and had to dump their cargo to get away. They're hoping to get some repair work done; Sluis Control's basically told them to get in line."

"I thought all this relief shipping had more or less taken over the whole place," Wedge frowned.

Afyon shrugged. "Theoretically. In practice . . . well, the Sluissi are easy enough to talk into bending that kind of rule. You just have to know how to phrase the request."

Reluctantly, Wedge nodded. It did all seem reasonable enough, he supposed. And a damaged, empty ship would probably handle something like an intact full one. And the freighter was empty-the Larkhess's sensors said so.

But the tingles refused to go away.

Abruptly, he dug his comlink from his belt. "Rogue Squadron, this is Rogue Leader," he called. "Everyone to your ships."

He got acknowledgments, looked up to find Afyon's eyes steady on him. "You still think there's trouble?" the other asked quietly.

Wedge grimaced, throwing one last look out the viewport at the freighter. "Probably not. But it won't hurt to be ready. Anyway, I can't have my pilots sitting around drinking tea all day." He turned and left the bridge at a quick jog.

The other eleven members of Rogue Squadron were in their X-wings by the time he reached the Larkhess's docking bay. Three minutes later, they launched.

The freighter hadn't made much headway, Wedge saw as they swung up over the Larkhess's hull and pulled together into a loose patrol formation. Oddly enough, though, it had moved a considerable distance laterally, drifting away from the Larkhess and toward a pair of Calamari Star Cruisers orbiting together a few kilometers away. "Spread out formation," Wedge ordered his pilots, shifting to an asymptotic approach course. "Let's swing by and take a nice, casual little look."

The others acknowledged. Wedge glanced down at his nav scope, made a minor adjustment to his speed, looked back up again-

And in the space of a single heartbeat, the whole thing went straight to hell.

The freighter blew up. All at once, without any warning from sensors, without any hint from previous visual observation, it just came apart.

Reflexively, Wedge jabbed for his comm control. "Emergency!" he barked. "Ship explosion near orbit-dock V-475. Send rescue team."

For an instant, as chunks of the cargo bay flew outward, he could see into the emptiness there . . . but even as his eyes and brain registered the odd fact that he could see into the disintegrating cargo bay but not beyond it-

The bay was suddenly no longer empty.

One of the X-wing pilots gasped. A tight-packed mass of something was in there, totally filling the space where the Larkhess's sensors had read nothing. A mass that was even now exploding outward like a hornet's nest behind the pieces of the bay.

A mass that in seconds had resolved itself into a boiling wave front of TIE fighters.

"Pull up!" Wedge snapped to his squadron, leaning his X-wing into a tight turn to get out of the path of that deadly surge. "Come around and re-form; S-foils in attack position."

And as they swung around in response, he knew with a sinking feeling that Captain Afyon had been wrong. Rogue Squadron was indeed going to earn its pay today.

The battle for Sluis Van had begun.

They'd cleared the outer system defense network and the bureaucratic overload that passed for Control at Sluis Van these days, and Han was just getting a bearing on the slot they'd given him when the emergency call came through. "Luke!" he shouted back down the cockpit corridor. "Got a ship explosion. I'm going to go check it out." He glanced at the orbit-dock map to locate V-475, gave the ship a fractional turn to put them on the right vector-

And jerked in his seat as a laser bolt slapped the Falcon hard from behind.

He had them gunning into a full forward evasive maneuver before the second shot went sizzling past the cockpit. Over the roar of the engines he heard Luke's startled-sounding yelp; and as the third bolt went past he finally had a chance to check the aft sensors to see just what was going on.

He almost wished he hadn't. Directly behind them, batteries already engaging one of the Sluis Van perimeter battle stations, was an Imperial Star Destroyer.

He swore under his breath and kicked the engines a little harder. Beside him, Luke clawed his way forward against the not-quite-compensated acceleration and into the copilot's seat. "What's going on?" he asked.

"We just walked into an Imperial attack," Han growled, eyes flying over the readouts. "Got a Star Destroyer behind us-there's another one over to starboard-looks like some other ships with them."

