The Last Command pt2

Gillespee eyed him suspiciously. "Don't con me, Karrde. You don't have that land of money lying around."

"No. But the New Republic does. And under the current situation, I don't think they'd be averse to having a few more fighting ships on the payroll."

"Uh-uh," Gillespee shook his head firmly. "Sorry, but privateer is a little out of my line."

"Even if your duty consists entirely of collecting information?" Karrde asked. "I'm not talking about anything more than what you were just doing in Orus sector."

"Sounds like a dream assignment," Gillespee said sardonically. "Except for the tiny little problem of finding someone in the New Republic stupid enough to pay privateer rates for snoop duty."

Karrde smiled. "Actually, I wasn't planning to waste their valuable time telling them about it. Have you ever met my associate Ghent?"

For a moment Gillespee just stared at him, looking puzzled. Then, abruptly, he got it. "You wouldn't."

"Why not?" Karrde countered. "On the contrary, we'd be doing them a service. Why clutter their lives with these troublesome accounting details while they're trying to survive a war?"

"And since they'd have to pay anyway once we found the clone center for them . . ."

"Exactly," Karrde nodded. "We can consider this merely a prepayment for work about to be rendered."

"Just as well they won't know about it until it's over," Gillespee said dryly. "Question is, can Ghent pull it off?"

"Easily," Karrde assured him. "Particularly since he's inside the Imperial Palace on Coruscant at the moment. I was planning to head that way soon to pick up Mara anyway; I'll simply have him slice into some sector fleet's records and write us in."

Gillespee exhaled noisily. "It's got possibilities—I'll give it that much. Don't know if it'll be enough to get the others back on board, though."

"Then we'll just have to ask them," Karrde said, stepping back to his desk. "Invitations for, say, four days from now?"

Gillespee shrugged. "Give it a try. What have you got to lose?"

Karrde sobered. "With Grand Admiral Thrawn," he reminded the other, "that's not a question to ever ask lightly."

The evening breezes moved through the crumbling walls and stone columns of the ruined fortress, occasionally whistling softly as it found its way through a small hole or crevice. Sitting with his back to one of the pillars, Karrde sipped at his cup and watched the last sliver of the sun disappear below the horizon. On the plain below, the long shadows stretching across the scarred ground were beginning to fade as the coming darkness of night began its inexorable move across the landscape.

All in all, rather symbolic of the way this galactic war had finally caught up with Karrde himself.

He took another sip from his cup, marveling once again at this whole absurd situation. Here he was: an intelligent, calculating, appropriately selfish smuggler who'd made a successful career out of keeping his distance from galactic politics. A smuggler, moreover, who'd sworn explicitly to keep his people out of this particular war. And yet, somehow, here he was, squarely in the middle of it.

And not only in the middle of it, but trying his best to drag other smugglers in after him.

He shook his head in vague annoyance. This exact same thing, he knew, had happened to Han Solo sometime around the big Yavin battle. He could remember being highly amused by Solo's gradual entanglement in the Rebel Alliance's nets of duty and responsibility. Looking at it from the inside of the net, the whole thing wasn't nearly so entertaining.

From across the battered courtyard came the faint sound of crunching gravel. Karrde turned to look at the line of stone pillars in that direction, his hand dropping to his blaster. No one else was supposed to be here at the moment. "Sturm?" he called softly. "Drang?"

The familiar cackling/purr came in response, and Karrde let out a quiet sigh of relief. "Over here," he called to the animal. "Come on—over here."

The order was unnecessary. The vornskr was already loping around the pillars toward him, its muzzle low to the ground, the stub of its truncated whip tail wagging madly behind him. Probably Drang, Karrde decided: he was the more sociable of the two, and Sturm had a tendency to dawdle over his meals.

The vornskr skidded to a halt beside him, giving another of his strange cackle/purrs—a rather mournful one this time—as he pressed his muzzle up into Karrde's outstretched palm. It was Drang, all right. "Yes, it's very quiet," Karrde told him, running his hand back up across the animal's face and around to scratch at the sensitive skin behind his ears. "But the others will be back soon. They've just gone out to check on the other ships."

Drang gave another mournful cackle/purr and dropped into a half-crouch beside Karrde's chair, staring alertly out over the empty plain below. But whatever he was looking for, he didn't find it, and after a moment he growled deep in his throat and lowered his muzzle to rest on the stone. His ears twitched once, as if straining to hear a sound that wasn't there, and then they, too, folded back down.

"It's quiet down there, too," Karrde agreed soberly, stroking the vornskr's fur. "What do you suppose happened here?"

Drang didn't answer. Karrde gazed down at the vornskr's lean, muscled back, wondering yet again about these strange predators he'd so casually—perhaps even arrogantly—decided to make pets of. Wondering if he'd have thought twice about doing so if he'd realized that he was dealing with possibly the only animals in the galaxy who hunted via the Force.

It was a preposterous conclusion, on the face of it. Force sensitivity itself wasn't unheard of, certainly—the Gotal had a fairly useless form of it, and there were persistent rumors about the Duinuogwuin as well, to name just two. But all those who had such sensitivity were sentient creatures, with the high levels of intelligence and self-awareness that that implied. For nonsentient animals to use the Force this way was something new.

But it was a conclusion that the events of the past few months had forced him to. There had been his pets' unexpected reaction to Luke Skywalker at Karrde's Myrkr base. There'd been the similar and, again, previously unseen reaction to Mara aboard the Wild Karrde, just before the hunch she'd had that had saved them from that Imperial Interdictor Cruiser. There'd been the far more vicious reaction of the wild vornskrs toward both Mara and Skywalker during their three-day trek through the Myrkr forests.

Skywalker was a Jedi. Mara had shown some decidedly Jedi-like talents. And perhaps even more telling, the existence of the bizarre Force-empty bubbles created by Myrkr's ysalamiri could finally be explained if they were simply a form of defense or camouflage against predators.

Abruptly Drang's head snapped up, his ears stiffening as he twisted halfway around. Karrde strained his ears . . . and a few seconds later he heard the faint sounds of the returning shuttle. "It's all right," he assured the vornskr. "It's just Chin and the others, back from the ship."

Drang held the pose a moment longer. Then, as if deciding to take Karrde's word for it, he turned and laid his head back down again. Looking out over a plain that, if Karrde's suspicion was right, was more silent even for him than it was for Karrde. "Don't worry," he soothed the animal, scratching again behind his ears. "We'll be out of here soon. And I promise that the next place we go will have plenty of other life around for you to listen to."

The vornskr's ears twitched, but that might have been just the scratching. Taking one last look at the fading colors of sunset, Karrde stood up, resettling his gun belt across his hips. There was no particular reason to go in yet, of course. The invitations had been written, encrypted, and transmitted, and for now there was nothing to do except wait for the replies. But suddenly it felt lonely out here. Much lonelier that it had a few minutes ago. "Come on, Drang," he said, reaching down for one last pat. "Time to go in."

The shuttle settled to the floor of the Chimaera's hangar bay, release valves hissing over the heads of the stormtroopers moving purposefully into escort position around the lowering ramp. Pellaeon stayed where he was beside Thrawn, grimacing at the smell of the skid gases and wishing he knew what in the Empire the Grand Admiral was up to this time.

Whatever it was, he had a bad feeling that he wasn't going to like it. Thrawn could talk all he liked about how predictable these smugglers were; and maybe to him they were. But Pellaeon had had his own share of dealings with this sort of fringe scum, and he'd never yet seen a deal that hadn't gone sour one way or the other.

And none of those deals had started from the sheer audacity of an attack on an Imperial shipyard.

The ramp finished its descent and locked in place. The stormtrooper commander peered up into the shuttle and nodded . . . and, flanked by two black-clad fleet troopers, the prisoner descended to the deck.

"Ah—Captain Mazzic," Thrawn said smoothly as the stormtroopers fell into escort positions around him. "Welcome to the Chimaera. I apologize for this rather theatrical summons and any problems it may have created in your business scheduling. But there are certain matters that cannot be discussed other than face-to-face."

"You're very funny," Mazzic snarled. A marked contrast, Pellaeon thought, to the suave, sophisticated ladies' man that had been profiled in Intelligence's files. But then, the knowledge that one was facing an Imperial interrogation was enough to strip the civilized polish from any man. "How did you find me?"

"Come now, Captain," Thrawn admonished him calmly. "Did you seriously think you could hide from me if I wanted you found?"

"Karrde managed it," Mazzic shot back. Trying hard to put up a good front; but the manacled hands were working nervously at each other. "You still haven't got him, have you?"

"Karrde's time will come," Thrawn told him, his voice still calm but noticeably cooler. "But we're not talking about Karrde. We're talking about you."

"Yes, and I'm sure you're looking forward to it," Mazzic growled, waving his manacled hands. "Let's get it over with."

Thrawn's eyebrows lifted slightly. "You misunderstand, Captain. You're not here for punishment. You're here because I wanted to clear the air between us."

Mazzic paused in midbluster. "What are you talking about?" he asked suspiciously.

"I'm talking about the recent incident at the Bilbringi shipyards," Thrawn said. "No, don't deny it—I know it was you and Ellor who destroyed that unfinished Star Destroyer. And normally the Empire would exact an extremely high price for such an act. However, under these particular circumstances, I'm prepared to let it go."

Mazzic stared at him. "I don't understand."

"It's very simple, Captain." Thrawn gestured, and one of Mazzic's escort began removing his restraints. "Your attack on Bilbringi was in revenge for a similar attack against a smugglers' meeting you attended on Trogan. All well and good; except that neither I nor any senior Imperial officer authorized that attack. In fact, the garrison commander had explicit orders to leave your meeting alone."

Mazzic snorted. "You expect me to believe that?"

Thrawn's eyes glittered. "Would you rather believe I was so incompetent that I allowed an inadequate field force to be sent on a mission?" he bit out.

Mazzic eyed him, still hostile but starting to look a little thoughtful, as well. "I always thought we got away too easily," he muttered.

"Then we understand each other," Thrawn said, his voice calm again. "And the matter is settled. The shuttle has orders to take you back to your base." He smiled faintly. "Or, rather, to the backup base your ship and crew will have fled to by now on Lelmra. Again, my apologies for the inconvenience."

Mazzic's eyes darted around the hangar bay, his expression halfway between suspicion that this was a trick and an almost painfully eager hope that it wasn't. "And I'm just supposed to believe you?" he demanded.

"You're welcome to believe anything you wish," Thrawn said. "But remember that I had you in my hand . . . and that I let you go. Good day, Captain."

He started to turn away. "So who were they?" Mazzic called after him. "If they weren't Imperial troops, I mean?"

Thrawn turned back to face him. "They were indeed Imperial troops," he said. "Our inquiries are still incomplete, but at the moment it appears that Lieutenant Kosk and his men were attempting to make a little extra money on the side."

Mazzic stared. "Someone hired them to hit us? Imperial troops?"

"Even Imperial troops are not always immune to the lure of bribery," Thrawn said, his voice dark with an excellent imitation of bitter contempt. "In this case, they paid for their treason with their lives. Be assured that the person or persons responsible will pay a similar price."

"You know who it was?" Mazzic demanded.

"I believe I know," Thrawn said. "As yet, I have no proof."

"Give me a hint."

Thrawn smiled sardonically. "Form your own hints, Captain. Good day."

He turned and strode back toward the archway leading to the service and prep areas. Pellaeon waited long enough to watch Mazzic and his escort turn and start back up into the shuttle, then hurried to join him. "Do you think you gave him enough, Admiral?" he asked quietly.

"It won't matter, Captain," Thrawn assured him. "We've given him all that's necessary; and if Mazzic himself isn't clever enough to finger Karrde, one of the other smuggler chiefs will be. In any case, it's always better to offer too little rather than too much. Some people automatically distrust free information."

Behind them, the shuttle lifted from the deck and swung back around into space . . . and from the archway ahead a grinning figure emerged. "Nicely done, Admiral," Niles Ferrier said, shifting his cigarra to the other side of his mouth. "You got him all squirmy and then tossed him back. He'll be thinking about that for a long time."

"Thank you, Ferrier," Thrawn said dryly. "Your approval means so very much to me."

For a second the ship thief's grin seemed to slip. Then, apparently, he decided to take the comment at face value. "Okay," he said. "So what's our next move?"

Thrawn's eyes flashed at the our, but he let it go. "Karrde sent out a series of transmissions last night, one of which we intercepted," he said. "We're still decrypting it, but it can only be a call for another meeting. Once we have the location and time, they'll be provided to you."

"And I'll go and help Mazzic finger Karrde," Ferrier nodded.

"You'll do nothing of the sort," Thrawn said sharply. "You will sit in a corner and keep your mouth shut."

Ferrier seemed to shrink back. "Okay. Sure."

Thrawn held his gaze another moment. "What you will do," he continued at last, "is to make certain that a certain data card is placed into Karrde's possession. Preferably in the office aboard his ship—that will be where Mazzic will probably look first."

He motioned, and an officer stepped forward and handed Ferrier a data card. "Ah," Ferrier said slyly as he took it. "Yeah, I get it. The record of Karrde's deal with this Lieutenant Kosk, huh?"

"Correct," Thrawn said. "That, plus the supporting evidence we've already inserted into Kosk's own personal records should leave no doubt that Karrde has been manipulating the other smugglers. I expect that to be more than adequate."

"Yeah, they're a pretty nasty bunch, all right." Ferrier turned the data card over in his hand, chewing on his cigarra. "Okay. So all I gotta do is get aboard the Wild Karrde—"

He broke off at the look on Thrawn's face. "No," the Grand Admiral said quietly. "On the contrary, you'll stay as far away from his ship and private ground facilities as possible. In fact, you will never allow yourself to be alone while you're at his base."

Ferrier blinked in surprise. "Yeah, but. . ." Helplessly, he held up the data card.

Beside him, Pellaeon felt Thrawn's sigh of strained patience. "Your Defel will be the one to plant the data card aboard the Wild Karrde."

Ferrier's face cleared. "Oh, yeah. Yeah. He can probably slip in and out without anyone even noticing."

"He had better," Thrawn warned; and suddenly his voice was icy cold. "Because I haven't forgotten your role in the deaths of Lieutenant Kosk and his men. You owe the Empire, Ferrier. And that debt will be paid."

Behind his beard, Ferrier's face had gone a little pale. "I got it, Admiral."

"Good," Thrawn said. "You'll remain on your ship until Decrypt obtains the location of Karrde's meeting for you. After that, you'll be on your own."

"Sure," Ferrier said, stuffing the data card into his tunic. "So. After they take care of Karrde, what do I do?"

"You'll be free to go about your business," Thrawn said. "When I want you again, I'll let you know."

Ferrier's lip twitched. "Sure," he repeated.

And on his face, Pellaeon saw that he was slowly starting to realize just how deep his debt to the Empire really was.

Chapter 16

The planet was green and blue and mottled white, pretty much like all the other planets Han had dropped in on over the years. With the minor exception that this one didn't have a name.

Or spaceports. Or orbit facilities. Or cities, power plants, or other ships. Or much of anything else.

"That's it, huh?" he asked Mara.

She didn't answer. Han looked over and found her staring at the planet hanging out there in front of them. "Well, is it or isn't it?" he prompted.

"It is," she said, her voice strangely hollow. "We're here."

"Good," Han said, still frowning at her. "Great. You going to tell us where this mountain is? Or are we just going to fly around and see where we draw fire from?"

Mara seemed to shake herself. "It's about halfway between the equator and the north pole," she said. "Near the eastern edge of the main continent. A single mountain, rising out of forest and grassland."

"Okay," Han said, feeding in the information and hoping the sensors wouldn't loop out and fail on him. Mara had made enough snide comments about the Falcon as it was.

Behind him, the cockpit door slid open, and Lando and Chewbacca came in. "How about it?" Lando asked. "We there?"

"We're there," Mara said before Han could answer.

Chewbacca rumbled a question. "No, seems to be a real low-tech place," Han shook his head. "No power sources or transmissions anywhere."

"Military bases?" Lando asked.

"If they're there, I can't find 'em," Han said.

"Interesting," Lando murmured, peering over Mara's shoulder. "I wouldn't have pegged the Grand Admiral as being the trusting sort."

"The place was designed to be a private storehouse," Mara reminded him tartly. "Not a display ad for Imperial hardware. There weren't any garrisons or command centers scattered around for Thrawn to have moved into."

"So whatever he's got will be stashed inside the mountain?" Han asked.

"Plus probably a few ground patrols just outside," Mara said. "But they won't have any fighter squadrons or heavy weaponry to throw at us."

"That'll be a nice change," Lando said wryly.

"Unless Thrawn decided to put up a couple of garrisons on his own," Han pointed out. "You and Chewie'd better charge up the quads, just in case."

"Right."

The two of them left. Han shifted into a general approach vector, then keyed for a sensor search. "Trouble?" Mara asked.

"Probably not," Han assured her, watching the displays. But there was nothing showing anywhere around them. "A couple of times on the way in I thought I spotted something hanging around back there."

"Calrissian thought he saw something when we changed course at Obroa-skai, too," Mara said, peering down at the display. "Could be something with a really good sensor stealth mode."

"Or just a glitch," Han said. "The Fabritech's been giving us trouble lately."

Mara craned her neck to look out to starboard. "Could someone have followed us here from Coruscant?"

"Who knew we were coming?" Han countered. No, there was nothing there. Must have been his imagination. "How much of this private storehouse did you see?"

Slowly, Mara turned back to face forward, not looking all that convinced. "Not much more than the route between the entrance and the throne room at the top," she said. "But I know where the Spaarti cylinder chamber is."

"How about the power generators?"

"I never actually saw them," she said. "But I remember hearing that the cooling system pulls in water from a river flowing down the northeastern slope of the mountain. They're probably somewhere on that side."

Han chewed at his lip. "And the main entrance is on the southwest side."

"The only entrance," she corrected. "There's just the one way in or out."

"I've heard that before."

"This time it's true," she retorted.

Han shrugged. "Okay," he said. There was no point in arguing about it. Not until they'd looked the place over, anyway.

The cockpit door slid open, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Luke come in. "We're here, kid," he said.

"I know," Luke said, moving forward to stand behind Mara. "Mara told me."

Han threw a look at Mara. Near as he could tell, she'd spent the whole trip avoiding Luke, which wasn't all that easy on a ship the size of the Falcon. Luke had returned the favor by staying out of her way, which wasn't much easier. "She did, huh?"

"It's all right," Luke assured him, gazing out at the planet ahead. "So that's Wayland."

"That's Wayland," Mara said shortly, unstrapping and brushing past Luke. "I'll be in back," she said over her shoulder, and left.

"You two work so well together," Han commented as the cockpit door slid shut behind her.

"Actually, we do," Luke said, sliding into the copilot's seat Mara had just vacated. "You should have seen us aboard the Chimaera when we went in to rescue Karrde. She's a good person to have at your side."

Han threw him a sideways look. "Except when she wants to slide a knife in it."

"I'm willing to take my chances." Luke smiled. "Must be one of those crazy Jedi things."

"This isn't funny, Luke," Han growled. "She hasn't given up on killing you, you know. She told Leia that back on Coruscant."

"Which tells me that she really doesn't want to do it," Luke countered. "People don't usually go around announcing murder plans in advance. Especially not to the victim's family."

"You willing to bet your life on that?"

Luke shrugged fractionally. "I already have."

The Falcon was skimming along the outer atmosphere now, and the computer had finally identified a probable location for Mount Tantiss. "Well, if you ask me, this isn't a good time to be running short odds," he told Luke, giving the sensor map a quick study. A straight-in southern approach, he decided—that would give them forest cover for both the landing and the overland trip.

"You have any suggestions?" Luke asked.

"Yeah, I've got one," Han said, changing course toward the distant mountain. "We leave her with the Falcon at the landing site."

"Alive?"

At other times in his life, Han reflected, it wouldn't necessarily have been a ridiculous question. "Of course alive," he said stiffly. "There are a lot of ways to keep her from getting into trouble."

"You really think she'd agree to stay behind?"

"No one said we had to ask her."

Luke shook his head. "We can't do that, Han. She needs to see this through."

"Which part of it?" Han growled. "Hitting the clone factory, or trying to kill you?"

"I don't know," Luke said quietly. "Maybe both."

Han had never liked forests very much before joining the Rebel Alliance. Which wasn't to say he'd disliked them, either. Forests were simply not something the average smuggler thought about very much. Most of the time you picked up and delivered in grimy little spaceports like Mos Eisley or Abregado-rae; and on the rare occasion where you met in a forest, you let the customer watch the forest while you watched the customer. As a result, Han had wound up with a vague sort of assumption that one forest was pretty much like another.

His stint with the Alliance had changed all that. What with Endor, Corstris, Fedje, and a dozen more, he'd learned the hard way that each forest was different, with its own array of plants, animal life, and general all-around headaches for the casual visitor. Just one of many subjects the Alliance had taught him more about than he'd really wanted to know.

Wayland's forest fit the pattern perfectly; and the first headache proved to be how to get the Falcon down through the dense upper leaf canopy without leaving a hole any wandering Imperial TIE pilot would have to be asleep to miss. They'd first had to find a gap—in this case made by a fallen tree—and then he'd had to basically run the ship in on its side, a lot trickier maneuver in a planetary gravity well than it was out in an asteroid field. The secondary canopy, which he didn't find out about until he was most of the way through the first, was the second headache, and he tore the tops off a line of those shorter trees before he got the Falcon stabilized and down, crunching a lot of underbrush in the process.

"Nice landing," Lando commented dryly, rubbing his shoulder beneath the restraint strap as Han shut down the repulsorlifts.

"At least the sensor dish is still there," Han said pointedly.

Lando winced. "You're never going to let that go, are you?"

Han shrugged, keying in the life-form algorithms. Time to find out what was out there. "You said you wouldn't get a scratch on her," he reminded the other.

"Fine," Lando grumped. "Next time, I'll destroy the energy field generator and you can fly her down the Death Star's throat."

Which wasn't all that funny. If the Empire got enough of its old resources back again, Thrawn just might try to build another of the blasted things.

"We're ready back here," Luke said, poking his head into the cockpit. "How's it look?"