"They've got the system bottled up," Luke said, his voice glacially calm. A far cry, Han thought, from the panicky kid he'd pulled off Tatooine out from under Star Destroyer fire all those years back. "I make it five Star Destroyers and something over twenty smaller ships."

Han grunted. "At least we know now why they hit Bpfassh and the others. Wanted to pull enough ships here to make an attack worth their while."

The words were barely out of his mouth when the emergency comm channel suddenly came to life again. "Emergency! Imperial TIE fighters in orbit-dock area. All ships to battle stations."

Luke started. "That sounded like Wedge," he said, punching for transmission. "Wedge? That you?"

"Luke?" the other came back. "We got trouble here-at least forty TIE fighters and fifty truncated-cone-shaped things I've never seen before-"

He broke off as a screech from the X-wing's etheric rudder came faintly over the speaker. "I hope you've brought a couple wings of fighters with you," he said. "We're going to be a little pressed here."

Luke glanced at Han. "Afraid it's just Han and me and the Falcon. But we're on our way."

"Make it fast."

Luke keyed off the speaker. "Is there any way to get me into my X-wing?" he asked.

"Not fast enough," Han shook his head. "We're going to have to drop it here and go in alone."

Luke nodded, getting out of his seat. "I'd better make sure Lando and the droids are strapped in and then get up into the gun well."

"Take the top one," Han called after him. The upper deflector shields were running stronger at the moment, and Luke would have more protection there.

If there was any protection to be had from forty TIE fighters and fifty truncated flying cones.

For a moment he frowned as a strange thought suddenly struck him. But no. They couldn't possibly be Lando's missing mole miners. Even a Grand Admiral wouldn't be crazy enough to try to use something like that in battle.

Boosting power to the forward deflectors, he took a deep breath and headed in.

"All ships, commence attack," Pellaeon called. "Full engagement; maintain position and status."

He got confirmations, turned to Thrawn. "All ships report engaged, sir," he said.

But the Grand Admiral didn't seem to hear him. He just stood there at the viewport, gazing outward at the New Republic ships scrambling to meet them, his hands gripped tightly behind his back. "Admiral?" Pellaeon asked cautiously.

"That was them, Captain," Thrawn said, his voice unreadable. "That ship straight ahead. That was the Millennium Falcon. And it was towing an X-wing starfighter behind it."

Pellaeon frowned past the other. The glow of a drive was indeed barely visible past the flashing laser bolts of the battle, already pretty well out of combat range and trying hard to be even more so. But as to the design of the craft, much less its identity . . . "Yes, sir," he said, keeping his tone neutral. "Cloak Leader reports a successful breakout, and that the command section of the freighter is making its escape to the periphery. They're encountering some resistance from escort vehicles and a squadron of X-wings, but the general response has so far been weak and diffuse."

Thrawn took a deep breath and turned away from viewport. "That will change," he told Pellaeon, back in control again. "Remind him not to push his envelope too far, or to waste excessive time in choosing his targets. Also that the spacetrooper mole miners should concentrate on Calamari Star Cruisers-they're likely to have the largest number of defenders aboard." The red eyes glittered. "And inform him that the Millennium Falcon is on its way in."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said. He glanced out the viewport again, at the distant fleeing ship. Towing an X-wing . . . ? "You don't think . . . Skywalker?"

Thrawn's face hardened. "We'll know soon," he said quietly. "And if so, Talon Karrde will have a great deal to answer for. A great deal."

"Watch it, Rogue Five," Wedge warned as a flash of laser fire from somewhere behind him shot past and nicked the wing of one of the X-wings ahead. "We've picked up a tail."

"I noticed," the other came back. "Pincer?"

"On my mark," Wedge confirmed as a second bolt shot past him. Directly ahead, a Calamari Star Cruiser was pulling sluggishly away, trying to get out of the battle zone. Perfect cover for this kind of maneuver. Together, he and Rogue Five dived underneath it-

"Now." Leaning hard on his etheric rudder, he peeled off hard to the right. Rogue Five did the same thing to the left. The pursuing TIE fighter hesitated between his diverging targets a split second too long; and even as he swung around to follow Wedge, Rogue Five blew him out of the sky.

"Nice shooting," Wedge said, giving the area a quick scan. The TIE fighters still seemed to be everywhere, but for the moment, at least, none of them was close enough to give them any trouble.

Five noticed that, too. "We seem to be out of it, Rogue Leader," he commented.

"Easy enough to fix," Wedge told him. His momentum was taking him farther under the Star Cruiser they'd used for cover. Curving up and around it, he started to spiral back toward the main battle area.

He was just swinging up along the Star Cruiser's side when he noticed the small cone-shaped thing nestled up against the larger ship's hull.

He craned his neck for a better look as he shot past. It was one of the little craft that had come out with the TIE fighters, all right. Sitting pressed up against the Star Cruiser's bridge blister as if it were welded in place.

There was a battle going on nearby, a battle in which his people were fighting and very possibly dying. But something told Wedge that this was important. "Hang on a minute," he told Five. "I want to check this out."

His momentum had already taken him to the Star Cruiser's bow. He curved around in front of the ship, leaning back into a spiral again-

And suddenly his canopy lit up with laser fire, and his X-wing jolted like a startled animal beneath him.

The Star Cruiser had fired on him.

In his ear, he heard Five shout something. "Stay back," Wedge snapped, fighting against a sudden drop in power and giving his scopes a quick scan. "I'm hit, but not bad."

"They fired on you!"

"Yeah, I know," Wedge said, trying to maintain some kind of evasive maneuvering with what little control he had left. Fortunately, the systems were starting to come back on line as his R2 unit did some fast rerouting. Even more fortunately, the Star Cruiser didn't seem inclined to shoot at him again.

But why had it fired in the first place?

Unless . . .

His own R2 was too busy with rerouting chores to handle anything else at the moment. "Rogue Five, I need a fast sensor scan," he called. "Where are the rest of those cone things?"

"Hang on, I'll check," the other replied. "Scope shows . . . I don't find more than about fifteen of them. Nearest one's ten kilometers away-bearing one-one-eight mark four."

Wedge felt something hard settle into his stomach. Fifteen, out of the fifty that had been in that freighter with the TIE fighters. So where had the rest of them gone? "Let's go take a look," he said, turning into an intercept vector.

The cone thing was heading toward another Escort Frigate like the Larkhess, he saw, with four TIE fighters running interference for it. Not that there was much potential for interference- if the Frigate was manned anywhere near as sparsely as the Larkhess, it would have precious little chance of fighting back. "Let's see if we can take them before they notice us," he told Five as they closed the distance.

Abruptly, all four TIE fighters peeled off and came around. So much for surprise. "Take the two on the right, Rogue Five; I'll take the others."

"Copy."

Wedge waited until the last second before firing on the first of his targets, swinging around instantly to avoid collision with the other. It swept past beneath him, his X-wing shuddering as it took another hit. He leaned hard into the turn, catching a glimpse of the TIE fighter dropping into a pursuit slot as he did so-

And suddenly something shot past him, spitting laser fire and twisting back and around in some kind of insane variant on a drunkard's-walk evasive maneuver. The TIE fighter caught a direct hit and blew into a spectacular cloud of fiery gas. Wedge finished his turn, just as Rogue Five's second target fighter did likewise.

"All clear, Wedge," a familiar voice called into his ear. "You damaged?"

"I'm fine, Luke," Wedge assured him. "Thanks."

"Look-there it goes," Han's voice cut in. "Over by the Frigate. It's one of Lando's mole miners, all right."

"I see it," Luke said. "What's it doing out here?"

"I saw one stuck onto the Star Cruiser back there," Wedge told him, swinging back on course for the Frigate. "Looks like this one's trying to do the same thing. I don't know why."

"Whatever it's doing, let's stop it," Han said.

"Right."

It was, Wedge saw, going to be a close race; but it was quickly clear that the mole miner was going to win it. Already it had turned its base around toward the Frigate and was starting to nestle up against the hull.

And just before it closed the gap completely, he caught a glimpse of an acridly brilliant light.