"Not too bad," Han said, reading off the display. "Got a bunch of animals out there, but they're keeping their distance."

"How big are these animals?" Lando asked, leaning over Han's shoulder to have a look at the display.

"And how many to a bunch?" Luke added.

"About fifteen," Han told him. "Nothing we cant handle if we need to. Let's go take a look."

Mara and Chewbacca were waiting at the hatchway with Artoo and Threepio, the latter keeping his mouth shut for a change. "Chewie and me'll go first," Han told them, drawing his blaster. "The rest of you stay sharp up here."

He punched the controls, and the hatchway slid open as the entry ramp lowered, settling into the dead leaves with a muffled crunch. Trying to watch all directions at once, Han started down.

He spotted the first of the animals before he'd reached the bottom of the ramp: gray, with a freckling of white across its back, maybe two meters from nose to tail tuft. It was crouched at the base of a tree limb, its beady little eyes following him as he walked. And if its teeth and claws were anything to go by, it was definitely a predator.

Beside him, Chewbacca rumbled softly. "Yeah, I see it," Han muttered back. "There are another fourteen out there somewhere, too."

The Wookiee growled again, gesturing. "You're right," Han agreed slowly, eyeing the predator. "It does kind of look familiar. Like those panthac things from Mantessa, maybe?"

Chewbacca considered, then growled a negative. "Well, we'll figure it out later," Han decided. "Luke?"

"Right here," Luke's voice came down from the hatchway.

"You and Mara start bringing the equipment down," Han ordered, watching the predator closely. The sound of conversation didn't seem to be bothering it any. "Start with the speeder bikes. Lando, you're high cover. Stay sharp."

"Right," Lando said.

From above came a handful of pops and clicks as the transport restraints around the first two speeder bikes were knocked off, then the faint hum as the repulsorlifts were activated.

And with a sudden violent crackling of leaves and branches, the predator leaped.

"Chewie!" was all Han had time to shout before the animal was on top of him. He fired, the blaster bolt catching it square in the torso, and managed to duck as the carcass shot past his head. Chewbacca was roaring Wookiee battle cries, swinging his bowcaster around and firing again and again as more of the predators charged at them from out of the trees. From the hatchway someone shouted something and another shot flashed out.

And out of the corner of his eye, moving much too fast to avoid, Han saw a set of claws coming his direction.

He threw up his forearm across his face, ducking his head back as far out of the way as he could. An instant later he was knocked back off his feet as the predator slammed full-tilt into him. A moment of pressure and lancing pain as the claws dug through his camouflage jacket—

And then, suddenly, the weight was gone. He lowered his arm, just in time to see the predator bound onto the ramp and prepare for a spring into the Falcon. He twisted around and fired, just as a shot from inside the ship also caught it.

Chewbacca snarled a warning. Still on his back, Han swung around, to see three more of the animals bounding across the ground toward him. He dropped one with a pair of quick shots, and was trying to swing his blaster around to target the second when a pair of black-booted feet hit the ground just in front of him. The animals leaped upward into a blurred line of brilliant green and crashed to the ground.

Rolling over, Han scrambled back to his feet and looked around. Luke was standing in a half-crouch in front of him, lightsaber humming in ready position. On the other side of the ramp, Chewbacca was still on his feet with three of the speckled animals lying dead around him.

Han looked down at the dead predator beside him. Now that he had a good, close look at the thing . . .

"Watch out—there are three more over there," Luke warned.

Han looked. Two of the animals were visible, crouched low down in the trees. "They won't bother us. Any of them get into the ship?"

"Not very far into it," Luke told him. "What did you do that set them off?"

"We didn't do anything," Han said, holstering his blaster. "It was you and Mara turning on the speeder bikes."

Chewbacca rumbled with sudden recognition. "You got it, pal," Han nodded. "That's where we tangled with them, all right."

"What are they?" Luke asked.

"They're called garrals," Mara said from the ramp. Crouching down, her own blaster still drawn, she was peering at the carcasses scattered around Chewbacca. "The Empire used to use them as watchdogs, usually near heavily wooded frontier garrisons where probe droid pickets weren't practical. There's something in the ultrasonic signature of a repulsorlift that's supposed to sound like one of their prey animals. Draws them like a magnet."

"So that's why they were sitting here waiting for us," Luke said, closing down his lightsaber but keeping it handy.

"They can hear a ship-sized repulsorlift coming in from kilometers away," Mara said. Jumping down off the side of the ramp, she dropped to one knee beside one of the dead garrals and dug her free hand into the fur at its neck. "Which means that if they've been radiotagged, the controllers in Mount Tantiss know we're here."

"Great," Han muttered, crouching down beside the dead garral at his feet. "What do we look for, a collar?"

"Probably," Mara said. "Check around the legs, too."

It took a few anxious minutes, but in the end they confirmed that none of the dead predators had been tagged.

"Must be descendants of the group they brought in to protect the mountain," Lando said.

"Or else this is where they came from originally," Mara said. "I never saw their home planet listed."

"It's trouble either way," Han said, shoving the last carcass off the Falcon's ramp to crunch into the leaf cover below. "If we can't use the speeder bikes, it means we're walking."

From up above came a low electronic whistle. "Pardon me, sir," Threepio asked. "Does that also apply to Artoo and me?"

"Unless you've learned how to fly," Han said.

"Well—sir—it occurs to me that Artoo in particular isn't really equipped for this sort of forest travel," Threepio pointed out primly. "If the cargo plat can't be used, perhaps other arrangements can be made."

"The arrangement is that you walk like the rest of us," Han said shortly. Getting into a long discussion with Threepio wasn't how he'd been planning to spend his day. "You did it on Endor; you can do it here."

"We didn't have nearly as far to go on Endor," Luke reminded him quietly. "We must be about two weeks' walk from the mountain here."

"It's not that bad," Han said, doing a quick estimate. It wasn't that bad, but it was bad enough. "Eight or nine days, tops. Maybe a couple more if we run into trouble."

"Oh, we'll run into trouble, all right," Mara said sourly, sitting down on the ramp and dropping her blaster into her lap. "Trust me on that one."

"You don't expect the natives to be hospitable?" Lando asked.

"I expect them to welcome us with open crossbows," Mara retorted. "There are two different native species here, the Psadans and the Myneyrshi. Neither of them had any great love of humans even before the Empire moved in on Mount Tantiss."

"Well, at least they won't be on the Empire's side," Lando said.

"That's not likely to be a lot of comfort," Mara growled. "And whatever trouble they don't give us, the usual range of predators will. We'll be lucky to make it in twelve or thirteen days, not eight or nine."

Han looked out at the forest, and as he did, something caught his eye. Something more than a little disturbing . . . "So we'll figure on twelve," he said. Suddenly it was critical that they make tracks away from here. "Let's get to it. Lando, Mara, you get the equipment packs sorted out for carrying. Chewie, go pull all the ration boxes out of the survival packs—that ought to do us for extra food. Luke, you and the droids head that way"— he pointed —"and see what you can find in the way of a path. Maybe a dry creek bed—we ought to be close enough to the mountain to have some of those around."

"Certainly, sir," Threepio said brightly, starting down the ramp. "Come, Artoo."

There was a muttering of acknowledgment and the others headed into the ship. Han started toward the ramp; stopped as Luke put a hand on his arm. "What's wrong?" he asked quietly.

Han jerked his head back toward the forest. "Those garrals that were watching us? They're gone."

Luke looked back. "Did they all leave together?"

"I don't know. I didn't see them go."

Luke fingered his lightsaber. "You think it's an Imperial patrol?"

"Or else a flock of those prey animals Mara mentioned. You getting anything?"

Luke took a deep breath, held it a moment, then slowly let it out. "I don't sense anyone else nearby," he said. "But they could just be out of range. You think we should abort the mission?"

Han shook his head. "If we do, well lose our best shot at the place. Once they know we've found their clone factory, there won't be any point in pretending they're just some overlooked backwoods system anymore. By the time we got back with a strike force, they'd have a couple of Star Destroyer fleets waiting for us."

Luke grimaced. "I suppose so. And you're right—if they tracked the Falcon in, the sooner we get away from it the better. Are you going to send the coordinates back to Coruscant before we go?"

"I don't know." Han looked up at the Falcon looming above him, trying not to think about the Imperials getting their grubby little hands on it again. "If that's a patrol out there, we'll never get the transmitter tuned tight enough to slide a message past them. Not the way it's been acting up lately."

Luke glanced up, too. "Sounds risky," he said. "If we get into trouble, they won't have any idea where to send a follow-up strike force."

"Yeah, well, if we transmit through an Imperial patrol, I can guarantee that trouble," Han growled. "I'm open to suggestions."

"How about if I stay behind for a few hours?" Luke suggested. "If no patrols have shown up by then, it should be safe to transmit."

"Forget it," Han shook his head. "You'd have to travel alone, and there's a better-than-even chance you wouldn't even be able to find us."

"I'm willing to risk it."

"I'm not," Han said bluntly. "And besides, every time you go off alone you wind up getting me in trouble."

Luke smiled ruefully. "It does seem that way sometimes."

"Bet on it," Han told him. "Come on, we're wasting time. Get out there and find us a path."

"All right," Luke said with a sigh. But he didn't sound all that upset. Maybe he'd known all along that it wasn't a very smart idea. "Come on, Threepio, Artoo. Let's go."

The first hour was the hardest. The vague, pathlike trail Artoo had found dead-ended into a mass of thornbushes after less than a hundred meters, forcing them to push a path of their own through the dense undergrowth. In the process they disturbed more than plant life, and wound up spending several tense minutes shooting at a nest of six-legged, half-meter-long creatures that swarmed out biting and clawing at them. Fortunately, the claws and teeth were designed for much smaller game, and aside from a nicely matched set of tooth dents in Threepio's left leg, no one suffered any damage before they could be driven away. Threepio moaned more about that than either the incident or the damage really deserved, the noise possibly attracting the brown-scaled animal that attacked a few minutes later. Han's quick blaster shot failed to stop the animal, and Luke had to use his lightsaber to cut it off Threepio's arm. The droid was even more inclined to moan after that; and Han was threatening to shut him down and leave him for the scavengers when they unexpectedly hit one of the dry creek beds they'd been hoping to find. With the easier terrain, and with no further animal attacks to slow them down, they made much better speed, and by the time the leaf canopy overhead began to darken with nightfall they'd made nearly ten kilometers.

"Brings back such wonderful memories, doesn't it?" Mara commented sarcastically as she got out of her backpack and dropped it beside one of the small bushes lining the creek bed.

"Just like back on Myrkr," Luke agreed, using his lightsaber to cut away another of the thornbushes they'd become all too familiar with in the past few hours. "You know, I never did find out what happened after we left."

"About what you'd expect," Mara told him. "We cleared out about two steps ahead of Thrawn's AT-ATs. And then nearly got caught anyway when Karrde insisted on hanging around to watch."

"Is that why you're helping us?" he asked her. "Because Thrawn's put a death mark on Karrde?"

"Let's get one thing clear right now, Skywalker," she growled. "I work for Karrde, and Karrde has already said that we're staying neutral in this war of yours. The only reason I'm here is because I know a little about the Clone Wars era and don't want to see a bunch of cold-faced duplicates trying to overrun the galaxy again. The only reason you're here is that I can't shut the place down by myself."

"I understand," Luke said, cutting a second thornbush and closing down his lightsaber. Reaching out with the Force, he lifted the two bushes off the ground and lowered them into the creek bed. "Well, it won't stop anything that's really determined to get at us," he decided, studying the makeshift barrier. "But it should at least slow them down."

"For whatever that's worth," Mara said, pulling out a ration bar and stripping off the wrapping. "Let's just hope this isn't one of those lucky places where all the really big predators come out at night."

"Hopefully, Artoo's sensors can spot them before they get too close," Luke told her. Igniting his lightsaber again, he cut two more thornbushes for good measure.

And he was preparing to shut it down when he caught the subtle change in Mara's sense. He turned, to find her staring at his lightsaber, ration bar forgotten in her hand, a strangely haunted expression on her face. "Mara?" he asked. "You all right?"

Her gaze shifted almost guiltily away from him. "Sure," she muttered. "I'm fine." Throwing him a quick glare, she bit viciously into her ration bar.

"Okay." Closing down the lightsaber, Luke used the Force to move the newly cut thornbushes into place on top of the others. Still not much of a barrier, he decided. Maybe if he stretched a few of those vines between the trees . . .

"Skywalker."

He turned. "Yes?"

Mara was looking up at him. "I have to ask," she said quietly. "You're the only one who knows. How did the Emperor die?"

For a moment Luke studied her face. Even in the fading light he could see the ache in her eyes; the bitter memories of the luxuriant life and glittering future that had been snatched away from her at Endor. But alongside the ache was an equally strong determination. However badly this might hurt, she truly did want to hear it. "The Emperor was trying to turn me to the dark side," he told her, longburied memories of his own surging painfully back again. It had nearly been him, not the Emperor, who'd died that day. "He almost succeeded. I'd taken one swing at him, and wound up fighting with Vader instead. I guess he thought that if I killed Vader in anger, I'd be opened to him through the dark side."

"And so instead you ganged up on him," she accused, her eyes flashing with sudden anger. "You turned on him—both of you—"

"Wait a minute," Luke protested. "I didn't attack him. Not after that first swing."

"What are you talking about?" she demanded. "I saw you do it. Both of you moved in against him with your lightsabers. I saw you do it."

Luke stared at her . . . and suddenly he understood. Mara Jade, the Emperor's Hand, who could hear his voice from anywhere in the galaxy. She'd been in contact with her master at the moment of his death, and had seen it all.

Except that, somehow, she'd gotten it wrong.

"I didn't move against him, Mara," he told her. "He was about to kill me when Vader picked him up and threw him down an open shaft. I couldn't have done anything even if I'd wanted to—I was still half paralyzed from the lightning bolts he'd hit me with."

"What do you mean, if you'd wanted to?" Mara said scornfully. "That was the whole reason you went aboard the Death Star in the first place, wasn't it?"

Luke shook his head. "No. I went there to try and turn Vader away from the dark side."

Mara turned away, and Luke could sense the turmoil within her. "Why should I believe you?" she demanded at last.

"Why should I lie?" he countered. "It doesn't change the fact that if I hadn't been there Vader wouldn't have turned on him. In that sense, I'm probably still responsible for his death."

"That's right, you are," Mara agreed harshly. But there was a moment of hesitation before she said it. "And I won't forget it."

Luke nodded silently, and waited for her to say more. But she didn't, and after a minute he turned back to the thornbushes. "I'd go easy on those things if I were you," Mara said from behind him, her voice cool and under control again. "You don't want to trap us in an area this size if something big comes over the bushes."

"Good point," Luke said, understanding both the words and the meaning beneath them. There was a job to do, and until that job was finished, she still needed Luke alive.

At which point, she would have to face the destiny that had been prepared for her. Or would have to choose a new one.

Closing down his lightsaber, he stepped past Mara to where the others were busy setting up camp. Time to check on the droids.

Chapter 17

The door to the Assemblage chamber slid open and a small flood of beings and droids began pouring out into the Grand Corridor, chattering among themselves in the usual spectrum of different languages. Glancing at Winter as the two of them walked toward the crowd, Leia nodded.

It was show time.

"Anything else come in that I should know about?" she asked as they passed along the edge of the flow.

"There was an unusual follow-up to the Pantolomin report," Winter said, her eyes flicking casually around the crowd. "A bounty hunter there claims to have penetrated the Imperial shipyards at Ord Trasi and is offering to sell us information about their new building program."

"I've dealt with my share of bounty hunters," Leia said, trying not to look around the crowd as they passed through it. Winter was watching, and with her perfect memory she would remember everyone who was close enough to overhear their conversation. "What makes Colonel Derlin think we can trust him?"

"He's not sure we can," Winter said. "The smuggler offered what he said was a free sample: the information that there are three Imperial Star Destroyers within a month of completion out there. Colonel Derlin said Wing Commander Harleys is drawing up a plan to confirm that."

They were out of the Grand Corridor now, following along with the handful of beings who hadn't yet split off toward offices or other conference rooms. "Sounds dangerous," Leia said, dutifully running their prepared script out to the end. "I hope he's not just going to do a fly-by."

"The report didn't give any details," Winter said. "But there was an addendum asking about the possibility of borrowing a freighter from someone who does business with the Empire."

The last of the officials turned off into a cross corridor, leaving them alone in the hallway with an assortment of techs, assistants, admin personnel, and other low-ranking members of the New Republic government. Leia threw a quick glance at each, decided there was no point in going through another script for their benefit. Looking at Winter, she nodded again, and together the two women headed toward the turbolifts.

They'd needed some place where Ghent could set up shop without word or even rumors of the project leaking out, and a search of the Palace's original blueprints had found them the ideal spot. It was an old backup power cell room, closed down and sealed years earlier, wedged in between the Sector Ordnance/Supply and Starfighter Command offices down on the command floor. Leia had cut a new entrance from a service corridor with her lightsaber; Bel Iblis had helped them run power cables and datalines; and Ghent had set up his decrypting program.

They had everything they needed. Except results.

Ghent was sitting in the room's single chair when they arrived, staring dreamily off into space with his feet propped up on the edge of his decrypter desk. They were both inside, and Winter had closed the door, before he even noticed their presence. "Oh—hi," he said, dropping his feet to the floor with a muffled thud.

"Not so loud, please," Leia reminded him, wincing. The officers working on the other sides of the thin walls would probably ascribe any stray noises to the adjacent offices. But then again, they might not. "Has General Bel Iblis brought the latest transmissions in yet?" she asked.

"Yeah—about an hour ago," Ghent nodded, whispering almost inaudibly now. "I just finished slicing 'em."

He tapped a key, and a series of decrypted messages came up on the display. Leia stepped up behind his chair, reading down them. Details of upcoming military deployments, what seemed to be verbatim transcriptions of high-level diplomatic conversations, tidbits of idle Palace gossip—as always, Delta Source had covered the whole range from the significant to the trivial.

"There's one of ours," Winter said, touching a spot on the display.

Leia read the item. An unconfirmed intelligence report from the Bpfassh system, suggesting that the Chimaera and its support ships had been spotted near Anchoron. That was one of theirs, all right. "How many heard that one?" she asked Winter.

"Only forty-seven," Winter told her, already busy with Ghent's data pad. "It was just before three yesterday afternoon—during the second Assemblage session—and the Grand Corridor was fairly empty."

Leia nodded and turned back to the display. By the time Winter had finished her list she'd identified two more of their decoy messages. By the time Winter had finished those, she'd found another five.

"Looks like that's it," she said as Winter handed Ghent her first three lists and got to work on the others. "Let's go ahead and run these through your sifter."

"Okay," Ghent said, throwing one last look of awe at Winter before turning back to his console. Three days into this scheme, he still hadn't gotten over the way she could remember every single detail of fifty separate one-minute conversations. "Okay, let's see. Correlations . . . okay. We're down to a hundred twenty-seven possibilities. Mostly techs and admin types, looks like. Some offworld diplomats, too."

Leia shook her head. "None of those are likely to have access to all of this information," she said, waving at the decrypt display. "It has to be someone considerably higher up the command structure—"

"Wait a minute," Ghent interrupted, raising a finger. "You want a big fish; you got one. Councilor Sian Tew of Sullust."

Leia frowned at the display. "That's impossible. He was one of the earliest leaders in the Rebel Alliance. In fact, I think he was the one who brought Nien Nunb and his private raiding squad over to us after the Empire forced them out of Sullust system."

Ghent shrugged. "I don't know anything about that. All I know is that he heard all fifteen of those little teasers that wound up on Delta Source's transmitter."

"It can't be Councilor Tew," Winter spoke up absently, still working at the data pad. "He wasn't present during any of these last six conversations."

"Maybe one of his aides heard it," Ghent offered. "He didn't have to be there personally."

Winter shook her head. "No. One of his aides was present, but only for one of these conversations. More importantly, Councilor Tew was present for two conversations the day before yesterday that Delta Source didn't transmit. Nine-fifteen in the morning and two-forty-eight in the afternoon."

Ghent keyed up the relevant lists. "You're right," he confirmed. "Didn't think about checking things that direction. Guess I'd better work up a better sifter program."

Behind Leia their makeshift door swung open, and she turned to see Bel Iblis come in. "Thought I'd find you here," he nodded to Leia. "We're about ready to give the Stardust plan its first try, if you want to come and watch."

The latest scheme to locate the swarm of cloaked asteroids Thrawn had left in orbit around Coruscant. "Yes, I do," Leia said. "Winter, I'll be in the war room when you're finished here."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Leia and Bel Iblis left the room and headed single-file down the service corridor. "Find anything yet?" the general asked over his shoulder.

"Winter's still running yesterday's list," Leia told him. "So far we've got around a hundred thirty possibilities."

Bel Iblis nodded. "Considering how many of us there are working in the Palace, I'd say that qualifies as progress."

"Maybe." She hesitated. "It's occurred to me that this scheme will only work if Delta Source is a single person. If it's a whole group, we may not be able to weed them out this way."

"Perhaps," Bel Iblis agreed. "But I have a hard time believing we could have that many traitors here. Matter of fact, I still have trouble believing we have even one. I've always thought that Delta Source might be some kind of exotic recording system. Something Security simply hasn't been able to locate yet."

"I've watched them do counterintelligence sweeps," Leia said. "I can't think how they could possibly have missed anything."

"Unfortunately, neither can I."

They arrived in the war room, to find General Rieekan and Admiral Drayson standing behind the main command console. "Princess," Rieekan greeted her gravely. "You're just in time."

Leia looked up at the master visual. An old transport had left the group of ships standing guard in far orbit and was making its careful way down toward the planet. "How far in is it going to come?" Leia asked.

"We're going to start just above the planetary shield, Councilor," Drayson told her. "The postbattle analysis indicates that most of the cloaked asteroids probably wound up in low orbit."

Leia nodded. And since those would be the ones most likely to sneak through if they opened the shield, it made all the more sense to start there.

Slowly, moving with the tentative awkwardness of a ship under remote control, the transport came closer in. "All right," Drayson said. "Transport One control, cut drive and prepare to dump on my command. Ready . . . dump."