"What was that?" Luke asked.

"I don't know," Wedge said, blinking away the afterimage. "It looked too bright for laser fire."

"It was a plasma jet," Han grunted as the Falcon came up alongside him. "Right on top of the bridge emergency escape hatch. That's what they wanted the mole miners for. They're using them to burn through the hulls-"

He broke off; and, abruptly, he swore. "Luke-we got it backwards. They're not here to wreck the fleet.

"They're here to steal it."

For a long heartbeat Luke just stared at the Frigate . . . and then, like pieces clicking together in a puzzle, it all fell into place. The mole miners, the undermanned and underdefended capital ships that the New Republic had been forced to press into shipping service, the Imperial fleet out there that seemed to be making no real effort to push its way past the system's defenses-

And a New Republic Star Cruiser, mole miner planted firmly on its side, that had just fired on Wedge's X-wing.

He took a moment to scan the sky around him. Moving with deceptive slowness through the continuing starfighter battle, a number of warships were beginning to pull out. "We've got to stop them," he told the others.

"Good thinking," Han agreed. "How?"

"Is there any way we can get aboard them ourselves?" he asked. "Lando said the mole miners were two-man ships-the Imperials can't possibly have packed more than four or five stormtroopers in each one of them."

"The way those warships are manned at the moment, four stormtroopers would be plenty," Wedge pointed out.

"Yes, but I could take them," Luke said.

"On all fifty ships?" Han countered. "Besides, you blast a hatch open to vacuum and you'll have pressure bulkheads closing all over the ship. Take you forever to even get to the bridge."

Luke gritted his teeth; but Han was right. "Then we have to disable them," he said. "Knock out their engines or control systems or something. If they get out to the perimeter and those Star Destroyers, we'll never see them again."

"Oh, we'll see them again," Han growled. "Pointed straight back at us. You're right-disabling as many as we can is our best shot. We're never going to stop all fifty, though."

"We don't have fifty to stop, at least not yet," Wedge put in. "There are still twelve mole miners that haven't attached themselves to ships."

"Good-let's take them out first," Han said. "You got vectors on them?"

"Feeding your computer now."

"Okay . . . okay, here we go." The Falcon twisted around and headed off in a new direction. "Luke, get on the comm and tell Sluis Control what's happening," he added. "Tell them not to let any ships out of the orbit-dock area."

"Right." Luke switched channels on the comm; and as he did so, he was suddenly aware of a slight change in sense from the Falcon's cockpit. "Han? You all right?"

"Huh? Sure. Why?"

"I don't know. You seemed to change."

"I had half a grip on some idea," Han said. "But it's gone now. Come on, make that call. I want you back on the quads when we get there."

The call to Sluis Control was over well before they reached their target mole miner. "They thank us for the information," Luke reported to the others, "but they say they don't have anything to spare at the moment to help us."

"Probably don't," Han agreed. "Okay, I see two TIE fighters running escort. Wedge, you and Rogue Five take them out while Luke and I hit the mole miner."

"Got it," Wedge confirmed. The two X-wings shot past Luke's canopy, flaring apart into intercept mode as the TIE fighters broke formation and came around to meet the attack.

"Luke, try to blow it apart instead of disintegrating it," Han suggested. "Let's see how many people the Imperials have got stuffed inside."

"Got it," Luke said. The mole miner was in his sights now. Adjusting his power level down, he fired.

The truncated cone flared as the metal dead center of the shot boiled away into glowing gas. The rest of the craft seemed intact, though, and Luke was just lining up for a second shot when the hatch at the top abruptly popped open.

And through the opening, a monstrous, robotlike figure came charging out.

"What-?"

"It's a spacetrooper," Han snapped back. "A stormtrooper in zero-gee armor. Hang on."

He spun the Falcon around away from the spacetrooper, but not before there was a flash from a protuberance atop the other's backpack and the hull around Luke slammed with a violent concussion. Han rolled the ship around, blocking Luke's view, as another concussion rocked them.