For a moment nothing happened. Then, abruptly, a cloud of brilliant dust began to billow from the aft end of the transport, swirling around lazily in the ship's wake. "Keep it coming," Drayson said. "Harrier, stand by negative ion beams."

"All dust is clear of the transport, Admiral," one of the officers reported.

"Transport One control, pull her away," Drayson ordered.

"But slowly," Bel Iblis murmured. "We don't want to carve exhaust grooves through the dust."

Drayson threw an annoyed look back at him. "Take it nice and slow," he said grudgingly. "Do we have any readings yet?"

"Coming in very strong, sir," the officer at the sensor console reported. "Between point nine-three and nine-eight reflection on all bands."

"Good," Drayson nodded. "Keep a sharp eye on it. Harrier?"

"Harrier reports ready, sir," another officer confirmed.

"Fire negative ion beam," Drayson ordered. "Lowest intensity. Let's see how this works."

Leia peered up at the visual. The shimmering dust particles were beginning to clump together as ions from the departing transport's drive created random electrostatic charges throughout the cloud. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the hazy line of an ion beam appear on the master tactical display and sweep across the cloud. Charging all the dust particles with the same polarity so that they would repel each other . . . and suddenly the coalescing dust cloud was expanding again, spreading out across the visual display like the opening of some exotic flower.

"Cease fire," Drayson said. "Let's see if that does it."

For a long minute the flower continued to open, and Leia found herself staring intently at the hazy glitter. Unreasonably, of course. Given how much space there was out there, it was highly unlikely that this first dump would happen to be in the path of any of the orbiting asteroids. And even if it was, there still would be nothing for her to see on the visual. Except at the moment before its collapse, the cloaking shield seemed to twist light and sensor beams perfectly around itself, which meant there would be no dark spot cutting visibly through the dust.

"Cloud's starting to break up, Admiral," the sensor officer reported. "Dissipation ratio is up to twelve."

"Solar wind's catching it," Rieekan muttered.

"As expected," Drayson reminded him. "Transport Two control: go ahead and launch."

A second transport emerged from among the orbiting ships and headed down toward the surface. "This is definitely the slow way to do this," Bel Iblis commented quietly.

"Agreed," Rieekan said. "I wish they hadn't lost that CGT array of yours out at Svivren. We could sure have used it here."

Leia nodded. Crystal gravfield traps, originally designed to zoom in on the mass of sensor-stealthed ships from thousands of kilometers away, would be ideal for this job. "I thought Intelligence had a lead on another one."

"They've got leads on three," Rieekan said. "Problem is, they're all in Imperial space."

"I'm still not convinced a CGT would do us all that much good here," Bel Iblis said. "This close in, I suspect that Coruscant's gravity would swamp any readings we got from the asteroids."

"It would be tricky—no doubt about that," Rieekan agreed. "But I think it's our best chance."

They fell silent as, on the visual, the second transport reached its target zone and repeated the procedure of the first. Again, nothing.

"That solar wind is going to be a real nuisance," Bel Iblis commented as the third transport headed out. "We may want to consider going with larger dust particles on the next batch."

"Or shifting operations to the night side," Rieekan suggested. "That would at least cut back the effect—"

"Turbulence!" the sensor officer barked. "Vector one-one-seven—bearing four-nine-two."

There was a mad scramble for the sensor console. At the very edge of the still-expanding second dust cloud a hazy orange line had appeared, marking the turbulence created by the invisible asteroid's passage. "Get a track on it," Drayson ordered. "Harrier, fire at will."

On the visual, red lines lanced out as the Dreadnaught's turbolasers began to sweep across the projected path. Leia watched the visual, hands gripping the sensor officer's chair back . . . and suddenly, there it was: a misshapen lump of rock, drifting slowly across the stars.

"Cease fire," Drayson ordered. "Well done, gentlemen. All right, Allegiant, it's your turn. Get your tech crew out there—"

He broke off. On the visual, a mesh of thin lines had appeared crisscrossing the dark bulk of the asteroid. For a brief moment they flared brilliantly, then faded away.

"Belay that order, Allegiant," Drayson growled. "Looks like the Grand Admiral doesn't want anyone else getting a look at his little toys."

"At least we found one of them," Leia said. "That's something."

"Right," Rieekan said dryly. "Leaves just under three hundred to go,"

Leia nodded again and started to turn away. This was going to take a while, and she might as well get back to Winter and Ghent—

"Collision!" the sensor officer snapped.

She twisted back. On the visual the third transport was spinning wildly off course, its stern crushed and on fire, its cargo of dust spraying out in all directions.

"Can you get a track?" Drayson demanded.

The officer's hands were skating across his board. "Negative—insufficient data. All I can do is a probability cone."

"I'll take it," Drayson said. "All ships: open fire. Full-pattern bombardment; target cone as indicated."

The cone had appeared on the tactical, and from the distant fleet turbolaser fire began to appear. "Open the cone to fifty percent probability," Drayson ordered. "Battle stations, you take the outer cone. I want that target found."

The encouragement was unnecessary. The space above Coruscant had become a fire storm, with turbolaser blasts and proton torpedoes cutting through the marked probability cone. The target zone stretched and expanded as the computers calculated the invisible asteroid's possible paths, the ships and battle stations shifting aim in response.

But there was nothing there . . . and after a few minutes Drayson finally conceded defeat.

"All units, cease fire," he said, his voice tired. "There's no more point. We've lost it."

There didn't seem to be anything else to be said. In silence they stood and watched as the crippled transport, far out of range of the fleet's tractor beams, spun slowly toward the planetary shield and its impending death. Its crushed stern skimmed the shield, and the fire of burning drive gases was joined by the sharp blue-white edge of shattered atomic bonds. A muffled flash as the stern broke away—a brighter flash as the bow hit the shield—scatterings of dark debris against the flame as the hull began to break up—

And with a final spattering of diffuse fire it was gone.

Leia watched the last flickers fade away, running through her Jedi calming exercises and forcing the anger from her mind. Allowing herself the luxury of hating Thrawn for doing this to them would only fog her own intellect. Worse, such hatred would be a perilous step toward the dark side.

There was a breath of movement at her shoulder, and she turned to see Winter at her side. The other woman was gazing up at the visual, a look of ancient pain deep in her eyes. "It's all right," Leia assured her. "There wasn't anyone aboard."

"I know," Winter murmured. "I was thinking about another transport I saw go down like that over Xyquine. A passenger transport . . ."

She took a deep breath, and Leia could see the conscious effort as she put her always-vivid past away from her. "I'd like to speak with you, Your Highness, whenever you're finished here."

Leia reached out past Winter's carefully neutral expression and touched her sense. Whatever the news was, it wasn't good. "I'll come now," she said.

They left the war room and circled back past the turbolifts to the service corridor and their secret decrypt room. And the news was indeed not good.

"This can't be," Leia said, shaking her head as she reread Ghent's analysis. "We know there's a leak in the Palace."

"I've checked it backwards, forwards, and from the inside out," Ghent said. "It comes up the same every time. Feed in everyone who heard and didn't hear the stuff Delta Source sent out; feed in everyone who heard or didn't hear the stuff Delta Source didn't send out; and you come out with the same answer every time. A straight, flat zero."

Leia keyed the data pad for a replay and watched as the list of names dwindled with each sifting until it was gone. "Then Delta Source has to be more than one person," she said.

"I already ran that," Ghent said, waving his hands helplessly. "It doesn't work, either. You wind up having to have at least fifteen people. Your security here can't be that bad."

"Then he's picking and choosing what he transmits. Sending some of what he hears but not all of it."

Ghent scratched at his cheek. "I suppose that could be it," he said reluctantly. "I don't know, though. You look at some of the really stupid stuff he's sent—I mean, there was one in that last transmission that was nothing but a couple of Arcona talking about what one of them was going to name her hatchlings. Either this guy doesn't remember too good or else he's got a really weird priority list."

The door opened, and Leia turned as Bel Iblis stepped in. "I saw you leave," the general said. "Have you found something?"

Wordlessly, Leia handed him the data pad. Bel Iblis glanced over it, then read it through more carefully. "Interesting," he said at last. "Either the analysis is wrong, or Winter's memory is starting to fail her . . . or Delta Source is onto us."

"How do you figure that?" Leia asked.

"Because he's clearly no longer transmitting everything he hears," Bel Iblis said. "Something must have aroused his suspicions."

Leia thought back to all those staged conversations. "No," she said slowly. "I don't believe it. I never picked up even a hint of malice or suspicion."

Bel Iblis shrugged. "The alternative is to believe we have a whole spy nest here. Wait a minute, though—this isn't quite as bad as it sounds. If we assume he didn't catch on right away, we should still be able to use the data from the first two days to cut the suspect list down to a manageable number."

Leia felt her stomach tighten. "Garm, we're talking about over a hundred trusted members of the New Republic here. We can't go around accusing that many people of treason. Councilor Fey'lya's accusations against Admiral Ackbar were bad enough—this would be orders of magnitude worse."

"I know that, Leia," Bel Iblis said firmly. "But we can't let the Empire continue to listen in on our secrets. Offer me an alternative and I'll take it."

Leia bit at her lip, her mind racing. "What about that comment you made on the way to the war room?" she asked. "You said you thought Delta Source might be nothing but an exotic recording system."

"If it is, it's somewhere in the Grand Corridor," Winter said before Bel Iblis could answer. "That's where all the conversations that were transmitted took place."

"Are you sure?" Bel Iblis frowned.

"Absolutely," Winter said. "Every one."

"That's it, then," Leia said, feeling the first stirrings of excitement. "Somehow, someone's planted a recording system in the Grand Corridor."

"Don't get excited," Bel Iblis cautioned. "I know it sounds good, but it's not that easy. Microphone systems have certain well-defined characteristics, all of which are quite well known and can be readily picked up by a competent counterintelligence sweep."

"Unless it goes dormant when counterintelligence comes by," Ghent suggested. "I've seen systems that do that."

Bel Iblis shook his head. "But then you're talking something with at least minimal decision-making capabilities. Anything that close to droid-level intelligence would—"

"Hey!" Ghent interrupted excitedly. "That's it. Delta Source isn't a person—it's a droid."

Leia looked at Bel Iblis. "Is that possible?"

"I don't know," the general said slowly. "Implanting secondary espionage programming in a droid is certainly feasible. The problem is how to get that programming in past the Palace's usual security procedures, and then avoiding the counterintelligence sweeps."

"It would have to be a droid that has a good reason to hang around the Grand Corridor," Leia said, trying to think it through. "But who can also leave without attracting notice whenever a sweep gets under way."

"And given the sort of high-level traffic that passes through the Grand Corridor, those sweeps are pretty frequent," Bel Iblis agreed. "Ghent, can you get into Security's records and pull a list of sweep times over the past three or four days?"

"Sure," the kid shrugged. "Probably take me a couple of hours, though. Unless you don't care if they spot me."

Bel Iblis looked at Leia. "What do you think?"

"We certainly don't want him to get caught," Leia said. "On the other hand, we don't want to give Delta Source free rein of the Palace any longer than we have to."

"Your Highness?" Winter asked. "Pardon me, but it seems to me that if the sweeps are that frequent, all we need to do is watch the Grand Corridor until one gets under way and then see which droids leave."

"It's worth a try," Bel Iblis said. "Ghent, you get started on Security. Leia, Winter—let's go."

"They're coming," Winter's voice came softly from the comlink nestled in Leia's palm.

"You sure they're Palace Security?" Bel Iblis's voice said.

"Yes," Winter said. "I've seen Colonel Bremen giving them orders. And they have droids and equipment with them."

"Sounds like this is it," Leia murmured, surreptitiously raising her hand near her mouth and hoping the three Kubaz sitting across the lounge/conversation ring from her wouldn't notice the odd behavior. "Watch carefully."

There were acknowledging murmurs from both of them. Lowering her hand back to her lap, Leia looked around. This was it, all right: possibly the clearest shot at Delta Source they were likely to get. With an Assemblage meeting just letting out and a Council meeting about to start, the Grand Corridor was crowded with high-ranking officials. With officials, their aides and assistants, and their droids.

On one level, Leia had always known how common droids were in the Imperial Palace. On another level, as she was rapidly coming to realize, she'd had no idea how many of them there actually were. There were quite a few 3PO protocol droids visible from where she sat, most of them accompanying groups of offworld diplomats but some also in the entourages of various Palace officials. Hovering over the crowd on repulsorlifts, a set of insectoid SPD maintenance droids were systematically cleaning the carvings and cutglass windows that alternated along the walls. A line of MSE droids scuttled past along the far wall, delivering messages too complex for comm transmissions or too sensitive for direct data transfer and trying hard not to get stepped on. At the next of the greenish-purple ch'hala trees down the line, occasionally visible through the crowd, an MN-2E maintenance droid was carefully pruning away dead leaves.

Which one of them, she wondered, had the Empire turned into a spy?

"They're starting," Winter, reported quietly. "Lining up across the Corridor—"

There was a sudden rustle of sound from the comlink, as if Winter had put her hand across the microphone. Another series of muffled sounds; and Leia was wondering if she should go and investigate when a man's voice came on. "Councilor Organa Solo?"

"Yes," she said cautiously. "Who is this?"

"Lieutenant Machel Kendy, Councilor," he said. "Palace Security. Are you aware that a third person is tapping into your comlink signal?"

"It's not a tap, Lieutenant," Leia assured him. "We were holding a three-way discussion with General Bel Iblis."

"I see," Kendy said, sounding a little disappointed. Probably thought he'd stumbled onto Delta Source. "I'll have to ask you to suspend your conversation for a few minutes, Councilor. We're about to do a sweep of the Grand Corridor, and we can't have stray comlink transmissions in the area."

"I understand," Leia said. "We'll wait until you're finished."

She shut off the comlink and replaced it in her belt, her heart beginning to thud in her ears. Twisting casually around in her seat, she made sure she could see the entire end of the Grand Corridor. If there was an espionage droid present, he'd be shuffling this direction as soon as he noticed the sweep team coming from the other end.

Overhead, the hovering cleaning droids had been joined by a new set of SPDs, moving down the corridor as they methodically checked the upper walls and convoluted contours of the vaulted ceiling for any microphones or recording systems that might have somehow been planted there since the last sweep. Directly beneath them, Leia could see Lieutenant Kendy and his squad, walking through the milling diplomats in a militarily straight line stretched across the corridor and watching the displays of their shoulder-slung detectors. The line reached her lounge area, passed it, and continued without incident to the end of the corridor. There the squad waited, letting the SPD droids and a group of wall-hugging MSEs finish their part of the sweep and catch up. Re-formed again, the entire group disappeared down the hallway toward the Inner Council offices.

And that was that. The entire Grand Corridor had been swept, and had obviously come up negative . . . and not a single droid had scurried out ahead of the sweep.

Something off to the side caught her eye. But it was just the MN-2E maintenance droid she'd noticed earlier, rolling up to the ch'hala tree that sprouted out of the floor beside her conversation ring. Clucking softly to itself, the droid began poking delicate feelers through the branches, hunting for dead or dying leaves.

Dead or dying. Rather like their theory.

With a sigh, she pulled out her comlink. "Winter? Garm?"

"Here, Your Highness," Winter's voice came promptly.

"So am I," Bel Iblis added. "What happened?"

Leia shook her head. "Absolutely nothing," she told them. "As far as I could tell, none of the droids even twitched."

There was a short pause. "I see," Bel Iblis said at last. "Well . . . it may just be that our droid doesn't happen to be here today. What we need to do is send Winter back to Ghent and have her add droids into the list."

"What do you think, Winter?" Leia asked.

"I can try," the other woman said hesitantly. "The problem will be identifying specific droids. Externally, one 3PO protocol droid looks basically like any other."

"We'll take whatever you can get," Bel Iblis said. "It's here, though, somewhere close by. I can feel it."

Leia held her breath, stretching out with her Jedi senses. She didn't have Bel Iblis's fine-honed warrior's intuition, nor did she have Luke's far deeper Jedi skill. But she could sense it, too. Something about the Grand Corridor . . . "I think you're right," she told Bel Iblis. "Winter, you'd better head down and get busy on this."

"Certainly, Your Highness."

"I'll come with you, Winter," Bel Iblis volunteered. "I want to see what's happening with the Stardust plan."

Leia shut off the comlink and leaned back in her seat, fatigue and discouragement seeping into her mind despite her best efforts to hold it back. It had seemed like such a good idea, using Ghent's decrypt to try to identify Delta Source. But so far every lead had simply melted away from in front of them.

And time was running out. Even if they were able to keep Ghent's work a secret—which was by no means certain—each of these failed gambits simply brought them closer to the inevitable day when Delta Source would finally notice all the activity and shut down. And when that happened, their last chance to identify the Imperial spy in their midst would be gone.

And that would be a disaster. Not because of the leak itself—Imperial Intelligence had been stealing information since the Rebel Alliance was first formed, and they'd managed to live through it. What was infinitely more dangerous to the New Republic was the deepening aura of suspicion and distrust that Delta Source's mere existence had already spread through the Palace. Councilor Fey'lya's discredited accusations against Admiral Ackbar had already shown what such distrust could do to the delicate multispecies coalition that made up the New Republic. If that leadership was found to contain a genuine Imperial agent . . .

Across the conversation ring the three Kubaz got to their feet and headed away, circling around behind the ch'hala tree and the MN-2E droid working alongside it and disappearing into the traffic flow down the corridor. Leia found herself staring at the droid, watching as it eased a manipulator arm carefully through the branches toward a small cluster of dead leaves, clucking softly to itself all the while. She'd had a brief run-in with an Imperial espionage droid on the Noghri home planet of Honoghr, a run-in which could have spelled disaster for her and genocide for the remnants of the Noghri race. If Bel Iblis was right—if Delta Source was, in fact, merely a droid and not a traitor . . .

But it didn't really help. The Empire simply could not have infiltrated an espionage droid into the Palace without the collaboration of one or more of the beings here. Security invariably did a complete screening of every droid that came into the Palace, whether on a permanent or temporary basis, and they knew exactly what to look for. Hidden secondary espionage programming would show up like a burst of pale red against the subtle background pattern on that ch'hala tree—

Leia frowned, staring at the tree, as her chain of thought jolted to a halt. Another small burst of red appeared on the slender trunk as she watched, sending a pale red ring rippling outward and around the trunk until it faded into the quiet purple background turmoil. Another flicker followed, and another, and another, chasing each other around the trunk like ripples from a dripping water line. All of them more or less the same size; all of them originating from the same place on the trunk.

And each of them exactly in time with one of the clucking noises from the MN-2E droid.

And suddenly then it hit her, like a violent wave of icy water. Fumbling at her belt with suddenly trembling fingers, she keyed for the central operator. "This is Councilor Organa Solo," she identified herself. "Get me Colonel Bremen in Security.

"Tell him I've found Delta Source."

They had to dig nearly eight meters down before they found it: a long, fat, age-tarnished tube half buried in the side of the ch'hala tree's taproot with a thousand slender sampling leads feeding into one end and a direct-transmission fiber snaking out the other. Even then, it took another hour and the preliminary report before Bremen himself was finally convinced.

"The techs say it's like nothing they've ever seen before," the security chief told Leia, Bel Iblis, and Mon Mothma as they stood on the scattered dirt around the uprooted ch'hala tree. "But apparently it's reasonably straightforward. Any pressure on the ch'hala tree's trunk—including the pressure created by sound waves—sets off small chemical changes in the inner layers of bark."

"Which is what creates the shifting colors and patterns?" Mon Mothma asked.

"Right," Bremen nodded, wincing slightly. "Obvious in hindsight, really—the pattern changes are far too fast to be anything but biochemical in origin. Anyway, those implanted tubes running up into the trunk continuously sample the chemicals and shunt the information back down to the module on the taproot. The module takes the chemical data, turns it back into pressure data, and from there back into speech. Some other module—maybe farther down the taproot—sorts out the conversations and gets the whole thing ready for encrypting and transmission. That's all there is to it."

"An organic microphone," Bel Iblis nodded. "With no electronics anywhere in sight for a counterintelligence sweep to pick up."

"A whole series of organic microphones," Bremen corrected, glancing significantly at the twin rows of trees lining the Grand Corridor. "We'll get rid of them right away."

"Such a brilliant plan," Mon Mothma mused. "And so very like the Emperor. I'd always wondered how he obtained some of the information he used against us in the Senate." She shook her head. "Even after his death, it seems, his hand can move against us."

"Well, this part's about to be stilled, anyway," Bel Iblis said. "Let's get a team up here, Colonel, and dig up some trees."

Chapter 18

In the distance, far across the scarred plain, there was a glimmer of reflected light. "Mazzic's coming," Karrde commented.

Gillespee turned his attention from the refreshments table and squinted out past the crumbling fortress wall. "Someone's coming, anyway," he agreed, putting down his cup and the cold bruallki he'd been munching on and wiping his hands on his tunic. Pulling out his macrobinoculars, he peered through them. "Yeah, it's him," he confirmed. "Funny—he's got two other ships with him."

Karrde frowned at the approaching spot. "Two other ships?"

"Take a look," Gillespee said, handing over the macrobinoculars.

Karrde held them up to his eyes. There were three incoming, all right: a sleek space yacht and two slender, highly vicious-looking ships of an unfamiliar design. "You suppose he's brought some guests?" Gillespee asked.

"He didn't say anything about guests when he checked in with Aves a few minutes ago," Karrde said. Even as he watched, the two flanking ships left the formation, dropping to the plain below and vanishing into one of the deep ravines crisscrossing it.

"Maybe you'd better check."

"Maybe I'd better," Karrde agreed, handing back the macrobinoculars and pulling out his comlink. "Aves? You have some ID on our incoming?"

"Sure do," Aves's voice came back. "Gimmicked IDs on all of them, but we read them as the Distant Rainbow, the Skyclaw, and the Raptor."

Karrde grimaced. The designs might not be familiar, but the names certainly were. Mazzic's personal transport and two of his favorite customized fighters. "Thank you," he said, and shut down the comlink.

"Well?" Gillespee asked.

Karrde returned the comlink to his belt. "It's just Mazzic," he said.

"What's that about Mazzic?" Niles Ferrier's voice put in.

Karrde turned. The ship thief was standing behind them at the refreshments table, a generous helping of charred pirki nuts cupped in one hand. "I said Mazzic was coming," he repeated.

"Good," Ferrier nodded, popping one of the nuts into his mouth and cracking it loudly between his teeth. "About time. Finally get this meeting going."

He sauntered off, crunching as he went, nodding at Dravis and Clyngunn as he passed. "I thought you didn't want him here," Gillespee muttered.

Karrde shook his head. "I didn't. Apparently, the feeling wasn't universal."

Gillespee frowned. "You mean someone else invited him? Who?"

"I don't know," Karrde admitted, watching as Ferrier wandered over to the corner where Ellor and his group had gathered. "I haven't found a way to ask around without looking either petty, suspicious, or overbearing. Anyway, it's probably quite innocent. Someone assuming that all those at the original Trogan meeting should continue to be involved."

"The lack of an invitation notwithstanding?"

Karrde shrugged. "Perhaps that was assumed to be an oversight. At any rate, calling attention to it at this point would only create friction. Some of the others already seem resentful that I've apparently taken over management of the operation."

Gillespee tossed the last bit of bruallki into his mouth. "Yeah, maybe it's innocent," he said darkly. "But maybe it's not."

"We're keeping a good watch on the likely approaches," Karrde reminded him. "If Ferrier's made a deal with the Empire, we'll see them coming in plenty of time."

"I hope so," Gillespee grunted, surveying the refreshments table for his next target. "I hate running on a full stomach."

Karrde smiled; and he was starting to turn away when his comlink beeped. He pulled it out and flicked it on, eyes automatically turning to the sky. "Karrde," he said into it.

"This is Torve," the other identified himself . . . and from the tone Karrde knew something was wrong. "Could you step downstairs a minute?"

"Certainly," Karrde said, his other hand dropping to his side and the blaster holstered there. "Should I bring anyone?"

"No need—we're not having a party or anything here."

Translation: reinforcements were already on their way. "Understood," Karrde said. "I'll be right there."

He shut off the comlink and returned it to his belt. "Trouble?" Gillespee asked, eyeing Karrde over his glass.

"We've got an intruder," Karrde said, glancing around the courtyard. None of the other smugglers or their entourages seemed to be looking his direction. "Do me a favor and keep an eye on things here."

"Sure. Anyone in particular I should watch?"

Karrde looked at Ferrier, who had now left Ellor and was heading toward Par'tah and her fellow Ho'Din. "Make sure Ferrier doesn't leave."

The main part of the base had been set up three levels below the top remaining floors of the ruined fortress, in what had probably been the kitchens and ancillary prep areas for a huge high-ceilinged room that had probably been a banquet area. The Wild Karrde was berthed in the banquet chamber itself—a moderately tight fit for a ship its size, but offering the twin advantages of reasonable concealment plus the possibility for a quick exit should that become necessary. Karrde arrived at the high double doors to find Fynn Torve and five of the crewers from the Starry Ice waiting with drawn blasters. "Report," he said.

"We think someone's in there," Torve told him grimly. "Chin was taking the vornskrs for a walk around the ship and saw something moving in the shadows along the south wall."

The wall closest to the Wild Karrde's lowered entrance ramp. "Anyone currently aboard the ship?"

"Lachton was working on the secondary command console," Torve said. "Aves told him to sit tight on the bridge with his blaster pointed at the door until we got someone else there. Chin grabbed some of the Etherway people who were hanging around and started searching through the south-end rooms; Dankin is doing the same with the north-end ones."

Karrde nodded. "That leaves the ship for us, then. You two"—he pointed to two of the Starry Ice crewers—"will stay here and guard the doors. Nice and easy; let's go."

They pulled open one of the double doors and slipped inside. Directly ahead, the Wild Karrde's stern rose up darkly in front of them; 150 meters beyond it, glimpses of the blue Hijarna sky could be seen through the broken fortress wall. "I wish we had better lighting in here," Torve muttered as he looked around.

"It looks easier to hide in than it really is," Karrde assured him, pulling out his comlink. "Dankin, Chin, this is Karrde. Report."

"Nothing so far in the north-end rooms," Dankin's voice came promptly. "I sent Corvis for some portable sensor equipment, but he's not back yet."

"Nothing here either, Capt'," Chin added.

"All right," Karrde said. "We're coming in around the starboard side of the ship and heading for the entryway. Be ready to give us cover fire if we need it."

"We're ready, Capt'."

Karrde slid the comlink back in his belt. Taking a deep breath, he headed out.

They searched the ship, the banquet chamber, and all the offices and storerooms on the periphery. And in the end, they found no one.

"I must have imagined it," Chin said morosely as the searchers gathered together at the foot of the Wild Karrde's entrance ramp. "Sorry, Capt'. Truly sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Karrde said, looking around the banquet chamber. Cleared or not, there was still an uneasy feeling tugging at him. Like someone was watching and laughing . . . "We all misread things sometimes. If this was, in fact, a misreading. Torve, you're certain you and Lachton covered the entire ship?"

"Every cubic meter of it," Torve said firmly. "If anyone sneaked into the Wild Karrde, he was out long before we got here."

"What about those vornskr pets of yours, sir?" one of the Starry Ice crewers asked. "Are they any good at tracking?"

"Only if you're hunting ysalamiri or Jedi," Karrde told him. "Well. Whoever was here seems to be gone now. Still, we may have driven him off before he finished whatever it was he came to do. Torve, I want you to set up a guard detail for the area. Have Aves alert the duty personnel aboard the Starry Ice and Etherway, as well."

"Right," Torve said, pulling out his comlink. "What about our guests upstairs? Should we warn them, too?"

"What are we, their mothers?" one of the other crewers snorted. "They're big boys—they can look out for themselves."

"I'm sure they can," Karrde reproved him mildly. "But they're here at my invitation. As long as they're under our roof, they're under our protection."

"Does that include whoever sent the intruder Chin spotted?" Lachton asked.

Karrde looked up at his ship. "That will depend on what the intruder was sent to do," he said. And speaking of his guests, it was time he got back to them. Mazzic would have joined them by now, and Ferrier wasn't the only one impatient for the meeting to begin. "Lachton, as soon as Corvis gets here with those scanners I want the two of you to run a complete check of the ship, starting with the exterior hull. Our visitor may have left us a gift, and I don't want to fly out of here with a homing beacon or timed concussion bomb aboard somewhere. I'll be up in the conference area if you need me."

He left them to their work, feeling once again Mara Jade's absence from the group. One of these days, he was going to have to make the time to go back to Coruscant and get her and Ghent back.

Assuming he was allowed to do so. His information sources had picked up a vague and disturbing rumor that an unnamed woman had been caught giving assistance to an Imperial commando force on Coruscant. Given Mara's obvious disdain for Grand Admiral Thrawn, it was unlikely she would actually give his Empire any help. But on the other hand, there were many in the New Republic starting to edge toward a kind of war hysteria . . . and given her shadowy history, Mara was an obvious candidate for that kind of accusation. All the more reason for him to get her off Coruscant.

He reached the upper courtyard to find that Mazzic had indeed arrived. He was standing with the Ho'Din group, talking earnestly with Par'tah, with the deceptively decorative female bodyguard he'd had at Trogan an aloof half-step back from the conversation, trying to look inconspicuous.

As were the pair of men just behind her. And the four standing around them a few meters away. And the six scattered elsewhere around the edges of the courtyard.

Karrde paused in the arched entrance, a quiet warning alarm going off in the back of his head. For Mazzic to bring a pair of fighting ships to protect him en route was one thing. To bring a full squad of enforcers into a friendly meeting was something else entirely. Either the Imperial attack on Trogan had made him uncharacteristically nervous . . . or else he wasn't planning for the meeting to remain quite so friendly.

"Hey—Karrde," Ferrier called, beckoning him over. "Come on—let's get this meeting out of the bay."

"Certainly," Karrde said, putting on his best host's smile as be walked into the room. Too late now to bring some of his own people up here for balance. He would just have to hope that Mazzic was merely being cautious. "Good afternoon, Mazzic. Thank you for coming."

"No problem," Mazzic said, his eyes cool. He didn't smile back.

"We have more comfortable seats prepared in a room back this way," Karrde said, gesturing to his left. "If you'd all care to follow me—"

"I have a better idea," Mazzic interrupted. "What do you say we hold this meeting inside the Wild Karrde?"

Karrde looked at him. Mazzic returned the gaze evenly, his face not giving anything away. Apparently, he was not merely being cautious. "May I ask why?" Karrde asked.

"Are you suggesting you have something to hide?" Mazzic countered.

Karrde allowed himself a cool smile. "Of course I have things to hide," he said. "So does Par'tah; so does Ellor; so do you. We're business competitors, after all."

"So you won't allow us aboard the Wild Karrde?"

Karrde looked at each of the smuggler chiefs in turn. Gillespee, Dravis, and Clyngunn were frowning, clearly with no idea at all as to what this was all about. Par'tah's Ho'Din face was difficult to read, but there was something about her stance that seemed oddly troubled. Ellor was avoiding his eyes entirely. And Ferrier—

Ferrier was smirking. Not obviously—almost invisibly, in fact, behind that beard of his. But enough. More than enough.

And now, far too late, he finally understood. What Chin had seen—and what all of them had subsequently failed to catch—had been Ferrier's shadowy Defel.

Mazzic's men were here. Karrde's were three levels down, guarding his ship and base against a danger that was long gone. And all his guests were waiting for his answer. "The Wild Karrde is berthed down below," he told them. "If you'd care to follow me?"

Dankin and Torve were conversing together at the foot of the Wild Karrde's entrance ramp as the group arrived. "Hello, Captain," Dankin said, looking surprised. "Can we help you?"

"No help needed," Karrde said. "We've decided to hold the meeting aboard ship, that's all."

"Aboard ship?" Dankin echoed, his eyes flicking over the group and obviously not liking what he saw. Small wonder: among the smuggler chiefs, aides, and bodyguards, Mazzic's enforcers stood out like a landing beacon cluster. "I'm sorry—I wasn't informed," he added, hooking the thumb of his right hand casually into the top of his gun belt.

"It was a rather spur-of-the-moment decision," Karrde told him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the rest of his people in the banquet chamber beginning to drift from their assigned tasks as they spotted Dankin's hand signal. Drifting into encirclement positions . . .

"Oh, sure," Dankin said, starting to look a little embarrassed. "Though the place really isn't set up for anything this fancy. I mean, you know what the wardroom looks like—"

"We're not interested in the decor," Mazzic interrupted. "Please step aside—we have business to attend to."

"Right—I understand that," Dankin said, looking even more embarrassed but holding his ground. "Problem is, we've got a scanning crew aboard right now. It'll foul up the readings if we get more people coming and going."

"So foul them up," Ferrier put in. "Who do you think you are, anyway?"

Dankin didn't get a chance to come up with an answer to that one. A whiff of perfume-scented air brushed across the side of Karrde's face, and the hard knob of a blaster muzzle dug gently into his side. "Nice try, Karrde," Mazzic said, "but it won't work. Call them off. Now."

Carefully, Karrde looked over his shoulder. Mazzic's decorative bodyguard looked back, her eyes cool and very professional. "If I don't?"

"Then we have a firefight," Mazzic said bluntly. "Right here."

There was a quiet ripple of movement through the group. "Would someone like to tell me what's going on here?" Gillespee murmured uncertainly.

"I'll tell you inside the ship," Mazzic said, his eyes steady on Karrde. "Assuming we all live to get in there. That part's up to our host."

"I won't surrender my people to you," Karrde said quietly. "Not without a fight."

"I have no interest in your people," Mazzic told him. "Or your ship, or your organization. This is a personal matter, between you and me. And our fellow smugglers."

"Then let's have it out," Dankin suggested. "We'll clear a space, you can choose weapons—"

"I'm not talking some stupid private feud," Mazzic cut him off. "This is about treachery."

"About what?" Gillespee asked. "Mazzic—"

"Shut up, Gillespee," Mazzic said, throwing a quick glare at him. "Well, Karrde?"

Slowly, Karrde looked around the group. There were no allies here; no friends who would stand firmly by him against whatever these phantom charges were that Mazzic and Ferrier had concocted. Whatever respect any of them might have for him, whatever favors they might owe him—all of that was already forgotten. They would watch while his enemies took him down . . . and then they would each take a piece of the organization he'd worked so hard to build.

But until that happened, the men and other beings here were still his associates. And still his responsibility.

"There's not enough room in the wardroom for anyone but the eight of us," he told Mazzic quietly. "All aides, bodyguards, and your enforcers will have to stay out here. Will you order them to leave my people alone?"

For a long minute Mazzic studied his face. Then he nodded, a single curt jerk of his head. "As long as they're not provoked, they won't bother anyone. Shada, get his blaster. Karrde . . . after you."

Karrde looked at Dankin and Torve and nodded. Reluctantly, they moved away from the ramp and he started up. Followed closely by the people he'd once hoped to make into a unified front against the Empire.

He should have known better.

They settled into the wardroom, Mazzic nudging Karrde into a chair in one corner as the others found places around the table facing him. "All right," Karrde said. "We're here. Now what?"

"I want your data cards," Mazzic said. "All of them. We'll start with the ones in your office."

Karrde nodded over his shoulder. "Through the door and down the corridor to the right."

"Access codes?"

"None. I trust my people."

Mazzic's lip twisted slightly. "Ellor, go get them. And bring a couple of data pads back with you."

Wordlessly, the Duro stood up and left. "While we're waiting," Karrde said into the awkward silence, "perhaps I could present the proposal I invited you to Hijarna to hear."

Mazzic snorted. "You've got guts, Karrde—I'll give you that. Guts and style. Let's just sit quiet for now, okay?"

Karrde looked at the blaster pointed at him. "Whatever you wish."

Ellor returned a minute later, carrying a tray full of data cards with two data pads balanced on top. "Okay," Mazzic said as the Duro sat down beside him. "Give one of the data pads to Par'tah and start going through them. You both know what to look for."

[[I must acknowledge at the beginning,]] Ellor said, [[that I do not like this.]]

[Iy agree,] Par'tah said, her head appendages writhing like disturbed snakes. [To fiyght openly agaiynst a competiytor iys part of busiyness. But thiys iys diyfferent.]

"This isn't about business," Mazzic said.

"Of course not," Karrde agreed. "He's already said he has no interest in my organization. Remember?"

"Don't try playing on my words, Karrde," Mazzic warned. "I hate that as much as I hate being led around by the nose."

"I'm not leading anyone by the nose, Mazzic," Karrde said quietly. "I've dealt squarely with all of you since this whole thing began."

"Maybe. That's what we're here to find out."

Karrde looked around the table, remembering back to the chaos that had flooded through the twilight world of smuggling after the collapse of Jabba the Hutt's organization. Every group in the galaxy had scrambled madly to pick up the pieces, snatching ships and people and contracts for themselves, sometimes fighting viciously for them. The larger organizations, particularly, had profited quite handsomely from the Hutt's demise.

He wondered if Aves would be able to beat them off. Aves, and Mara.

"Anything yet?" Mazzic asked.

[We wiyll tell you iyf there iys,] Par'tah said, her offpitch tone betraying her displeasure with the whole situation.

Karrde looked at Mazzic. "Would you mind at least telling me what it is I've allegedly done?"

"Yeah, I want to hear it, too," Gillespee seconded.

Mazzic leaned back in his seat, resting his gun hand on his thigh. "It's very simple," he said. "That attack on Trogan—the one where my friend Lishma was killed—appears to have been staged."

"What do you mean, staged?" Dravis asked.

"Just what I said. Someone hired an Imperial lieutenant and his squad to attack us."

Clyngunn rumbled deep in his throat. "Imperial troops do not work for hire," he growled.

"This group did," Mazzic told him.

"Who said so?" Gillespee demanded.

Mazzic smiled tightly. "The most knowledgeable source there is. Grand Admiral Thrawn."

There was a moment of stunned silence. Dravis found his voice first. "No kidding," he said. "And he just happened to mention this to you?"

"They picked me up poking around Joiol system and took me to the Chimaera," Mazzic said, ignoring the sarcasm. "After the incident at the Bilbringi shipyards I thought I was in for a rough time. But Thrawn told me he'd just pulled me in to clear the air, that no one in the Empire had ordered the Trogan attack and that I shouldn't hold them responsible for it. And then he let me go."

"Having conveniently implied that I was the one you should hold responsible?" Karrde suggested.

"He didn't finger you specifically," Mazzic said. "But who else had anything to gain by getting us mad at the Empire?"

"We're talking a Grand Admiral here, Mazzic," Karrde reminded him. "A Grand Admiral who delights in leisurely and convoluted strategies. And who has a personal interest in destroying me."

Mazzic smiled tightly. "I'm not just taking Thrawn's word for this, Karrde. I had a friend do a little digging through Imperial military records before I came here. He got me the complete details of the Trogan arrangement."

"Imperial records can be altered," Karrde pointed out.

"Like I said, I'm not taking their word for it," Mazzic retorted. "But if we find the other end of the deal here"— he lifted his blaster slightly—"I'd say that would be hard evidence."

"I see," Karrde murmured, looking at Ferrier. So that was what his Defel had been doing down here. Planting Mazzic's hard evidence. "I suppose it's too late to mention that we had an intruder down here a few minutes before you arrived."

Ferrier snorted. "Oh, right. Nice try, Karrde, but a little late."

"A little late for what?" Dravis asked, frowning.

"He's trying to throw suspicion on someone else, that's all," Ferrier said contemptuously. "Trying to make you think one of us planted that data card on him."

"What data card?" Gillespee scoffed. "We haven't found any data card."

"Yes, we have," Ellor said softly.

Karrde looked at him. Ellor's flat face was stiff, his emotions unreadable as he silently handed his data pad to Mazzic. The other took it; and his face, too, hardened. "So there it is," he said softly, laying the data pad on the table. "Well. I suppose there's nothing else to say."

"Wait a second," Gillespee objected. "There is too. Karrde's right about that intruder—I was with him upstairs when the alert came through."

Mazzic shrugged. "Fine; I'll play. What about it, Karrde? What did you see?"

Karrde shook his head, trying to keep his eyes off the muzzle of Mazzic's blaster. "Nothing, unfortunately. Chin thought he saw some movement near the ship, but we weren't able to locate anyone."

"I didn't notice all that many places out there where anyone could hide," Mazzic pointed out.

"A human couldn't, no," Karrde agreed. "On the other hand, it didn't occur to us at the time just how many shadows there were along the walls and near the doors."

"Meaning you think it was my wraith, huh?" Ferrier put in. "That's typical, Karrde—fire off a few hints and try to fog the issue. Well, forget it—it won't work."

Karrde frowned at him. At the aggressive face but wary eyes . . . and suddenly he realized he'd been wrong about the setup here. Ferrier and Mazzic were not, in fact, working together on this. It was Ferrier alone, probably under Thrawn's direction, who was trying to bring him down.

Which meant Mazzic honestly thought Karrde had betrayed them all. Which meant, in turn, that there might still be a chance to persuade him otherwise. "Let me try this, then," he said, shifting his attention back to Mazzic. "Would I really be so careless as to leave a record of my treachery here where anyone could find it?"

"You didn't know we'd be looking for it," Ferrier said before Mazzic could answer.

Karrde cocked an eyebrow at him. "Oh, so now it's 'we,' Ferrier? You're assisting Mazzic on this?"

"He's right, Karrde—stop trying to fog the issue," Mazzic said. "You think Thrawn would go to all this effort just to take you down? He could have done that straight-out at Trogan."

"He couldn't touch me at Trogan," Karrde shook his head. "Not with all of you there watching. He would have risked stirring up the entire fringe against him. No, this way is much better. He destroys me, discredits my warnings about him, and retains both your goodwill and your services."

Clyngunn shook his shaggy head. "No. Thrawn is not like Vader. He would not waste troops in a deliberately failed attack."

"I agree," Karrde said. "I don't think he ordered the Trogan attack, either. I think someone else planned that raid, and that Thrawn's simply making the best use of it he can."

"I suppose you're going to try and put that one on me, too," Ferrier growled.

"I haven't accused anyone, Ferrier," Karrde reminded him mildly. "One might think you had a guilty conscience."

"There he goes—fogging things again," Ferrier said, looking around the table before turning his glare back to Karrde. "You already practically flat out accused my wraith of planting that data card in here."

"That was your suggestion, not mine," Karrde said, watching the other closely. Thinking on his feet obviously wasn't Ferrier's strong point, and the strains were starting to show. If he could push just a little harder . . . "But since we're on the subject, where is your Defel?"

"He's on my ship," Ferrier said promptly. "Over in the western courtyard with everyone else's. He's been there since I landed."

"Why?"

Ferrier frowned. "What do you mean, why? He's there because he's part of my crew."

"No, I mean why isn't he outside the Wild Karrde with the rest of the bodyguards?"

"Who said he was a bodyguard?"

Karrde shrugged. "I simply assumed he was. He was playing that role on Trogan, after all."

"That's right, he was," Gillespee said slowly. "Standing over against the wall. Where he was all ready to hit the Imperials when they came in."

"Almost as if he knew they were coming," Karrde agreed.

Ferrier's face darkened. "Karrde—"

"Enough," Mazzic cut him off. "This isn't evidence, Karrde, and you know it. Anyway, what would Ferrier have to gain by setting up an attack like that?"

"Perhaps so he could be conspicuous in helping us fight it off," Karrde suggested. "Hoping it would soothe our suspicions about his relationship with the Empire."

"Twist all the words you want," Ferrier said, jabbing a finger at the data pad sitting on the table beside Mazzic. "But that data card doesn't say I hired Kosk and his squad. It says you did. Personally, I think we've heard enough of this—"

"Just a minute," Mazzic interrupted, turning to face him. "How do you know what the data card says?"

"You told us," Ferrier said. "You said it was the other half of the—"

"I never mentioned the lieutenant's name."

The room was suddenly very quiet . . . and behind his beard, Ferrier's face had gone pale. "You must have."

"No," Mazzic said coldly. "I didn't."

"No one said it," Clyngunn rumbled.