And then they were pulling away-pulling away, but with agonizing slowness. Luke swallowed hard, wondering what kind of damage they'd taken.

"Han, Luke-you all right?" Wedge's voice called anxiously.

"Yeah, for now," Han called back. "You get the TIE fighters?"

"Yes. I think the mole miner's still underway, though."

"Well, then, blast it," Han said. "Nothing cute; just blow it apart. But watch out for that spacetrooper-he's using miniature proton torpedoes or something. I'm trying to draw him away; I don't know if he'll fall for it."

"He's not," Wedge said grimly. "He's staying right on top of the mole miner. They're heading for a passenger liner-looks like they'll make it, too."

Han swore under his breath. "Probably got a few regular stormtrooper buddies still in there. All right, I guess we do this the hard way. Hang on, Luke-we're going to ram him."

"We're what?"

Luke's last word was lost in the roar from the engines as Han sent the Falcon flying straight out and then around in a hard turn. The mole miner and spacetrooper came back into Luke's line of sight-

Wedge had been wrong. The spacetrooper wasn't standing by the damaged mole miner; he was, in fact, sidling quickly away from it. The twin protuberances on top of his backpack began flashing again, and a couple of seconds later the Falcon's hull began ringing with proton torpedo blasts. "Get ready," Han called.

Luke braced himself, trying not to think about what would happen if one of those torpedoes hit his canopy-and trying, too, not to wonder if Han could really ram the spacetrooper without also plowing into the passenger liner directly behind him. Ignoring the proton blasts, the Falcon continued accelerating-

And without warning, Han dropped the ship beneath the spacetrooper's line of fire. "Wedge: go!"

From beneath Luke's line of sight an X-wing flashed upward, laser cannon blazing.

And the mole miner shattered into flaming dust.

"Good shot," Han told him, a note of satisfaction in his voice as he veered underneath the liner, nearly taking the Falcon's main sensor dish off in the process. "There you go, hotshot-enjoy your view of the battle."

Belatedly, the light dawned. "He was listening in on our channel," Luke said. "You just wanted to decoy him into moving away from the mole miner."

"You got it," Han said. "I figured he'd tap in-Imperials always do when they can . . ."

He trailed off. "What is it?" Luke asked.

"I don't know," Han said slowly. "There's something about this whole thing that keeps poking at me, but I can't figure out what it is. Never mind. Our hotshot spacetrooper will keep for now-let's go hit some more mole miners."

It was just as well, Pellaeon thought, that they were only here to keep the enemy tied up. The Sluissi and their New Republic allies were putting up one terrific fight.

On his status board, a section of the Chimera's shield schematic went red. "Get that starboard shield back up," he ordered, giving the sky in that direction a quick scan. There were half a dozen warships out there, all of them firing like mad, with a battle station in backstop position behind them. If their sensors showed that the Chimera's starboard shields were starting to go-

"Starboard turbolasers: focus all fire on the Assault Frigate at thirty-two mark forty," Thrawn spoke up calmly. "Concentrate on the starboard side of the ship only."

The Chimaera gun crews responded with a withering hail of laser fire. The Assault Frigate tried to swerve away; but even as it turned, its entire starboard side seemed to flash with vaporized metal. The weapons from that section, which had been firing nonstop, went abruptly silent.

"Excellent," Thrawn said. "Starboard tractor crews: lock on and bring it in close. Try to keep it between the damaged shields and the enemy. And be sure to keep its starboard side facing toward us; the port side may still have active weapons and a crew to use them."

Clearly against its will, the Assault Frigate began to move inward. Pellaeon watched it for a moment, then returned his attention to the overall battle. He had no doubt the tractor crew would do the job right; they'd shown a remarkable increase in efficiency and competence lately. "TIE Squadron Four, keep after that B-wing group," he instructed. "Port ion cannon: keep up the pressure on that command center." He looked at Thrawn. "Any specific orders, Admiral?"

Thrawn shook his head. "No, the battle seems to be progressing as planned." He turned his glowing eyes on Pellaeon. "What word from Cloak Leader?"