Ferrier glared at him. "This is insane," he spat, some of his courage starting to come back. "All the evidence points straight to Karrde—and you're going to let him off just because I happened to hear this Kosk's name somewhere? Maybe one of the stormtroopers on Trogan shouted it during the fight—how should I know?"

"Well, then, here's an easier question," Karrde said. "Tell us how you learned the time and location of this meeting. Given your lack of an invitation."

Mazzic shot a look at him. "You didn't invite him?"

Karrde shook his head. "I've never really trusted him, not since I heard about his role in Thrawn's acquisition of the Katana fleet. He wouldn't have been at Trogan at all if Gillespee hadn't made that invitation more or less open to anyone."

"Well, Ferrier?" Dravis prompted. "Or are you going to claim one of us told you?"

There were tight lines at the corners of Ferrier's eyes. "I picked up the transmission to Mazzic," he muttered. "Decrypted it; figured I ought to be here."

"Pretty fast decrypting work," Gillespee commented. "Those were good encrypt codes we were using. You kept a copy of the original encrypted transmission, of course?"

Ferrier stood up. "I don't have to sit here and listen to this," he growled. "Karrde's the one on trial here, not me."

"Sit down, Ferrier," Mazzic said softly. His blaster was no longer pointed at Karrde.

"But he's the one," Ferrier insisted. His right hand shot out, forefinger pointed accusingly at Karrde. "He's the one who—"

"Watch out!" Gillespee snapped.

But it was too late. With his right hand waving out in front of him as a diversion, Ferrier's left hand had dipped into his waist sash and was now back out in front of him.

Holding a thermal detonator.

"All right, hands on the table," he snarled. "Drop it, Mazzic."

Slowly, Mazzic laid his blaster on the table. "You can't possibly get out of here, Ferrier," he bit out. "It'll be a toss-up between Shada and my enforcers."

"They'll never even get a shot at me," Ferrier said, reaching over to pick up Mazzic's blaster. "Wraith! Get in here!"

Behind him, the wardroom door slid open and a black shadow moved silently into the room. A black shadow with red eyes and a hint of long white fangs.

Clyngunn swore, a roiling ZeHethbra curse. "So Karrde was right about all of it. You have betrayed us to the Empire."

Ferrier ignored him. "Watch them," he ordered, shoving Mazzic's blaster at the shadow and drawing his own. "Come on, Karrde—we're going to the bridge."

Karrde didn't move. "If I refuse?"

"I kill you all and take the ship up myself," Ferrier told him shortly. "Maybe I should do that anyway—Thrawn'd probably pay a good bounty on all of you."

"I concede the point," Karrde said, getting to his feet. "This way."

They reached the bridge without incident. "You're flying," Ferrier instructed, gesturing toward the helm with his blaster as he took a quick look at the displays. "Good—I figured you'd have it ready to go."

"Where are we going?" Karrde asked, sitting down in the helm seat. Through the viewport, he could see some of his people, oblivious to his presence up here as they maintained their uneasy standoff with Mazzic's enforcers.

"Out, up, and over," Ferrier told him, motioning toward the broken fortress wall ahead with his blaster. "We'll start with that."

"I see," Karrde said, keying for a preflight status report with his right hand and letting his left drop casually to his knee. Just above it, built into the underside of the main console, was a knee panel with the controls for the ship's external lights. "What happens then?"

"What do you think?" Ferrier retorted, crossing over to the comm station and giving it a quick look. "We get out of here. You got any other ships on comm standby?"

"The Starry Ice and Etherway," Karrde said, turning the exterior running lights on and then off three times. Outside the viewport, frowning faces began turning to look up at him. "I trust you're not going to try to go very far."

Ferrier grinned at him. "What, you afraid I'll steal your precious freighter?"

"You're not going to steal it," Karrde said, locking eyes with him. "I'll destroy it first."

Ferrier snorted. "Big talk from someone on the wrong end of a blaster," he said contemptuously, hefting the weapon for emphasis.

"I'm not bluffing," Karrde warned him, turning on the running lights again and risking a casual look out the viewport. Between the warning flicker of lights and the sight of Ferrier holding a blaster on him, the crowd out there had presumably caught on to what was happening. He hoped so, anyway. If they hadn't, the Wild Karrde's unannounced departure would probably trigger a firefight.

"Sure you're not," Ferrier grunted, dropping into the copilot station beside him. "Relax—you're not going to have to be a hero. I'd like nothing better than to take the Wild Karrde off your hands, but I know better than to try to run a ship like this with half a crew. No, all you're going to do is take me back to my ship. We'll get out of here and lay low until all this blows over." He threw one last look at the displays and nodded. "Okay. Let's go."

Mentally crossing his fingers, Karrde eased in the repulsorlifts and nudged the ship forward, half expecting a barrage of blaster shots from the crowd of aides and bodyguards outside. But no one opened fire as he maneuvered carefully through the jagged stone edging the opening and out into the open air. "Yeah, they're all gone from in there, all right," Ferrier said casually into the silence. "Probably scrambling to get back to their ships so they can chase after us."

"You don't seem worried about it."

"I'm not," Ferrier said. "All you have to do is get me to my ship a little ahead of them. You can do that, right?"

Karrde looked over at the blaster pointed at him. "I'll do my best."

They made it easily. Even as the Wild Karrde settled to the cracked stone beside a modified Corellian Gunship the others were just beginning to appear from the archways leading into the main part of the fortress, a good couple of minutes away. "Knew you could do it," Ferrier complimented him sarcastically, standing up and keying the intercom. "Wraith? Hit the door. We're out of here."

There was no response. "Wraith? You hear me?"

"He will not be hearing anything for a while," Clyngunn's voice rumbled back. "If you want him, you will have to carry him."

Viciously, Ferrier slapped off the intercom. "Fool. I should have known better than to trust a stupid wraith with anything. Better yet, I should have killed all of you right at the start."

"Perhaps," Karrde said. He nodded across the courtyard toward the approaching bodyguards and enforcers. "I don't think you have time to correct that oversight now."

"I'll just have to do it later," Ferrier shot back. "I could still take care of you, though."

"Only if you're willing to die along with me," Karrde countered, shifting slightly in his seat to show that his left hand was holding down one of the knee panel switches. "As I said, I'd rather destroy the ship than let you have it."

For a long moment he thought Ferrier was going to try it anyway. Then, with obvious reluctance, the ship thief shifted his aim and sent two shots sizzling into the fire-control section of the control board. "Another time, Karrde," he said. He stepped back to the bridge door, threw a quick look outside as it opened, and then slipped through.

Karrde took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly. Releasing the landing light switch he'd been holding down, he stood up. Fifteen seconds later, he spotted Ferrier through the viewport as he sprinted alone toward his Gunship.

Reaching carefully past the sizzling hole in his control board, he keyed the intercom. "This is Karrde," he said. "You can unbarricade the door now; Ferrier's left. Do you need any medical help or assistance with your prisoner?"

"No, to both," Gillespee assured him. "Defel might be good at sneaking around, but they're not much good as jailers. So Ferrier just abandoned him here, huh?"

"No more or less than I would have expected from him," Karrde said. Outside the viewport, Ferrier's Gunship was rising on its repulsorlifts, rotating toward the west as it did so. "He's lifting now. Warn everyone not to leave the ship—he's bound to have something planned to discourage pursuit."

And he did. The words were barely out of Karrde's mouth when the hovering ship ejected a large canister into the air overhead. There was a flash of light, and suddenly the sky exploded into a violently expanding tangle of metal mesh. The net stretched itself out across the courtyard and settled to the ground, throwing off sparks where it draped itself across the parked ships.

"A Conner net," Dravis's voice came from behind him. "Typical ship-thief trick."

Karrde turned. Dravis, Par'tah, and Mazzic were standing just inside the door, looking through the viewport at the departing Gunship. "We have plenty of people outside it," he. reminded them. "It shouldn't take long to get it burned off."

[He must not be allowed to escape,] Par'tah insisted, making a Ho'Din gesture of contempt toward the Gunship.

"He wont," Karrde assured her. The Gunship was streaking low across the plain, staying out of range of anything the netted ships might still be able to fire at him. "The Etherway and Starry Ice are standing ready, north and south of here." He turned back and lifted an eyebrow toward Mazzic. "But under the circumstances, I think Mazzic should have the honor."

Mazzic gave him a tight smile. "Thank you," he said softly, pulling out his comlink. "Griv, Amber. Gunship on the way. Take it."

Karrde looked back. The Gunship was nearly to the horizon now, starting its vertical climb toward space . . . and as he watched, Mazzic's two fighters rose behind it from their hiding places and gave pursuit.

"I guess I owe you an apology," Mazzic said from behind him.

Karrde shook his head. "Forget it," he said. "Or, better, don't forget it. Keep it as a reminder of the way Grand Admiral Thrawn does business. And what people like us ultimately mean to him."

"Don't worry," Mazzic said softly. "I won't forget."

"Good," Karrde said briskly. "Well, then. Let's get our people out there busy on this net—I'm sure we'd all prefer to be off Hijarna before the Empire realizes their scheme has failed."

In the distance, just above the horizon, there was a brief flare of light. "And while we're waiting," Karrde added, "I still have a proposal to present to you."

Chapter 19

"All right," Han told Lando, his fingers searching along the edge of Artoo's left leg for a better handhold. "Get ready."

The droid twittered something. "He reminds you to be careful," Threepio translated, standing nervously just far enough out of their way not to get yelled at. "Do remember that the last time—"

"We didn't drop him on purpose," Han growled. "If he'd rather wait for Luke, he's welcome."

Artoo twittered again. "He says that will not be necessary," Threepio said primly. "He trusts you implicitly."

"Glad to hear it," Han said. There were, unfortunately, no better handholds. He'd have to talk to Industrial Automaton about that someday. "Here we go, Lando: lift."

Together they strained; and with a jolt that wrenched Han's back the droid came up and out of the tangle of tree roots that he'd somehow gotten entwined around his wheels. "There you go," Lando grunted as they dropped the droid more or less gently back into the dirt and leaves of the dry creek bed. "How's it feel?"

The explanation this time was longer. "He says there appears to have been only minimal damage," Threepio said. "Mainly cosmetic in nature."

"Translation: he's rusting," Han muttered, rubbing the small of his back as he turned around. Five meters further down the creek bed, Luke was using his lightsaber to carefully slice through a set of thick vines blocking their path. Beside him, Chewbacca and Mara were crouched with weapons drawn, ready to shoot the snakelike creatures that sometimes came boiling out when you cut into them. Like everything else on Wayland, they'd learned about that one the hard way.

Lando walked up beside him, brushing a few last bits of acidic tree root off his hands. "Fun place, isn't it?" he commented.

"I should have brought the Falcon down closer," Han grumbled. "Or moved it closer in when we found out we couldn't use the speeder bikes."

"If you had, we might be dodging Imperial patrols right now instead of fighting acid root and vine snakes," Lando said. "Personally, I'd call that a fair trade."

"I suppose so," Han agreed reluctantly. In the near distance something gave out with a complicated whistle, and something else whistled back. He looked that direction, but between the brush and vines and two different levels of trees he couldn't see anything.

"Doesn't sound much like a predator," Lando said.

"Maybe." Han looked back over his shoulder, to where Threepio was talking soothingly to Artoo as he inspected the squat droid's latest acid burns. "Hey—short stuff. Get your scanners busy."

Obediently, Artoo extended its little antenna and began moving it back and forth. For a minute it clucked to itself, then jabbered something. "He says there are no large animals anywhere within twenty meters," Threepio said. "Beyond that—"

"He can't read through the undergrowth," Han finished for him. It was getting to be a very familiar conversation. "Thanks."

Artoo retracted his sensor, and he and Threepio resumed their discussion. "Where do you suppose they've all gone?" Lando asked.

"The predators?" Han shook his head. "Beats me. Maybe the same place the natives went."

Lando looked around, exhaling gently between his teeth. "I don't like it, Han. They've got to know by now that we're here. What are they waiting for?"

"Maybe Mara was wrong about them," Han suggested doubtfully. "Maybe the Empire got tired of sharing the planet with anyone else and wiped them out."

"That's a cheerful thought," Lando said. "Still wouldn't explain why the predators have ignored us for the past two and a half days."

"No," Han agreed. But Lando was right: there was something out there watching them. He could feel it deep in his gut. Something, or somebody. "Maybe the ones that got away after that first fight passed the word down the wire to leave us alone."

Lando snorted. "Those things were dumber than space slugs, and you know it."

Han shrugged. "Just a thought."

Ahead, the greenish glow vanished as Luke closed down his lightsaber. "Looks clear," he called softly back. "You get Artoo out?"

"Yeah, he's all right," Han said, stepping up behind them. "Any snakes?"

"Not this time." Luke pointed with his lightsaber at one of the trees bordering the creek bed. "Looks like we just missed having to tangle with another group of clawbirds, though."

Han looked. There, in one of the lower branches, was another of the plate-sized mud-and-grass nests. Threepio had brushed against one of them the day before, and Chewbacca was still nursing the slashes he'd gotten in his left arm before they'd managed to shoot or lightsaber the predator birds that had come out of it. "Don't touch it," he warned.

"It's okay—it's empty," Luke assured him, nudging it with the tip of the lightsaber. "They must have moved on."

"Yeah," Han said slowly, taking a step closer to the nest. "Right."

"Something wrong?"

Han looked back at him. "No," he said, trying hard to sound casual. "No problem. Why?"

Behind Luke, Chewbacca rumbled deep in his throat. "Let's get moving," Han added before Luke could say anything. "I want to get a little further before it gets dark. Luke, you and Mara take the droids and head out. Chewie and me'll take the rear."

Luke wasn't going for it—he could tell that from the kid's face. But he just nodded. "All right. Come on, Threepio."

They started down the creek bed, Threepio complaining as usual the whole way. Lando threw Han a look of his own, but followed after them without comment.

Beside him, Chewbacca growled a question. "We're going to find out what happened to the clawbirds, that's what," Han told him, looking back at the nest. It didn't look damaged, like it should have if a predator had got it. "You're the one who can smell fresh meat ten paces upwind. Start sniffing."

It turned out not to take much in the way of Wookiee hunting skill. One of the birds was lying beside a bush just on the other side of the tree, its wings stretched out and stiff. Very dead.

"What do you think?" Han asked as Chewbacca gingerly picked it up. "Some predator?"

Chewbacca rumbled a negative. His climbing claws slid from their sheaths, probing at a dark-brown stain on the feathers under the left wing. He found a cut, dug a single claw delicately into it.

And growled. "You sure it was a knife?" Han frowned, peering at the wound. "Not some kind of claw?"

The Wookiee rumbled again, pointing out the obvious: if the bird had been killed by a predator, there shouldn't have been anything left but feathers and bones.

"Right," Han commented sourly as Chewbacca dropped the clawbird back beside the bush. "So much for hoping the natives weren't around. Must be pretty close, too."

Chewbacca growled the obvious question. "Beats me," Han told him. "Maybe they're still checking us out. Or waiting for reinforcements."

The Wookiee rumbled, gesturing at the bird, and Han took another look. He was right: the way the wound was placed meant that the wings had been open when it had been killed. Which meant it had been killed in flight. By a single stab. "You're right—they're not going to need any reinforcements," he agreed. "Come on, let's catch up with the others."

Solo had wanted them to keep going until it got dark, but after another disagreement between Skywalker's astromech droid and a tangle of acid vines, he gave up and called a halt.

"So what's the word?" Mara asked as Skywalker dropped his pack beside hers and stretched his shoulder muscles. "We going to have to carry it?"

"I don't think so," Skywalker said, looking over his shoulder to where Calrissian and the Wookiee had the R2 on its side and were tinkering with its wheels. "Chewie thinks he'll be able to fix it."

"You ought to trade it in on something that wasn't designed to travel on a flat metal deck."

"Sometimes I've wished," Skywalker conceded, sitting down beside her. "All things considered, though, he does pretty well. You should have seen how far across the Tatooine desert he got the first night I had him."

Mara looked past the droids to where Solo was setting up his bedroll and keeping one eye on the forest around them. "You going to tell me what Solo was talking to you about back there? Or is it something I'm not supposed to know?"

"He and Chewie found one of the clawbirds from that empty nest," Skywalker said. "The one near the second vine cluster we had to cut through today. It had been killed by a knife thrust."

Mara swallowed, thinking back to some of the stories she'd heard when she was here with the Emperor. "Probably the Myneyrshi," she said. "They were supposed to have made an art of that kind of close-blade combat."

"Did they have any feelings one way or the other about the Empire?"

"Like I told you before, they don't like humans," Mara told him. "Starting with the ones who came here as colonists long before the Emperor found the planet."

She looked at Skywalker, but he wasn't looking back. He was staring at nothing, a slight frown creasing his forehead.

Mara took a deep breath, stretching out with the Force as hard as she could. The sounds and smells of the forest wove their way into her mind, flattening into the overall pattern of life around her. Trees, bushes, animals, and birds . . .

And there, just at the edge of her consciousness, was another mind. Alien, unreadable . . . but a mind just the same.

"Four of them," Skywalker said quietly. "No. Five."

Mara frowned, concentrating on the sensation. He was right: there was more than one mind out there. But she couldn't quite separate the various components out from the general sense.

"Try looking for deviations," Skywalker murmured. "The ways the minds are different from each other. That's the best way to resolve them."

Mara tried it; and to her slightly annoyed surprise discovered that he was right. There was the second mind . . . the third . . .

And then, suddenly, they were gone.

She looked sharply at Skywalker. "I don't know," he said slowly, still concentrating. "There was a surge of emotion, and then they just turned and left."

"Maybe they didn't know we were here," Mara suggested hesitantly, knowing even as she said it how unlikely that was. Between the Wookiee roaring at everything that came at them and the protocol droid whining about everything else, it was a wonder the whole planet didn't know they were there.

"No, they knew," Skywalker said. "In fact, I'm pretty sure they were coming directly toward us when they were—" He shook his head. "I want to say they were scared away. But that doesn't make any sense."

Mara looked at the double leaf-canopy overhead. "Could we have picked up an Imperial patrol?"

"No." Skywalker was positive. "I'd know if there were any other humans nearby."

"Bet that comes in handy," Mara muttered.

"It's just a matter of training."

She threw him a sideways look. There'd been something odd in his voice. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He grimaced, a quick tightening of his mouth. "Nothing. Just . . . I was thinking about Leia's twins. Thinking about how I'm going to have to train them some day."

"You worried about when to start?"

He shook his head. "I'm worried about being able to do it at all."

She shrugged. "What's to do? You teach them how to hear minds and move objects and use lightsabers. You did that with your sister, didn't you?"

"Yes," he agreed. "But that was when I thought that was all there was to it. It's really just the beginning. They're going to be strong in the Force, and with that strength comes responsibility. How do I teach them that? How do I teach them wisdom and compassion and how not to abuse their power?"

Mara studied his profile as he gazed out into the forest. This wasn't just word games; he was really serious about it. Definitely a side of the heroic, noble, infallible Jedi she hadn't seen before. "How does anyone teach anyone else that stuff?" she said. "Mostly by example, I suppose."

He thought about it, nodded reluctantly. "I suppose so. How much Jedi training did the Emperor give you?"

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. "Enough," she said shortly, shaking the sound of the words from her mind and trying to stifle the flash of reflexive hatred that came with them. "All the basics. Why?—you checking for wisdom and compassion?"

"No." He hesitated. "But as long as we've got a few more days until we reach Mount Tantiss, it might be a good idea to go over it again. You know—a refresher course sort of thing."

She looked at him, an icy chill running through her. He was just a little bit too casual about this. . . . "Have you seen something about what's ahead of us?" she asked suspiciously.

"Not really," he said. But there was that brief hesitation again. "A few images and pictures that didn't make any sense. I just think it would be a good idea for you to be as strong in the Force as possible before we go in."

She looked away from him. YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. "You'll be there," she reminded him. "What do I need to be strong in the Force for?"

"For whatever purpose your destiny calls you to," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "We have an hour or so left before sundown. Let's get started."

Wedge Antilles slid into his place on the long semicircular bench beside the other starfighter squadron commanders, glancing around the Star Cruiser war room as he did so. A good crowd already, and more were still filing in. Whatever Ackbar had planned, it was going to be big.

" 'Lo, Wedge," someone grunted in greeting as he sat down beside Wedge. "Fancy meeting you here."

Wedge looked at him in mild surprise. Pash Cracken, son of the legendary General Airen Cracken, and one of the best starfighter commanders in the business. "I could say the same about you, Pash," he said. "I thought you were out in Atrivis sector, baby-sitting the Outer Rim comm center."

"You're behind the times," Pash said grimly. "Generis fell three days ago."

Wedge stared at him. "I hadn't heard," he apologized. "How bad was it?"

"Bad enough," Pash said. "We lost the whole comm center, more or less intact, and most of the sector fleet supply depots. On the plus side, we didn't leave them any ships they could use. And we were able to make enough trouble on our way out to let General Kryll sneak Travia Chan and her people out from under the Imperials' collective snout."

"That's something, I guess," Wedge said. "What was it got you, numbers or tactics?"

"Both," Pash said with a grimace. "I don't think Thrawn was there personally, but he sure planned out the assault. I've got to tell you, Wedge, that those clones of his are the creepiest things I've ever tangled with. It's like going up against stormtroopers: same rabid dedication, same cold-blooded machine-precision fighting. The only difference is that they're everywhere now instead of just handling shock-troop duty."

"Tell me about it," Wedge agreed soberly. "We had to fight off two TIE fighter squadrons of the things in the first Qat Chrystac assault. They were pulling stunts I didn't think TIEs were capable of."

Pash nodded. "General Kryll figures Thrawn must be picking his best people for his cloning templets."

"He'd be stupid to do anything else. What about Varth? Did he make it out?"

"I don't know," Pash said. "We lost contact with him during the retreat. I'm still hoping he was able to punch through the other side of the pincer and hook up with one of the units at Fedje or Ketaris."

Wedge thought about the handful of times he'd gone nose-to-nose with Wing Commander Varth over something, usually involving spare parts or maintenance time. The man was a bitter, caustic-mouthed tyrant, with the single redeeming talent of being able to throw his starfighters against ridiculous odds and then get them back out again. "He'll make it," Wedge said. "He's too contrary to roll over and die just for the Empire's convenience."

"Maybe." Pash nodded toward the center of the room. "Looks like we're ready to start."

Wedge turned back as the buzz of conversation around them faded away. Admiral Ackbar was standing by the central holo table, flanked by General Crix Madine and Colonel Bren Derlin. "Officers of the New Republic," Ackbar greeted them gravely, his large Mon Calamari eyes rotating to take in the entire war room. "None of you needs to be reminded that in the past few weeks our war against the remnants of the Empire has changed from what was once called a mopping-up exercise to a battle for our very survival. For the moment, the advantage of resources and personnel is still ours; but even as we speak that advantage is in danger of slipping away. Less tangible but no less serious are the ways in which Grand Admiral Thrawn is seeking to undermine our resolve and morale. It is time for us to throw both aspects of this attack back into the Empire's face." He looked at Madine. "General Madine."

"I assume that you've all been briefed on the innovative form of siege the Imperials have created around Coruscant," Madine said, tapping his light-pointer gently against his left palm. "They've been making some progress in clearing out the cloaked asteroids; but what they really need to get the job done is a crystal gravfield trap. We've been assigned to get them one."

"Sounds like fun," Pash muttered.

"Quiet," Wedge muttered back.

"Intelligence has located three of them," Madine continued. "All in Imperial-held space, naturally. The simplest one to go after is at Tangrene, helping to guard the new Ubiqtorate base they're putting together there. Lots of cargo and construction ships moving around, but relatively few combat ships. We've managed to insert some of our people into the cargo crews, and they report the place is ripe for the taking."

"Sounds a lot like Endor," someone commented from the bench across from Wedge. "How can we be sure it isn't a trap?"

"Actually, we're pretty sure it is," Madine said with a tight smile. "That's why we're going here instead."

He touched a switch. The holo projector rose from the center of the table, and a schematic appeared in the air above it. "The Imperial shipyards at Bilbringi," he identified it. "And I know what you're all saying to yourselves: it's big, it's well defended, and what in the galaxy is the high command thinking about? The answer is simple: it's big, it's well defended, and it's the last place the Imperials will expect us to hit."

"Moreover, if we succeed, we will have severely damaged their shipbuilding capability," Ackbar added. "As well as putting to rest the growing belief in Grand Admiral Thrawn's infallibility."

Which assumed, of course, that Thrawn was fallible. Wedge thought about pointing that out, decided against it. Everyone here was probably already thinking it, anyway.

"The operation will consist of two parts," Madine went on. "We certainly don't want to disappoint the Imperials planning the trap for us at Tangrene, so Colonel Derlin will be in charge of creating the illusion that that system is indeed our target. While he does that, Admiral Ackbar and I will be organizing the actual attack on Bilbringi. Any questions?"

There was a moment of silence. Then, Pash raised his hand. "What happens if the Imperials pick up on the Bilbringi attack and miss the Tangrene preparations entirely?"

Madine smiled thinly. "We'd be most disappointed in them. All right, gentlemen, we have an assault force to organize. Let's get started."

The bedroom was dark and warm and quiet, murmuring with the faint nighttime noises of the Imperial City outside the windows and the more subtle sounds of the sleeping infants across the room. Listening to the sounds, inhaling the familiar aromas of home, Leia stared at the ceiling and wondered what had awakened her.

"Do you require anything, Lady Vader?" a soft Noghri voice came from the shadows beside the door.

"No, Mobvekhar, thank you," Leia said. She hadn't made any noise—he must have picked up on the change in her breathing pattern. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to disturb you."

"You did not," the Noghri assured her. "Are you troubled?"

"I don't know," she said. It was starting to come back now. "I had—not a dream, exactly. More like a subconscious flash of insight. A piece of a puzzle trying to fit into place."

"Do you know which piece?"

Leia shook her head. "I don't even know which puzzle."

"Did it relate to the siege of stones in the sky above?" Mobvekhar asked. "Or with the mission of your consort and the son of Vader?"

"I'm not sure," Leia said, frowning with concentration into the darkness and running through the short-term memory enhancement techniques Luke had taught her. Slowly, the half-remembered dream images started to sharpen. . . . "It was something Luke said. No. It was something Mara said. Something Luke did. They fit together somehow. I don't know how . . . but I know it's important."

"Then you will find the answer," Mobvekhar said firmly. "You are the Lady Vader. The Mal'ary'ush of the Lord Vader. You will succeed at whatever goal you set for yourself."

Leia smiled in the darkness. It wasn't just words. Mobvekhar and the other Noghri truly believed that. "Thank you," she said, taking a deep breath and feeling a renewing of her own spirit. Yes, she would succeed. If for no other reason than to justify the trust that the Noghri people had placed in her.

Across the room, she could sense the restlessness and growing hunger that meant the twins would be waking up soon. Reaching past the lightsaber half hidden beneath her pillow, she pulled her robe over to her. Whatever this important puzzle piece was she'd stumbled on, it would wait until morning.

Chapter 20

The last surviving Rebel ship flickered with pseudomotion and vanished into hyperspace . . . and after a thirty-hour battle, the heart of Kanchen sector was finally theirs. "Secure the fleet from full battle status, Captain," Thrawn ordered, his voice grimly satisfied as he stood at the side viewport. "Deploy for planetary bombardment, and have Captain Harbid transmit our terms of surrender to the Xa Fel government."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, keying in the order.

Thrawn half turned to face him. "And send a further message to all ships," he added. "Well done."

Pellaeon smiled. Yes; the Grand Admiral did indeed know how to lead his men. "Yes, sir," he said, and transmitted the message. On his board, a light went on: a preflagged message had just come through decrypt. He pulled it up, skimmed through it—

"A report from Tangrene?" Thrawn asked, still gazing out at the helpless world lying below them.

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon nodded. "The Rebels have sent two more freighters into the system. Long-range scans suggest that they off-loaded something in the outer system on the way in, but Intelligence has so far been unable to locate or identify the drops."

"Instruct them not to try," Thrawn said. "We don't want our prey frightened off."

Pellaeon nodded, marveling once again at the Grand Admiral's ability to read his opponents. Up until twenty hours ago he would have sworn the Rebels wouldn't be audacious enough to commit this many forces to a battle just to get hold of a CGT array. Apparently, they were. "We're also getting reports of Rebel ships drifting quietly into the Tangrene area," he added, skimming down the report again. "Warships, starfighters, support craft—the whole range."

"Good," Thrawn said. But there was something preoccupied and troubled about the way he clasped his hands behind his back.

A message appeared on Pellaeon's board: the Xa Fel government had accepted Harbid's terms. "Word from the Death's Head, Admiral," he said. "Xa Fel has surrendered."

"Not unexpectedly," Thrawn said. "Inform Captain Harbid that he will handle the landings and troop deployments. You, Captain, will reconfigure the fleet into defensive formation until planetary defenses have been secured."

"Yes, sir." Pellaeon frowned at the Grand Admiral's back. "Is anything wrong, Admiral?"

"I don't know," Thrawn said slowly. "I'll be in my private command room, Captain. Join me there in one hour."

He turned and favored Pellaeon with a tight smile. "Perhaps by then I'll have an answer to that question."

Gillespee finished reading and handed the data pad across the table to Mazzic. "You never cease to amaze me, Karrde," he said, his voice just loud enough to be heard over the tapcafe's background noise. "Where in space do you dig this stuff up from, anyway?"

"Around," Karrde said, waving his hand vaguely. "Just around."

"That doesn't tell me mynock spit," Gillespee complained.

"I don't think it was meant to," Mazzic said dryly, handing the data pad back to Karrde. "I agree; it's very interesting. The question is whether we can believe it."

"The information itself is reliable," Karrde said. "My interpretation of it, of course, is certainly open to question."

Mazzic shook his head. "I don't know. It seems like a pretty desperate move to me."

"I wouldn't say desperate," Karrde disagreed. "Call it instead a return to the bold tactics the Rebel Alliance used to be known for. Personally, I think a move like this is long overdue—they've allowed themselves to be put on the defensive far longer than they should have."

"That doesn't change the fact that if this doesn't work they're going to lose a lot of ships," Mazzic pointed out. "Up to two entire sector fleets, if you can believe these numbers."

"True," Karrde agreed. "But if it does work, they get a major victory against Thrawn and an equally major lift in morale. Not to mention a CGT array."

"Yeah, that's another thing," Gillespee put in. "What do they need a CGT for, anyway?"

"It supposedly has something to do with the reason Coruscant has been closed to civilian traffic for the past few days," Karrde said. "That's all I know."

Mazzic leaned back in his seat and fixed Karrde with a speculative look. "Forget what they need it for. What are you proposing we do about it?"

Karrde shrugged. "It looks to me like the New Republic is fairly desperate to get their hands on a CGT. If they're willing to fight for one, I assume they'd be even more willing to pay for one."

"Seems reasonable," Mazzic agreed. "So what do you want us to do, sneak into Tangrene before they get there?"

"Not really," Karrde shook his head. "I thought that while everyone was busy fighting at Tangrene, we'd pick up the CGT at Bilbringi."

Mazzic's smile vanished. "You're joking."

"Not a bad idea, really," Gillespee put in, slowly swirling the remains of the drink in his cup. "We slip in before the attack starts, then grab the CGT and run."

"Through half the Imperial fleet?" Mazzic countered. "Come on—I've seen the kind of firepower they keep there."

"I doubt they'll have more than a skeleton defense there." Karrde raised an eyebrow. "Unless you seriously think Thrawn won't anticipate and prepare for the New Republic's move on Tangrene."

"Point," Mazzic conceded. "They can't afford to let the New Republic have a victory there, can they?"

"Particularly not at Tangrene," Karrde nodded. "That's where General Bel Iblis successfully hit them once before."

Mazzic grunted and pulled the data pad over in front of him again. Karrde let him reread the information and analysis, giving the tapcafe a leisurely scan as he waited. Near the main entrance, Aves and Gillespee's lieutenant Faughn were sitting together at one of the tables, doing a good job of looking inconspicuous. Across the way at the rear entrance, Mazzic's bodyguard Shada was playing the flirtatious hostess role for Dankin and Torve, the whole routine being convincingly leered at by Rappapor and Oshay, two more of Gillespee's people. Three more tables of backup forces were scattered elsewhere throughout the tapcafe, primed and ready. This time, none of them were taking any chances with Imperial interference.

"It won't be easy," Mazzic warned at last. "Thrawn was furious about that raid we pulled. They've probably redone their whole security setup by now."

"All the better," Karrde said. "They won't have found the holes in it yet. Are you in or out?"

Mazzic looked down at the data pad. "I might be in," he growled. "But only if you can get a confirmation on the time of this Tangrene thing. I don't want Thrawn anywhere within a hundred light-years of Bilbringi when we hit the place."

"That shouldn't be a problem," Karrde said. "We know the systems where the New Republic is assembling their forces. I'll send some of my people to poke around and see what they can turn up."

"What if they can't get anything?"

Karrde smiled. "I need to have Ghent write us onto their payroll anyway," he pointed out. "As long as he's in the system, he might as well check on their battle plans, too."

For a moment Mazzic just stared at him. Then, suddenly, the frown vanished and he actually chuckled. "You know, Karrde, I've never seen anyone play both ends against the middle the way you do. Okay. I'm in."

"Glad to have you," Karrde nodded. "Gillespee?"

"I've already seen Thrawn's clones in action," Gillespee reminded him grimly. "You bet I'm in. Besides, if we win maybe I can get that land back the Empire stole from me on Ukio."

"I'll put in a good word for you with the New Republic," Karrde promised. "All right, then. I'm taking the Wild Karrde to Coruscant, but I'll be leaving Aves behind to coordinate my part of the attack group. He'll give you the operations plan when you check in."

"Sounds good," Mazzic said as they all got to their feet. "You know, Karrde, I just hope I'm around to see the day the New Republic catches up with you. Whether they give you a medal or just shoot you—either way, it'll be a terrific show."

Karrde smiled at him. "I rather hope to be there that day myself," he said. "Good flights, gentlemen; I'll see you at Bilbringi."

The brilliant green turbolaser blast flashed downward from the fuzzy-looking Star Destroyer in the distance beyond. It splashed slightly against the unseen energy shield, then reappeared a short distance away, continuing onward—

"Stop," Admiral Drayson said.

The record froze, the hazy splash of turbolaser fire looking angular and rather artificial as it sat there in stop-frame mode on the main display. "I apologize for the quality here," Drayson said, stepping over to tap it with his light-pointer. "Macrobinocular records can be enhanced only so much before the algorithms start breaking down. But even so, I think you can all see what's happening. The Star Destroyer's blast is not, in fact, penetrating Ukio's planetary shield. What appears to be that same blast is actually a second shot, fired from a cloaked vessel inside the shield."

Leia peered at the hazy picture. It didn't seem nearly that obvious to her. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"Quite sure," Drayson said, touching his light-pointer to the empty space between the splash and the continuing green fire. "We have spectral and energy-line data on the beams themselves; but this gap by itself is really all the proof we need. That's the bulk of the second ship—most likely a Carrack-class light cruiser, from the size."

He lowered the light-pointer and looked around the table. "In other words, the Empire's new superweapon is nothing more than an extremely clever fraud."

Leia thought about that meeting in Admiral Ackbar's rooms, back when he was under suspicion of treason. "Ackbar once warned Han and me that a Grand Admiral would find ways to use a cloaking shield against us."

"I don't think you'd find anyone arguing that point," Drayson nodded. "At any rate, this should put an end to this particular gambit. We'll put out an alert to all planetary forces that if the Empire tries it again, all they need to do is direct a saturation fire at the spot where the turbolaser blasts appear to penetrate the shield."

"Fraud or not, it was still one highly impressive show," Bel Iblis commented. "The position and timing were exquisitely handled. What do you think, Leia—that insane Jedi Luke locked horns with on Jomark?"

"I don't think there's any doubt," Leia said, a shiver running through her. "We've already seen this kind of coordination between forces in Thrawn's earlier campaigns. And we know from Mara that C'baoth and Thrawn are working together."

Mentioning Mara's name was a mistake. There was a general, uncomfortable shifting in seats around the table as the emotional sense in the room chilled noticeably. They'd all heard Leia's reasoning for her unilateral decision to release Mara, and none of them had liked it.

Bel Iblis broke the awkward silence first. "Where did this macrobinocular record come from, Admiral?"

"From that smuggler, Talon Karrde," Drayson said. He threw a significant look at Leia. "Another outsider who came here offering valuable information that didn't pan out."

Leia bristled. "That's not fair," she insisted. "The fact we lost the Katana fleet wasn't Karrde's fault." She looked at Councilor Fey'lya, sitting silently at the table, doing his private Bothan penance. If Fey'lya hadn't been making that insane bid for power . . .

She looked back at Drayson. "It was nobody's fault," she added quietly, releasing at last the final lingering dregs of resentment at Fey'lya and allowing them to drain away. The recognition of his failure was already paralyzing the Bothan. She couldn't allow long-dead anger to do the same to her.

Bel Iblis cleared his throat. "I think what Leia's trying to say is that without Karrde's help we might have lost more than just the Katana fleet. Whatever you think of smugglers in general or Karrde in particular, we owe him."

"Interesting that you should say that, General," Drayson said dryly. "Karrde seems to feel the same way. In exchange for this record and certain other minor items of intelligence, he's drawn rather liberally from a special New Republic credit line." He looked at Leia again. "A line apparently set up by Councilor Organa Solo's brother."

Commander Sesfan, Ackbar's representative to the Council, rolled his huge Mon Calamari eyes toward Leia. "Jedi Skywalker authorized payments to a smuggler?" he said, his gravelly voice sounding astonished.

"He did," Drayson confirmed. "Completely without authorization, of course. We'll close it off immediately."

"You'll do no such thing," Mon Mothma's quiet voice came from the head of the table. "Whether Karrde is officially on our side or not, he's clearly willing to help us. That makes him worthy of our support."

"But he is a smuggler," Sesfan objected.

"So was Han," Leia reminded him. "So was Lando Calrissian, once. Both of them became generals."

"After they joined us," Sesfan countered. "Karrde has made no such commitment."

"It doesn't matter," Mon Mothma said. Her voice was still quiet, but there was steel beneath it. "We need all the allies we can get. Official or otherwise."

"Unless he's setting us up," Drayson pointed out darkly. "Gaining our trust with things like this macrobinocular record so that he can feed us disinformation later. And in the meantime profiting rather handsomely from it."

"We'll simply have to make certain we spot any such duplicity," Mon Mothma told him. "But I don't believe that will happen. Luke Skywalker is a Jedi . . . and he, clearly, has some trust in this man Karrde. Regardless, for now, our focus should be on those parts of our destiny which are in our hands. Admiral Drayson, have you the latest report on the Bilbringi operation?"

"Yes," Drayson nodded, pulling out a data card. He inserted it into the display slot, and as he did so, Leia heard the faint beep of a comlink from beside her. Winter pulled the device from her belt and acknowledged softly into it. Leia couldn't make out the reply, but she felt the sudden flicker in Winter's sense. "Trouble?" she murmured.

"If I may have everyone's attention?" Drayson said, just a little too loudly.

Leia returned back to him, feeling her face warm, as Winter pushed her chair back and slipped over to the door. Drayson threw a glare at her back, apparently decided it wasn't worth invoking the usual sealed-room rule. The door slid open at Winter's touch and an unseen person pressed a data card into her hand. The door slid shut again— "Well?" Drayson demanded. "I trust this is something that couldn't wait?"

"I'm certain it could have," Winter said coolly, giving Drayson her full antibluster gaze as she returned to her seat and sat down. "For you, Your Highness," she said, handing Leia the data card. "The coordinates of the planet Wayland."

A ripple of surprise went around the room as Leia took the card. "That was fast," Drayson said, his voice tinged with suspicion. "I was under the impression this place was going to be a lot harder to find."

Leia shrugged, trying to suppress her own twinge of uneasiness. That had been her impression, too. "Apparently it wasn't."

"Show it to us," Mon Mothma said.

Leia slid the data card into the slot and keyed for a visual. A sector map appeared on the main display, with familiar names floating beside several of the stars. In the center, surrounded by a group of unlabeled stars, one of the systems flashed red. At the bottom of the map was a short list of planetary data and a few lines of text. "So that's the Emperor's rat's nest," Bel Iblis murmured, leaning forward as he studied it, "I always wondered where he hid all those interesting little tidbits that seemed to mysteriously vanish from official storehouses and depots."

"If that's really the place," Drayson murmured.

"I presume you can confirm the information came from Captain Solo," Mon Mothma said, looking at Winter.

Winter hesitated. "It didn't come from him, exactly," she said.

Leia frowned at her. "What do you mean, not exactly? Was it from Luke?"

A muscle in Winter's cheek twitched. "All I can say is that the source is reliable."

There was a short moment of silence as everyone digested that. "Reliable," Mon Mothma said.

"Yes," Winter nodded.

Mon Mothma threw a look at Leia. "This Council is not accustomed to having information withheld from it," she said. "I want to know where these coordinates came from."

"I'm sorry," Winter said quietly. "It's not my secret to tell."

"Whose secret is it?"

"I can't tell you that, either."

Mon Mothma's face darkened. "It doesn't matter," Bel Iblis put in before she could speak. "Not for right now. Whether this planet is the actual cloning center or not, there's nothing we can do about it until the Bilbringi operation is over."

Leia looked at him. "We're not sending any backup?"

"Impossible," Sesfan growled, shaking his huge Mon Calamari head. "All available ships and personnel are already committed to the Bilbringi attack. Too many regions and systems have been left undefended as it is."

"Especially when we don't even know if this is the right place," Drayson added. "It could just as easily be an Imperial trap."

"It's not a trap," Leia insisted. "Mara's not working for the Empire anymore."

"We only have your word for that—"

"It still doesn't matter," Bel Iblis cut him off, his senatorial voice cutting through the growing argument. "Look at the bottom of the map, Leia—it says all indications are that their landing was undetected. Would you really want to risk that element of surprise by sending another ship in after them?"

Leia felt her stomach tighten. Unfortunately, he had a point.

"Then perhaps the Bilbringi attack should be postponed," Fey'lya said.

Leia turned to look at him, dimly aware that the whole table was doing likewise. It was practically the first time the Bothan had spoken at a Council meeting since his bid for power had ignominiously collapsed out at the Katana fleet. "I'm afraid that's out of the question, Councilor Fey'lya," Mon Mothma said. "Aside from all the preparations that would have to be discarded, it's absolutely imperative that we clear out these cloaked asteroids hanging over our heads."

"Why?" Fey'lya demanded, a rippling wave running through the fur of his neck and down his shoulders. "The shield protects us. We have adequate supplies for many months. We have full communication with the rest of the New Republic. Is it merely the fear of looking weak and helpless?"

"Appearances and perceptions are important to the New Republic," Mon Mothma reminded him. "And properly so. The Empire rules by force and threat; we rule instead by inspiration and leadership. We cannot be perceived to be cowering here in fear of our lives."

"This is beyond image and perception," Fey'lya insisted, the fur flattening across the back of his head. "The Bothan people knew the Emperor—knew his desires and his ambitions, perhaps better than all who were not his allies and servants. There are things in that storehouse which must never again see light. Weapons and devices which Thrawn will some day find and use against us unless we prevent him from doing so."

"And we will do so," Mon Mothma assured him. "And soon. But not until we've damaged the Bilbringi shipyards and obtained a CGT array."

"And what of Captain Solo and Councilor Organa Solo's brother?"

The lines around Mon Mothma's mouth tightened. For all the rigid military logic, Leia could see that she didn't like abandoning them there, either. "All we can do for them right now is to continue with our plans," she said quietly. "To draw the Grand Admiral's attention toward our supposed attack on Tangrene." She looked at Drayson. "Which we were about to discuss. Admiral?"

Drayson stepped up to the display again. "We'll start with the current status of preparations for the Tangrene feint," he said, keying his light-pointer to call up the proper display.