Pellaeon checked the proper display. "The TIE fighters are still engaging the various escort ships," he reported. "Forty-three of the mole miners have successfully attached to target ships. Of those, thirty-nine are secure and making for the perimeter. Four are still encountering internal resistance, though they anticipate a quick victory."

"And the other eight?"

"They've been destroyed," Pellaeon told him. "Including two of those with a spacetrooper aboard. One of those spacetroopers is failing to respond to comm, presumably killed with his craft; the other is still functional. Cloak Leader has ordered him to join the attack on the escort ships."

"Countermand that," Thrawn said. "I'm quite aware that stormtroopers have infinite confidence in themselves, but that sort of deep-space combat is not what spacetrooper suits were designed for. Have Cloak Leader detail a TIE fighter to bring him out. And also inform him that his wing is to begin pulling back to the perimeter."

Pellaeon frowned. "You mean now, sir?"

"Certainly, now." Thrawn nodded toward the viewport. "The first of our new ships will begin arriving within fifteen minutes. As soon as they're all with us, the task force will be withdrawing."

"But . . ."

"The Rebel forces within the perimeter are of no further concern to us, Captain," Thrawn said with quiet satisfaction. "The captured ships are on their way. With or without TIE fighter cover, there's nothing the Rebels can do to stop them."

Han brought the Falcon as close as he could to the Frigate's engines without risking a backwash, feeling the slight multiple dips in ship's power as Luke repeatedly fired the quads. "Anything?" he asked as they came up around the other side.

"Doesn't look like it," Luke said. "There's just too much armor over the coolant-feeder lines."

Han glanced along the Frigate's course, fighting back the urge to swear. They were already uncomfortably close to the perimeter battle, and getting closer all the time. "This isn't getting us anywhere. There's got to be some way to take out a capital ship."

"That's what other capital ships are for," Wedge put in. "But you're right-this isn't working."

Han pursed his lips. "Artoo?-you still on line back there?" he called.

The droid's beeping came faintly up the cockpit corridor. "Go through your schematics again," Han ordered. "See if you can find us another weak point."

Artoo beeped again in acknowledgment. But it wasn't a very optimistic beep. "He's not going to find anything better, Han," Luke said, echoing Han's own private assessment. "I don't think we've got any choice left. I'm going to have to go topside and use my lightsaber on it."

"That's crazy, and you know it," Han growled. "Without a proper pressure suit-and with engine coolant spraying all over you if it works-"

"How about using one of the droids?" Wedge suggested.

"Neither of them can do it," Luke told him. "Artoo hasn't got the manipulative ability, and I wouldn't trust Threepio with a weapon. Especially not with all the high-acceleration maneuvers we're making."

"What we need is a remote manipulator arm," Han said. "Something that Luke could use inside while . . ."

He broke off. In a flash of inspiration, there it was-the thing that had been bothering him ever since they'd walked into this crazy battle. "Lando," he called into the intercom. "Lando! Get up here."

"I've got him strapped in," Luke reminded him.

"Well, go unstrap him and get him up here," Han snapped. "Now."

Luke didn't waste time with questions. "Right," he said.

"What is it?" Wedge asked tensely.

Han clenched his teeth. "We were there on Nkllon when the Imperials stole these mole miners from Lando," he told the other. "We had to reroute our communications through some jamming."

"Okay. So?"

"So why were they jamming us?" Han asked. "To keep us from calling for help? From who? They're not jamming us here, you notice."

"I give up," Wedge said, starting to sound a little testy. "Why?"

"Because they had to. Because-"

"Because most of the mole miners on Nkllon were running on radio remote," came a tired voice from behind him.

Han turned around, to see Lando easing his way carefully into the cockpit, clearly running at half speed but just as clearly determined to make it. Luke was right behind him, a steadying hand on his elbow. "You heard all that?" Han asked him.

"Every part that mattered," Lando said, dropping into the copilot's seat. "I could kick myself for not seeing it long ago."

"Me, too. You remember any of the command codes?"

"Most of them," Lando said. "What do you need?"

"We don't have time for anything fancy." Han nodded toward the Frigate, now lying below them. "The mole miners are still attached to the ships. Just start 'em all running."