Leia threw a sideways glance at Fey'lya, and at the obvious signs of agitation still visible in the Bothan's face and fur movements. What was in the mountain, she wondered, that he was so afraid Thrawn would get hold of?

Perhaps it was just as well she didn't know.

Pellaeon stepped into the dimly lit entry room just outside Thrawn's private command room, his eyes darting around. Rukh was here somewhere, waiting to play his little Noghri games. He took a step toward the door to the main chamber, took another—

There was a touch of air on the back of his neck. Pellaeon spun around, hands snapping up in half-remembered academy self-defense training.

There was no one there. He looked around again, searching for where the Noghri might have taken cover—

"Captain Pellaeon," the familiar catlike voice mewed from behind him.

He spun back again. Again, no one was there; but even as his eyes searched the walls and nonexistent cover, Rukh stepped around from behind him. "You are expected," the Noghri said, gesturing with his slender assassin's knife toward the main door.

Pellaeon glared at him. Someday, he promised himself darkly, he would persuade Thrawn that a Grand Admiral of the Empire didn't need an arrogant alien bodyguard to protect him. And when that happened, he was going to take a very personal pleasure in having Rukh killed. "Thank you," he growled, and went in.

He'd expected the command room to be filled with Thrawn's usual eclectic collection of alien art, and he was right. But with one minor difference: even to Pellaeon's untrained eye it was clear that two very different styles of art were being represented. They were spread out along opposite sides of the room, with a large tactical holo of the Tangrene system filling the center.

"Come in, Captain," Thrawn called from the double display ring as Pellaeon paused in the doorway. "What news from Tangrene?"

"The Rebels are still moving forces into strike positions," Pellaeon told him, making his way between the sculptures and the tactical holo toward Thrawn's command chair. "Sneaking their devious way into our trap."

"How very convenient of them." Thrawn gestured to his right. "Mon Calamari art," he identified it. "What do you think?"

Pellaeon gave it a quick look as he came up to the double display ring. It looked about as repulsive and primitive as the Mon Calamari themselves. "Very interesting," he said aloud.

"Isn't it," Thrawn agreed. "Those two pieces in particular—they were created by Admiral Ackbar himself."

Pellaeon eyed the indicated sculptures. "I didn't know Ackbar had any interest in art."

"A minor one only," Thrawn said. "These were composed some time ago, before he joined the Rebellion. Still, they provide useful insights into his character. As do those," he added, gesturing to his left. "Artwork once chosen personally by our Corellian adversary."

Pellaeon looked at them with new interest. So Senator Bel Iblis had picked these out himself, had he? "Where were these from, his old Imperial Senate office?"

"Those were," Thrawn said, indicating the nearest group. "Those were from his home; those from his private ship. Intelligence found these records, more or less accidentally, in the data from our last Obroa-skai information raid. So the Rebels continue to edge toward our trap, do they?"

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, glad to be getting back to something he could understand. "We've had two more reports of Rebel support ships moving into positions at the edge of the Draukyze system."

"But not obviously."

Pellaeon frowned. "Excuse me, Admiral?"

"What I mean is that they're being highly secretive about their preparations," Thrawn said thoughtfully. "Quietly detaching intelligence and support ships from other assignments; moving and re-forming sector fleets to free capital ships for service—that sort of thing. Never obviously. Always making Imperial Intelligence work hard to put the pieces together."

He looked up at Pellaeon, his glowing red eyes glittering in the dim light. "Almost as if Tangrene was indeed their true target."

Pellaeon stared at him. "Are you saying it isn't?"

"That's correct, Captain," Thrawn said, gazing out at the artwork.

Pellaeon looked at the Tangrene holo. Intelligence had put a 94 percent probability on this. "But if they're not going to hit Tangrene . . . then where?"

"The last place we would normally expect them," Thrawn said, reaching over to touch a switch on his command board. Tangrene system vanished, to be replaced by—

Pellaeon felt his jaw drop. "Bilbringi?" He wrenched his eyes back to his commander. "Sir, that's . . ."

"Insane?" Thrawn cocked a blue-black eyebrow. "Of course it is. The insanity of men and aliens who've learned the hard way that they can't match me face-to-face. And so they attempt to use my own tactical skill and insight against me. They pretend to walk into my trap, gambling that I'll notice the subtlety of their movements and interpret that as genuine intent. And while I then congratulate myself on my perception" —he gestured at the Bilbringi holo— "they prepare their actual attack."

Pellaeon looked at Bel Iblis's old artwork. "We might want to wait for confirmation before we shift any forces from Tangrene, Admiral," he suggested cautiously. "We could intensify Intelligence activity in the Bilbringi region. Or perhaps Delta Source could confirm it."

"Unfortunately, Delta Source has been silenced," Thrawn said. "But we have no need of confirmation. This is the Rebels' plan, and we will not risk tipping our hand with anything so obvious as a heightened Intelligence presence. They believe they've deceived me. Our overriding task now is to make certain they continue to believe that."

He smiled grimly. "After all, Captain, it makes no difference whether we crush them at Tangrene or at Bilbringi. No difference whatsoever."

Chapter 21

The lopsided-helix shape of the seed pod hovered a meter and a half in front of Mara, practically daring her to strike it down. She eyed it darkly, Skywalker's lightsaber held ready in an unorthodox but versatile two-handed grip. She'd already missed the pod twice; she didn't intend to do so a third time. "Don't rush it," Skywalker cautioned her. "Concentrate, and let the Force flow into you. Try to anticipate the pod's motion."

Easy for him to say, she thought sourly; after all, he was the one controlling it. The pod twitched a millimeter closer, daring her again. . . .

And suddenly, she decided she was tired of this game. Reaching out with the Force, she got a grip of her own on the pod. Briefly immobilized, it managed a single tremor before she jabbed the lightsaber straight out, stabbing it neatly dead center. "There," she said, closing down the weapon. "I did it."

She'd expected Skywalker to be angry. To her mild surprise, and not so mild annoyance, he wasn't in the least. "Good," he said encouragingly. "Very good. It's difficult to split your attention between two separate mental and physical activities that way. And you did it well."

"Thanks," she muttered, tossing the lightsaber away from her toward the bushes. It curved smoothly around in midair as Skywalker pulled it back to land in his outstretched hand. "So is that it?" she added.

Skywalker looked over his shoulder. Solo and Calrissian were hunched over the protocol droid, which had stopped complaining about Wayland's terrain, vegetation, and animal life and was instead complaining about what crunching through that stone crust had done to its foot. Skywalker's astromech droid was hovering nearby with its sensor antenna extended, running through its usual repertoire of encouraging noises. A couple of steps away, the Wookiee was rummaging through one of their packs, probably for some tool or other.

"I think we've got time for a few more exercises," Skywalker decided, turning back to face her. "That technique of yours is very interesting—Obi-wan never taught me anything about using the tip of the lightsaber blade."

"The Emperor's philosophy was to use everything you had available," Mara said.

"Somehow, that doesn't surprise me," Skywalker said dryly. He held out the lightsaber. "Let's try something else. Go ahead and take the lightsaber."

Reaching out with the Force, Mara snatched it away from his loose grip, wondering idly what he would do if she tried sometime to ignite the weapon first. She wasn't sure she could handle anything as small as a switch, but it'd be worth trying just to see him scramble away from the blade.

And if, in the process, she happened to accidentally kill him . . .

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.

She squeezed the lightsaber hard. Not yet, she told the voice firmly. I still need him. "All right," she growled. "What now?"

He didn't get a chance to answer. Behind him, the astromech droid suddenly started squealing excitedly.

"What?" Solo demanded, his blaster already out of its holster.

"He says he's just noticed something worth investigating there to the side," the protocol droid translated, gesturing to his left. "A group of vines, I believe he's saying. Though I could be mistaken—with all the acid damage—"

"Come on, Chewie, let's check it out," Solo cut him off, getting to his feet and starting up the shallow slope of the creek bed.

Skywalker caught Mara's eye. "Come on," he said, and started off after them.

There wasn't very far to go. Just inside the first row of trees, hidden from view by a bush, was another set of vines like the ones they'd had to occasionally cut through the last couple of days.

Except that this group had already been cut. Cut, and then bunched up out of the way like a pile of thick, tangled rope.

"I think that ends any discussion as to whether someone out there is helping us along," Calrissian said, studying one of the cut ends.

"I think you're right," Solo said. "No predator would have bunched them up like this."

The Wookiee rumbled something under his breath and pulled on the bush in front of the vines. To Mara's surprise, it came away from the ground without any effort at all. "And wouldn't have bothered with camouflage, either," Calrissian said as the Wookiee turned it over. "Knife cut, looks like. Just like the vines."

"And like the clawbird from yesterday," Solo agreed grimly. "Luke? We been getting company?"

"I've sensed some of the natives," Skywalker said. "But they never seem to come very close before they leave again." He looked back downslope at the protocol droid, waiting anxiously for them in the creek bed. "You suppose it has anything to do with the droids?"

Solo snorted. "You mean like on Endor, when those fuzzball Ewoks thought Threepio was a god?"

"Something like that," Skywalker nodded. "They could be getting close enough to hear either Threepio or Artoo."

"Maybe." Solo looked around. "When do they come around?"

"Mostly around sundown," Skywalker said. "So far, anyway."

"Well, next time they do, let me know," Solo said, jamming his blaster back into its holster and starting back down the slope to the creek bed. "It's about time we all had a little chat together. Come on, let's get moving."

The darkness was growing thicker, and the camp nearly put together for the night, when the wisps of sensation came. "Han?" Luke called softly. "They're here."

Han nodded, tapping Lando on the back as he drew his blaster. "How many?"

Luke focused his mind, working at separating the distinct parts out of the overall sensation. "Looks like five or six of them, coming in from that direction." He pointed to the side.

"Is that just in the first group?" Mara asked.

First group? Luke frowned, letting his focus open up again. She was right: there was a second group coming up behind the first. "That's just the first group," he confirmed. "Second group . . . I get five or six there, too. I'm not sure, but they might be a different species from the first."

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

"I don't like it," Lando said, fingering his blaster uneasily. "Mara, how well do these species usually get along?"

"Not all that well," she said. "There was some trade and other stuff going on when I was here; but there were also stories about long, three-way wars between them and the human colonists."

Chewbacca growled a suggestion: that the aliens might be joining forces against them. "That's a fun thought," Han said. "How about it, Luke?"

Luke strained, but it was no use. "Sorry," he said. "There's plenty of emotion there, but I don't have any basis for figuring out what kind."

"They've stopped," Mara said, her face tight with concentration. "Both groups."

Han grimaced. "I guess this is it. Lando, Mara—you stay here and guard the camp. Luke, Chewie, let's go check 'em out."

They headed up the rocky slope and into the forest, moving as quietly as possible among the bushes and dead leaves underfoot. "They know we're coming yet?" Han muttered over his shoulder.

Luke stretched out with the Force. "I can't tell," he said. "But they don't seem to be coming any closer."

Chewbacca rumbled something Luke didn't catch. "Could be," Han said. "It'd be pretty stupid to hold a council of war this close to their target, though."

And then, ahead and to their left, Luke caught a shadowy movement beside a thick tree trunk. "Watch it!" he warned, his lightsaber igniting with a snap-hiss. In the green-white light from the blade a small figure in a tightfitting hooded garment could be seen as it ducked back behind the trunk, barely getting out of the way as Han's quick shot blew a sizable pit in one side of the trunk. Chewbacca's bowcaster bolt was a split second behind Han's, gouging out a section of the trunk on the other side. Through the erupting cloud of smoke and splinters the figure could be seen briefly as it darted from the rapidly decreasing cover of its chosen tree toward another, thicker trunk. Even as Han swung his blaster to track it, a strange warbling split the air, sounding like a dozen alien birds—

And with a roar that was part recognition, part understanding, and part relief, Chewbacca swung the end of his bowcaster into Han's blaster, sending the shot wide of its intended target. "Chewie—!" Han barked.

"No—he's right," Luke cut him off. Suddenly, it had all come together for him, too. "You—stop."

The order was unnecessary. The shadowy figure had already come to a halt, standing unprotected in the open, its hooded face shaded from the faint light of Luke's lightsaber.

Luke took a step toward it. "I'm Luke Skywalker," he said formally. "Brother of Leia Organa Solo, son of the Lord Darth Vader. Who are you?"

"I am Ekhrikhor clan Bakh'tor," the gravelly Noghri voice replied. "I greet you, son of Vader."

The clearing Ekhrikhor led them to was close, only twenty meters or so further along the vector Luke had started them on in the first place. The aliens were there, all right: two different types, five of each, standing on the far side of a thick fallen tree trunk. On the near side stood two more Noghri in those camouflaged outfits of theirs with the hoods thrown back. Propped up on the log between the two sides was some sort of compact worklight, giving off just enough of a glow for Han to pick out the details of the nearest aliens.

It wasn't very encouraging. The group on the right were a head taller than the Noghri facing them and maybe a head shorter than Han. Covered with lumpy plates, they looked more like walking rock piles than anything else. The group on the left were nearly as tall as Chewbacca, with four arms each and a shiny, bluish-crystal skin that reminded Han of the brownish thing they'd had to shoot off Threepio their first day here. "Friendly-looking bunch," he muttered to Luke as their group moved toward the last line of trees between them and the clearing.

"They are the Myneyrshi and Psadans," Ekhrikhor said. "They have been seeking to confront you."

"And you've been driving them off?" Luke asked.

"They sought to confront," the Noghri repeated. "We could not permit that."

They stopped just inside the clearing. A rustle ran through the aliens, one that didn't sound all that friendly. "I get the feeling we aren't all that welcome," Han said. "Luke?"

Beside him, he felt Luke shake his head. "I still can't read anything solid," he said. "What's this all about, Ekhrikhor?"

"They have indicated they wish a conversation with us," the Noghri said. "Perhaps to decide whether they will seek to give us battle."

Han gave the aliens a quick once-over. They all seemed to be wearing knives, and there were a couple of bows in evidence, but he didn't see anything more advanced. "They better hope they brought an army with them," he said.

"We don't want to fight at all if we can avoid it," Luke reproved him mildly. "How are you going to communicate with them?"

"One of them learned a little of the Empire's Basic when the storehouse was being built beneath the mountain," Ekhrikhor said, pointing to the Myneyrsh standing closest to the work light. "He will attempt to translate."

"We might be able to do a little better." Luke raised his eyebrows at Han. "What do you think?"

"It's worth a try," Han agreed, pulling out his comlink. It was about time Threepio earned his keep, anyway. "Lando?"

"Right here," Lando's voice came instantly. "You find the aliens?"

"Yeah, we found them," Han said. "Plus a surprise or two. Have Mara bring Threepio here—if she heads out the way we went she'll run right into us."

"Got it," Lando said. "What about me?"

"I don't think this bunch will give us any trouble," Han said, giving the aliens another once-over. "You and Artoo might as well stay there and keep an eye on the camp. Oh, and if you see some short guys with camouflage suits and lots of teeth, don't shoot. They're on our side."

"I'm glad," Lando said dryly. "I think. Anything else?"

Han looked at the groups of shadowy aliens, all of them staring straight back at him. "Yeah—cross your fingers. We might be about to pick up some allies. Or else a whole lot of trouble down the road."

"Right. Mara and Threepio are on their way. Good luck."

"Thanks." Shutting off the comlink, Han returned it to his belt. "They're coming," he told Luke.

"There is no need for them to guard your camp," Ekhrikhor said. "The Noghri will protect it."

"That's okay," Han said. "It's getting crowded enough here as it is." He eyed Ekhrikhor. "So I was right. We were followed in."

"Yes," Ekhrikhor said, bowing his head. "And for that deception I beg your forgiveness, consort of the Lady Vader. I and others did not feel it entirely honorable; but Cakhmaim clan Eikh'mir wished our presence to be kept hidden from you."

"Why?"

Ekhrikhor bowed again. "Cakhmaim clan Eikh'mir felt hostility from you in the Lady Vader's suite," he said. "He believed you would not willingly accept a guard of Noghri to accompany you."

Han looked at Luke, caught the kid's halfway try at hiding a grin. "Well, next time you see Cakhmaim, you tell him that I stopped passing up free help years ago," he told Ekhrikhor. "But as long as we're discussing hostility, you can knock off that 'consort of the Lady Vader' stuff. Call me Han, or Solo. Or Captain. Or practically anything else."

"Han clan Solo, maybe," Luke murmured.

Ekhrikhor brightened. "That is good," he said. "We beg your forgiveness, Han clan Solo."

Han looked at Luke. "I think you've been adopted," Luke said, fighting that grin again.

"Yeah," Han said. "Thanks. A lot."

"A little rapport never hurts," Luke pointed out. "Remember Endor."

"I'm not likely to forget," Han growled, feeling his lip twist. Sure, the little fuzzballs there had done their bit in that final battle against the second Death Star. That didn't change the fact that being made part of an Ewok tribe was one of the more ridiculous things he'd ever had to go through.

Still, the Ewoks had overwhelmed the Imperial troops by sheer weight of numbers. The Noghri, on the other hand— "How many of you are there here?" he asked Ekhrikhor.

"There are eight," the other replied. "Two each have traveled before, after, and on either side of you during your journey."

Han nodded, feeling a grudging trickle of unwilling respect for these things. Eight of them, silently killing or driving away predators and natives. Day and night both. And still finding time on top of it to clear their path of nuisances like clawbirds and vine snakes.

He looked down at Ekhrikhor. No, the adoption process didn't feel quite so ridiculous this time around.

From somewhere behind them came a familiar shuffling sound. Han turned, and a moment later the equally familiar golden figure of Threepio traipsed into view. Beside him and a half-step behind was Mara, blaster in hand. "Master Luke," Threepio called, his voice its usual mixture of relieved and anxious and just plain prissy.

"Over here, Threepio," Luke called back. "Think you can do some translation for us?"

"I'll do my best," the droid said. "As you know, I am fluent in over six million forms of communica—"

"I see you found the natives," Mara cut him off, giving the group by the log a quick survey as she and Threepio stepped into the clearing. Her eyes fell on Ekhrikhor— "And a little surprise, too," she added, her blaster quietly shifting its aim toward the Noghri.

"It's all right—he's a friend," Luke assured her, reaching toward her blaster.

"I don't think so," Mara said, twitching the weapon to the side out of his reach. "They're Noghri. They work for Thrawn."

"We serve him no longer," Ekhrikhor told her.

"That's true, Mara, they don't," Luke said.

"Maybe," Mara said. She still wasn't happy about it, but at least her blaster wasn't pointed exactly at Ekhrikhor anymore.

Across the clearing, the Myneyrsh nearest the log pulled what seemed to be a bleached-white stuffed clawbird from a shoulder pouch. Speaking inaudibly under his breath, he laid it in front of him beside the worklight. "What's that?" Han asked. "Lunch?"

"It is called the satna-chakka," Ekhrikhor said. "It is a bond of peace while this meeting lasts. They are ready to begin. You—Threepio-droid—come with me."

"Of course," Threepio said, not sounding exactly thrilled by the whole arrangement. "Master Luke . . . ?"

"I'll come with you," Luke soothed. "Han, Chewie—you stay here."

"No argument from me," Han said.

With a clearly reluctant Threepio in tow, Luke and the Noghri headed toward the log. The head Myneyrsh raised its upper two hands over his head, palm inwards. "Bidaesi charaa," he said, his voice surprisingly melodious. "Lyaaunu baaraemaa dukhnu phaeri."

"He announces the arrival of the strangers," Threepio said precisely. "Presumably, that refers to us. He fears, however, that we will bring danger and trouble again to his people."

Beside Han, Chewbacca rumbled a sarcastic comment. "No, they're not much for small talk," Han agreed. "Not much for diplomacy, either."

"We bring hope to your people," the chief Noghri countered. "If you let us pass, we will free you from the domination of the Empire."

Threepio translated, the melodious Myneyrshi words still coming out prissy, in Han's opinion. One of the lumpy Psadans made a chopping gesture and said something that sounded like a faint and distant scream with consonants scattered around in it. "He says that the Psadan people have long memories," Threepio translated. "Apparently, deliverers have come before but nothing has ever changed."

"Welcome to the real world," Han muttered.

Luke threw a look at him over his shoulder. "Ask him to explain, Threepio," he told the droid.

Threepio complied, quiet-screaming back at the Psadan and then throwing in a Myneyrshi translation, too, just to show he could do it. The Psadan's answer went on for several minutes, and Han's ears were starting to hurt by the time he was done.

"Well," Threepio said, tilting his head and settling into the professor mode Han had always hated. "There are many details—but I will pass those by for now," he added hastily, probably at a look from one of the Noghri. "The humans who came as colonists were the first invaders. They drove the native peoples from some of their lands, and were stopped only when their lightning bows and metal birds—those are their terms, of course—began to fail. Much later came the Empire, who as we know built into the forbidden mountain. They enslaved many of the native peoples to help on the project and drove others from their lands. After the builders left came someone who called himself the Guardian, and he, too, sought control over the native peoples. Finally, the one who called himself the Jedi Master came, and in a battle that lit up the sky he defeated the Guardian. For a time the native peoples thought they might be freed, but the Jedi Master brought humans and native peoples to himself and forced them to live together beneath the shadow of the forbidden mountain. Finally, the Empire has returned." Threepio tilted his head back again. "As you can see, Master Luke, we are merely the last in a long line of invaders."

"Except that we're not invaders," Luke said. "We're here to free them from the rule of the Empire."

"I understand that, Master Luke—"

"I know you do," Luke interrupted the droid. "Tell them that."

"Oh. Yes. Of course."

He started into his translation. "You ask me, I don't think they've had it all that bad," Han muttered to Chewbacca. "The Empire took whole planets away from some people."

"Primitives always have this reaction to visitors," Mara said. "They usually have long memories, too."

"Yeah. Maybe. You suppose that Jedi Master they were talking about was your pal C'baoth?"

"Who else?" Mara said grimly. "This must be where Thrawn found him."

Han felt his stomach tighten. "You think he's here now?"

"I don't sense anything," Mara said slowly. "Doesn't mean he can't come back."