Lando looked at him in surprise. "Start them running?" he echoed.

"You got it," Han confirmed. "All of them are going to be near a bridge or control wing-if they can burn through enough equipment and wiring, it should knock out the whole lot of them."

Lando exhaled noisily, tilting his head sideways in a familiar gesture of reluctant acceptance. "You're the boss," he said, fingers moving over the comm keyboard. "I just hope you know what you're doing. Ready?"

Han braced himself. "Do it."

Lando keyed a final section of code . . . and beneath them, the Frigate twitched.

Not a big twitch, not at first. But as the seconds passed, it became increasingly clear that something down there was wrong. The main engines flickered a few times and then died, amid short bursts from the auxiliaries. Its drive toward the perimeter fighting faltered, its etheric control surfaces kicking in and then out again, striving to change course in random directions. The big ship floundered almost to a halt.

And suddenly, the side of the hull directly opposite the mole miner's position erupted in a brilliant burst of flame.

"It's cut all the way through!" Lando gasped, his tone not sure whether to be proud or dismayed by his handiwork. A TIE fighter, perhaps answering a distress call from the stormtroopers inside, swept directly into the stream of superheated plasma before it could maneuver away. It emerged from the other side, its solar panels blazing with fire, and exploded.

"It's working," Wedge called, sounding awed. "Look-it's working."

Han looked up from the Frigate. All around them-all throughout the orbit-dock area-ships that had been making for deep space were suddenly twisting around like metallic animals in the throes of death.

All of them with tongues of flame shooting from their sides.

For a long minute Thrawn sat in silence, staring down at his status boards, apparently oblivious to the battle still raging on all around them. Pellaeon held his breath, waiting for the inevitable explosion of injured pride at the unexpected reversal. Wondering what form that explosion would take.

Abruptly, the Grand Admiral raised his eyes to the viewport. "Have all the remaining Cloak Force TIE fighters returned to our ships, Captain?" he asked calmly.

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon told him, still waiting.

Thrawn nodded. "Then order the task force to begin its withdrawal."

"Ah . . . withdrawal?" Pellaeon asked cautiously. It was not exactly the order he'd been anticipating.

Thrawn looked at him, a faint smile on his face. "You were expecting, perhaps, that I'd order an all-out attack?" he asked. "That I would seek to cover our defeat in a frenzy of false and futile heroics?"

"Of course not," Pellaeon protested.

But he knew down deep that the other knew the truth. Thrawn's smile remained, but was suddenly cold. "We haven't been defeated, Captain," he said quietly. "Merely slowed down a bit. We have Wayland, and we have the treasures of the Emperor's storehouse. Sluis Van was to be merely a preliminary to the campaign, not the campaign itself. As long as we have Mount Tantiss, our ultimate victory is still assured."

He looked out the viewport, a thoughtful expression on his face. "We've lost this particular prize, Captain. But that's all we've lost. I will not waste ships and men trying to change that which cannot be changed. There will be many more opportunities to obtain the ships we need. Carry out your orders."

"Yes, Admiral," Pellaeon said, turning back to his status board, a surge of relief washing through him. So there would not be an explosion, after all . . . and with a twinge of guilt, he realized that he should have known better from the start. Thrawn was not merely a soldier, like so many others Pellaeon had served with. He was, instead, a true warrior, with his eye set on the final goal and not on his own personal glory.

Taking one last look out the viewport, Pellaeon issued the order to retreat. And wondered, once again, what the Battle of Endor would have been like if Thrawn had been in command.

Chapter 32

It took a while longer after the Imperial fleet pulled out for the battle to be officially over. But with the Star Destroyers gone, the outcome was never in doubt.

The regular stormtroopers were the easiest. Most of them were dead already, killed when Lando's activation of the mole miners had ruptured the airseals of their stolen ships and left them open to vacuum, and the rest were taken without much trouble. The eight remaining spacetroopers, whose zero-gee suits had allowed them to keep fighting after their ships were disabled, were another story entirely. Ignoring all calls to surrender, they fanned out through the shipyards, clearly intent on causing as much damage as they could before the inevitable. Six were hunted down and destroyed; the other two eventually self-destructed, one managing to cripple a Corvette in the process.

He left behind him a shipyard and orbit-dock facility in an uproar . . . and a great number of severely damaged major ships.

"Not exactly what you'd call a resounding victory," Captain Afyon grunted, surveying what was left of the Larkhess's bridge through a pressure bulkhead viewport as he gingerly adjusted a battle dressing that had been applied to his forehead. "Going to take a couple months' work just to rewire all the control circuits."

"Would you rather the Imperials have gotten it whole?" Han demanded from behind him, trying to ignore his own mixed feelings about this whole thing. Yes, it had worked . . . but at what cost?

"Not at all," Afyon replied calmly. "You did what you had to-and I'd say that even if my own neck hadn't been on the line. I'm just saying what others will say: that destroying all these ships in order to save them was not exactly the optimal solution."

Han threw a look at Luke. "You sound like Councilor Fey'lya," he accused Afyon.

The other nodded. "Exactly."

"Well, fortunately, Fey'lya's only one voice," Luke offered.

"Yeah, but it's a loud one," Han said sourly.

"And one that a lot of people are starting to listen to," Wedge added. "Including important military people."

"He'll find some way to parlay this incident into his own political gain," Afyon rumbled. "You just watch him."

Han's rejoinder was interrupted by a trilling from the wall intercom. Afyon stepped over and tapped the switch. "Afyon here," he said.

"Sluis Control communications," a voice replied. "We have an incoming call from Coruscant for Captain Solo. Is he with you?"

"Right here," Han called, stepping over to the speaker. "Go ahead."

There was a slight pause; and then a familiar and sorely missed voice came on. "Han? It's Leia."

"Leia!" Han said, feeling a delighted and probably slightly foolish-looking grin spread across his face. A second later, though- "Wait a minute. What are you doing back on Coruscant?"

"I think I've taken care of our other problem," she said. Her voice, he noticed for the first time, sounded tense and more than a little ragged. "At least for the moment."

Han threw a frown across the room at Luke. "You think?"

"Look, that's not important right now," she insisted. "What's important is that you get back here right away."

Something cold and hard settled into Han's stomach. For Leia to be this upset . . . "What's wrong?"

He heard her take a deep breath. "Admiral Ackbar has been arrested and removed from command. On charges of treason."

The room abruptly filled with a brittle silence. Han looked in turn at Luke, at Afyon, at Wedge. But there didn't seem to be anything to say. "I'll be there as soon as I can," he told Leia. "Luke's here, too-you want me to bring him?"

"Yes, if he can manage it," she said. "Ackbar's going to need all the friends he can get."

"Okay," Han said. "Call me in the Falcon if there's any more news. We're heading over there right now."

"I'll see you soon. I love you, Han."

"Me, too."

He broke the connection, turned back to the others. "Well," he said, to no one in particular. "There goes the hammer. You coming, Luke?"

Luke looked at Wedge. "Have your people had a chance to do anything with my X-wing yet?"

"Not yet," Wedge said, shaking his head. "But it's just been officially bumped to the top of the priority list. We'll have it ready to fly in two hours. Even if I have to take the motivators out of my own ship to do it."

Luke nodded and looked back at Han. "I'll fly into Coruscant on my own, then," he said. "Let me just come with you and get Artoo off the Falcon."

"Right. Come on."

"Good luck," Afyon called softly after them.

And yes, Han thought as they hurried down the corridor toward the hatchway where the Falcon was docked; the hammer was indeed coming down. If Fey'lya and his faction pushed too hard and too fast-and knowing Fey'lya, he would almost certainly push too hard and too fast-

"We could be on the edge of a civil war here," Luke murmured his thought back at him.

"Yeah, well, we're not going to let that happen," Han told him with confidence he didn't feel. "We haven't gone through a war and back just to watch some overambitious Bothan wreck it."

"How are we going to stop him?"

Han grimaced. "We'll think of something."

To be continued in ... Dark Force Rising