The head Myneyrsh was talking again. Han let his gaze drift around the clearing. Were there other Myneyrshi and Psadans out there keeping an eye on the big debate? Luke hadn't said anything about backups, but they'd have to be crazy not to have them somewhere nearby.

Unless Ekhrikhor's pals had already taken care of them. If this didn't work, it could turn out to be handy having the Noghri around.

The Myneyrsh finished its speech. "I'm sorry, Master Luke," Threepio apologized. "They say they have no reason to assume we are any different than all those they have already spoken of."

"I understand their fears," Luke nodded. "Ask them how we can prove our good intentions."

Threepio started to translate; and as he did so, a hard Wookiee elbow jabbed into Han's shoulder. "What?" Han asked.

Chewbacca nodded toward his left, his bowcaster already up and tracking. Han followed the movement with his eyes—"Uh-oh."

"What is it?" Mara demanded.

Han opened his mouth; then, suddenly, there wasn't time to tell her. The wiry predator Chewbacca had spotted slinking through the tree branches had stopped slinking and was coiling itself to spring at the discussion group. "Look out!" he snapped instead, bringing his blaster up.

Chewbacca was faster. With a Wookiee hunter's roar, he fired, the bowcaster bolt slicing the predator nearly in half. It fell off its perch, crunching into the dead leaves, and lay still.

And over by the log, the whole group of Myneyrshi snarled.

"Watch it, Chewie," Han warned, shifting his aim toward the aliens.

"That might have been a mistake," Mara said tensely. "You're not supposed to fire weapons at a truce conference."

"You're not supposed to let the conference get eaten, either," Han retorted. Beside the Myneyrshi, the five Psadans had started to shake, and he hoped Ekhrikhor's pals had the rest of the area covered. "Threepio—tell them."

"Certainly, Captain Solo," Threepio said, sounding about as nervous as Han felt. "Mulansaar—"

The head Myneyrsh cut him off with a chopping motion of its two left arms. "You!" he warbled in passable Basic, jabbing all four hands at Han. "He have lightning bow?"

Han frowned at him. Of course Chewbacca had a weapon—so did all the rest of them. He glanced up at the Wookiee . . . and suddenly he understood. "Yes, he has," he told the Myneyrsh, lowering his blaster. "He's our friend. We don't keep slaves like the Empire did."

Threepio started into his translation, but the Myneyrsh was already jabbering away to his friends. "Nice work," Mara murmured. "I hadn't thought of that. But you're right—the last Wookiees they saw here would have been Imperial slaves."

Han nodded. "Let's hope it makes a difference."

The discussion ran on for a few more minutes, mostly between the Myneyrshi and the Psadans. Threepio tried for a while to keep up a running translation, but it quickly degenerated into not much more than a reporting of the highlights. The Myneyrshi, apparently, were starting to think this was their chance to get rid of the oppression of first the Empire and then the Jedi Master himself. The Psadans didn't like the Imperials any more than the Myneyrshi, but the thought of facing up to C'baoth was making them skittish.

"We aren't asking you to fight alongside us," Luke told them when he was finally able to get their attention back. "Our battle is our own, and we will handle it ourselves. All we ask is your permission to travel through your territory to the forbidden mountain and your assurance that you won't betray us to the Empire."

Threepio did his double translation, and Han braced himself for another argument. But there wasn't one. The head Myneyrsh raised his upper hands again, and with his lower hands picked up the bleached clawbird and offered it to Luke. "I believe he is offering you safe conduct, Master Luke," Threepio said helpfully. "Though I could be wrong—their dialect has survived relatively intact, but gestures and movements are often—"

"Tell him thank you," Luke said, nodding as he accepted the clawbird. "Tell him we accept their hospitality. And that they won't be sorry they helped us."

"General Covell?" the militarily precise voice came over the intercom from the shuttle cockpit. "We should be on the surface in just a few more minutes."

"Acknowledged," Covell said. He keyed the intercom off and turned to the shuttle's only other passenger. "We're almost there," he said.

"Yes, I heard," C'baoth said, his amusement echoing through his voice. And through Covell's mind. "Tell me, General Covell, are we at the end of our voyage or at the beginning?"

"The beginning, of course," Covell told him. "The voyage we have set upon will have no end."

"And what of Grand Admiral Thrawn?"

Covell felt a frown crease his forehead. He hadn't heard this question before, at least not said this particular way. But even as he hesitated, the answer came soothingly into his thoughts. As all answers did now. "It's the beginning of Grand Admiral Thrawn's ending," he said.

C'baoth laughed softly, the amusement rippling pleasantly through Covell's mind. Covell thought about asking what was funny, but it was easier and far more agreeable to just sit back and enjoy the laughter. And anyway, he knew perfectly well what it was that was funny.

"You do, don't you," C'baoth agreed, shaking his head. "Ah, General, General. It's so very ironic, isn't it? From the very beginning—from that very first meeting in my city— Grand Admiral Thrawn has had the answer within his grasp. And yet even now he is as far from understanding as he was then."

"Is it about power, Master C'baoth?" Covell asked. This was a familiar topic, and even without the prompting in his mind he would have remembered his lines.

"It is indeed, General Covell," C'baoth said gravely. "I told him at the very beginning that true power didn't lie in the conquering of distant worlds. Or in battles and war and the crushing of faceless rebellions."

He smiled, his eyes glittering brightly in Covell's mind. "No, General Covell," he said softly. "This—this—is true power. Holding another's life in the palm of your hand. Having the power to choose his path, and his thoughts, and his feelings. To rule his life, and decree his death." Slowly, theatrically, C'baoth held out his hand, palm upward. "To command his soul."

"Something not even the Emperor ever understood," Covell reminded him.

Another ripple of pleasure rolled through Covell's mind. It was so satisfying to see the Master enjoying his game. "Not even the Emperor," C'baoth agreed, his eyes and thoughts drifting far away. "He, like the Grand Admiral, saw power only as how far outside himself he could reach. And it destroyed him, as I could have told him it would. For if he'd truly commanded Vader . . ." He shook his head. "In many ways he was a fool. But perhaps it was not his destiny to be otherwise. Perhaps it was the will of the universe that I, and I alone, would understand. For only I have both the strength and the will to grasp hold of this power. The first . . . but not the last."

Covell nodded, swallowing against a dry throat. It was not pleasant when C'baoth left him like this, even for a little bit. Especially not when there was this strange loneliness along with it . . .

But of course, the Master knew that. "Do you ache with my loneliness, General Covell?" he said, warming Covell's mind with another smile. "Yes, of course you do. But be patient. The time is coming when we shall be many. And when that time is here, we will never be lonely again. Observe."

He felt the distant sense as he did all others now: filtered and focused and structured through the Master's perfect mind. "You see, I was right," C'baoth said, reaching out to examine that sense. "They are here. Skywalker and Jade both." He smiled at Covell. "They will be the first, General Covell—the first of our many. For they will come to me, and when I have shown to them the true power, they will understand and will join us." His eyes drifted away again. "Jade will be first, I think," he added thoughtfully. "Skywalker has resisted once, and will resist again; but the key to his soul is even now waiting for me in the mountain below. But Jade is another matter. I have seen her in my meditations—have seen her coming to me and kneeling at my feet. She will be mine, and Skywalker will follow. One way or another."

He smiled again. Covell smiled back, pleased at the Master's own pleasure and by the thought of others who would be there to warm his mind.

And then, without any warning, it all went dark. Not loneliness, not the way it had been. But a sort of emptiness . . .

By and by, he felt his head being roughly lifted by his chin. C'baoth was there, in a way, staring into his eyes. "General Covell!" the Master's voice thundered. Thundered strangely, too. Covell could hear it, but it wasn't really there. Not like it should have been. "Can you hear me?"

"I can hear you," Covell said. His own voice sounded strange, too. He looked past C'baoth's face, to the interesting pattern of lines on the shuttle bulkhead.

He felt himself being shaken. "Look at me!" C'baoth demanded.

Covell did so. That was odd, too, because he could see the Master but he wasn't really there. "Are you still there?"

The Master's face changed. Something—was it called a smile?—came across it. "Yes, General, I am here," the distant voice said. "I no longer touch your mind, but I am still your Master. You will continue to obey me."

Obey. An odd concept, Covell thought. Not like simply doing what was natural. "Obey?"

"You will do as I tell you," C'baoth said. "I will give you things to say, and you will repeat every word."

"All right," Covell said. "If I do that, will you come back?"

"I will," the Master promised. "Despite Grand Admiral Thrawn's treachery. With your obedience—with you doing what I tell you—we will together destroy his betrayal of us. And then we will never be apart again."

"The emptiness will be gone?"

"Yes. But only if you do what I say."

The other men came a little later. The Master stayed at his side the whole time, and he said all the words the Master told him to say. They all went somewhere, and then the men left, and the Master left, too.

He stared off across the place they'd left him in, watching the patterns of lines and listening to the emptiness all around him. Eventually, he fell asleep.

A strange sort of birdcall warbled off in the distance, and instantly the background crackle of insects and scuttling animals ceased. But apparently there was no immediate danger, and a minute later the nighttime sounds and activity resumed. Shifting her position against her chosen tree trunk, Mara eased her aching back muscles and wished this whole thing was over.

"There is no need for you to stay awake," a soft Noghri voice said at her shoulder. "We will guard."

"Thanks," Mara said shortly. "If it's all the same to you, I'll do my job."

The Noghri was silent a moment. "You still do not trust us, do you?"

Actually, she hadn't thought all that much about it one way or the other. "Skywalker trusts you," she said. "Isn't that good enough?"

"It is not approval we seek," the Noghri told her. "Only the chance to repay our debt."

She shrugged. They'd protected the camp, they'd tackled the always tricky job of first contact with the Myneyrshi and Psadans, and now here they were protecting the camp again. "If it's a debt to the New Republic, I'd say you're doing a pretty good job of it," she conceded. "You finally figured out Thrawn and the Empire had been stringing you along?"

There was a quiet click, like needle teeth coming together. "You knew about that?"

"I heard rumors," Mara said, recognizing how potentially dangerous this ground was but not really caring. "More like jokes, really. I never knew how much of it was true."

"Most likely all of it," the Noghri said calmly. "Yes. I can see how our lives and deaths could be amusing to our enslavers. We will convince them otherwise."

No white-hot rage, no fanatical hatred. Just a simple, icy determination. About as dangerous as you could get. "How are you going to do that?" she asked.

"When the time is right the Noghri will turn upon their enslavers. Some on Imperial worlds, some on transporting ships. And five groups will come here."

Mara frowned. "You knew about Wayland?"

"Not until you led us here," the other said. "But we know now. We have sent the location to those waiting at Coruscant. By now they will have passed the word on to others."

Mara snorted quietly. "You have a lot of confidence in us, don't you?"

"Our missions complement each other," the Noghri assured her, his gravelly mewing somehow sounding grimmer. "You have set for yourselves the task of destroying the cloning facility. With the help of the son of Vader we do not doubt you will succeed. For ourselves, the Noghri have chosen the task of eliminating every last reminder of the Emperor's presence on Wayland."

Probably the last relics of the Emperor's presence anywhere. Mara turned that idea over in her mind, wondering why it didn't seem to grieve or anger her. Probably she was just tired. "Sounds like a big project," she said instead. "Who is this son of Vader you're expecting to show up and help us?"

There was a brief silence. "The son of Vader is already with you," the Noghri said, sounding puzzled. "You serve him, as do we."

Mara stared at him through the darkness . . . and suddenly her heart seemed to freeze in her chest. "You mean . . . Skywalker?"

"You did not know?"

Mara turned away from him, staring down at the sleeping form no more than a meter away from her feet, a horrible numbness flooding through her. Suddenly, finally, after all these years, the last elusive piece had fallen into place. The Emperor didn't want her to kill Skywalker for his own sake. It was, instead, one final act of vengeance against his father.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.

And in the space of a few heartbeats everything Mara had believed about herself—her hatred, her mission, her entire life—had turned from certainty to confusion.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.

"No," she muttered at the voice through clenched teeth. "Not like that. My decision. My reasons."

But the voice continued unabated. Perhaps it was her resistance and defiance fueling it now, or perhaps the deeper power in the Force that Skywalker had given her over the past few days had made her more receptive to it.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.

But you are another matter, Mara Jade.

Mara jerked, the sudden motion banging the back of her head against the tree trunk behind her. Another voice; but this one wasn't coming from inside her. It was coming from—

I have seen you in my meditations, the voice continued placidly. Have seen you coming to me and kneeling at my feet. You will be mine, and Skywalker will follow. One way or another.

Mara shook her head violently, trying to shake away the words and thoughts. The second voice seemed to laugh; then, suddenly, the words and laughter disappeared beneath a distant but steady pressure against her mind. Setting her teeth, she pushed back against it. Dimly, she heard the voice laugh again at her efforts—

And then, with a suddenness that made her catch her breath, the pressure was gone.

"Are you all right?" Skywalker's voice asked quietly.

Mara looked down. Skywalker had risen up on one elbow, his silhouetted face turned toward her. "Did you hear it, too?" she asked.

"I didn't hear any words. But I felt the pressure."

Mara looked up toward the leaf canopy overhead. "It's C'baoth," she said. "He's here."

"Yes," Skywalker said; and she could hear the apprehension in his voice. Small wonder—he'd faced C'baoth once, back on Jomark, and nearly lost out to him.

"So what now?" Mara asked, rubbing at the sweat around her mouth with a shaking hand. "We abort the mission?"

The silhouette shrugged. "How? We're only a couple of days from the mountain. It'd take us a lot longer than that to get back to the Falcon."

"Except that the Imperials know we're here now."

"Maybe," Skywalker said slowly. "But maybe not. Did the contact cut off suddenly for you, too?"

She frowned; and suddenly it hit her. "You think they moved some ysalamiri around him?"

"Or else strapped him into one of those frames you were using on Jomark," Skywalker said. "Either way, it would imply he was a prisoner."

Mara thought about that. If so, he might not be interested in telling his captors about the invaders moving toward the mountain.

She looked sharply at him as another thought suddenly occurred to her. "Did you know C'baoth was going to come?" she demanded. "Is that why you wanted me to practice my old Jedi training?"

"I didn't know he'd be here," Skywalker said. "But I knew we would eventually have to face him again. He said that himself on Jomark."

Mara shivered. Kneeling at my feet . . . "I don't want to face him, Skywalker."

"Neither do I," he said softly. "But I think we have to."

He sighed; and then, quietly, he peeled off the top of his bedroll and got to his feet. "Why don't you go get some sleep," he said, stepping over to her side. "I'm awake now anyway; and you took the brunt of that attack."

"All right," Mara said, too tired to argue. "If you need any help, call me."

"I will."

She picked her way across Calrissian and the Wookiee to her bedroll and crawled into it. Her last memory, as she dropped off to sleep, was of the voice in the back of her mind.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER . . .

Chapter 22

The report came in from Mount Tantiss during ship's night and was waiting for him when Pellaeon arrived on the bridge in the morning. The Draklor had reached Wayland more or less on schedule six hours previously, had offloaded its passengers, and had left the system bound for Valrar as per orders. General Covell had refused to take command until local morning—

Pellaeon frowned. Refused to take command? That didn't sound like Covell.

"Captain Pellaeon?" the comm officer called up to him. "Sir, we're getting a holo transmission from Colonel Selid on Wayland. It's marked urgent."

"Put it through to the aft bridge hologram pod," Pellaeon instructed, getting up from his command chair and heading aft. "Signal the Grand Admiral to—never mind," he interrupted himself as, through the archway, he spotted Thrawn and Rukh coming up the steps into the aft bridge.

Thrawn saw him, too. "What's wrong, Captain?"

"Urgent message from Wayland, sir," Pellaeon said, gesturing toward the hologram pod. The image of an Imperial officer was already waiting, and even in a quarter-size holo, Pellaeon could see the younger man's nervousness.

"Probably C'baoth," Thrawn predicted darkly. They reached position in front of the hologram pod, and Thrawn nodded to the image. "Colonel Selid, this is Grand Admiral Thrawn. Report."

"Sir," Selid said, his parade-ground posture stiffening even more. "I regret to inform you, Admiral, of the sudden death of General Covell."

Pellaeon felt his mouth fall open a couple of centimeters. "How?" he asked.

"We don't know yet, sir," Selid said. "He apparently died in his sleep. The medics are still running tests, but so far all they can suggest is that large portions of the General's brain had simply shut down."

"Brain tissue does not 'simply' shut down, Colonel," Thrawn said. "There has to be a reason for it."

Selid seemed to wince. "Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir; I didn't mean it that way."

"I know you didn't," Thrawn assured him. "What about the rest of the passengers?"

"The medics are checking them all now," Selid said. "No problems so far. Rather, they're checking all those still within the garrison. General Covell's troops—the company that arrived on the Draklor with him—had already been dispersed outside the mountain when he died."

"What, the whole company?" Pellaeon asked. "What for?"

"I don't know, sir," Selid said. "General Covell gave the orders. After the big meeting, I mean, before he died."

"Perhaps we'd better have the story from the beginning, Colonel," Thrawn cut him off. "Tell me everything."

"Yes, sir." Selid visibly pulled himself together. "General Covell and the others were landed via shuttle approximately six hours ago. I tried to turn over command of the garrison to him, but he refused. He then insisted on having a private word with his troops in one of the officers' mess halls."

"Which troops?" Thrawn asked. "The whole garrison?"

"No, sir, just the ones who'd accompanied him on the Draklor. He said he had some special orders to give them."

Pellaeon looked at Thrawn. "I'd have thought he'd have had plenty of time aboard ship for special orders."

"Yes," Thrawn agreed. "One would think so."

"Maybe it was C'baoth's idea, sir," Selid suggested. "He was at the general's side from the minute they got off the shuttle. Muttering, sort of, the whole time."

"Was he, now," Thrawn said thoughtfully. His voice was calm, but there was something beneath it that sent a shiver up Pellaeon's back. "Where is Master C'baoth now?"

"Up in the Emperor's old royal chambers," Selid said. "General Covell insisted they be opened for him."

"Would he be above the ysalamiri influence up there?" Pellaeon murmured.

Thrawn shook his head. "I doubt it. According to my calculations, the entire mountain and some of the surrounding area should be within the Force-empty bubble. What happened then, Colonel?"

"The general spent about fifteen minutes talking to his troops," Selid said. "When he came out, he told me that he'd given them secret orders that had come directly from you, Admiral, and that I wasn't to interfere."

"And then they left the mountain?"

"After stripping one of the supply rooms of field gear and explosives, yes," Selid said. "Actually, they spent a couple more hours inside the garrison before leaving. Familiarizing themselves with the layout, the general said. After they left, C'baoth escorted the general to his quarters and then was himself escorted to the royal chambers by two of my stormtroopers. I put the rest of the garrison back onto standard nighttime routine, and that was it. Until this morning, when the orderly found the general."

"So C'baoth wasn't with Covell at the time of his death?" Thrawn asked.

"No, sir," Selid said. "Though the medics don't think the general lived very long after C'baoth left him."

"And he was with the general up until that time."

"Yes, sir."

Pellaeon threw Thrawn a sideways look. The Grand Admiral was staring at nothing, his glowing red eyes narrowed to slits. "Tell me, Colonel, what was your impression of General Covell?"

"Well . . ." Selid hesitated. "I'd have to say I was a bit disappointed, sir."

"How so?"

"He just wasn't what I was expecting, Admiral," Selid said, sounding distinctly uncomfortable. Pellaeon didn't blame him: criticizing one senior officer in front of another was a serious breach of military etiquette. Especially between different branches of the service. "He seemed . . . distant is the word I'd have to use, sir. He implied that my security was poor and that he would be making some important changes, but he wouldn't talk to me about them. In fact, he hardly spoke to me the whole time he was here. And it wasn't just me—he was short with the other officers who tried to talk to him, as well. That was his privilege, of course, and he may have just been tired. But it didn't seem to fit with what I'd heard of the general's reputation."

"No, it doesn't," Thrawn said. "Is the hologram pad in the Emperor's old throne room operational, Colonel?"

"Yes, sir. Though C'baoth may not be in the throne room itself."

"He will be," Thrawn said coldly. "Connect me with him."

"Yes, sir."

Selid's image vanished, replaced by the pause symbol. "You think C'baoth did something to Covell?" Pellaeon asked quietly.

"I see no other likely explanation," Thrawn said. "My guess is that our beloved Jedi Master was trying to take over Covell's mind, perhaps even replacing entire sections of it with his own. When they hit the ysalamir bubble and he lost that direct contact, there wasn't enough of Covell left to keep him alive for long."

"I see." Pellaeon turned his head away from the Grand Admiral, a darkening anger flowing through him. He'd warned Thrawn about what C'baoth might do. Had warned him over and over again. "What are you going to do about it?"

The pause symbol vanished before Thrawn could answer; but it wasn't the standard quarter-size figure that replaced it. Instead, a huge image of C'baoth's face suddenly glared out at them, jolting Pellaeon an involuntary step backwards.

Thrawn didn't even twitch. "Good morning, Master C'baoth," the Grand Admiral said, his voice mirror smooth. "I see you've discovered the Emperor's private hologram setting."

"Grand Admiral Thrawn," C'baoth said, his own voice cold and arrogant. "Is this how you reward my work on behalf of your ambitions? By an act of betrayal?"

"If there is betrayal, it's on your side, Master C'baoth," Thrawn said. "What did you do to General Covell?"

C'baoth ignored the question. "The Force is not so easily betrayed as you think," he said. "And never forget this, Grand Admiral Thrawn: With my destruction will come your own. I have foreseen it."

He stopped, glaring back and forth at the two of them. For a handful of heartbeats Thrawn remained silent. "Are you finished?" he asked at last.

C'baoth frowned, the play of uncertainty and nervousness easily visible in the magnified face. For all its intimidating majesty, the Emperor's personal hologram setting clearly had its own set of drawbacks. "For now," C'baoth said. "Have you some feeble defense to offer?"

"I have nothing to defend, Master C'baoth," Thrawn said. "It was you who insisted on going to Wayland. Now tell me what you did to General Covell."

"You will first restore the Force to me."

"The ysalamiri will stay where they are," Thrawn said. "Tell me what you did to General Covell."

For a moment the two men glared at each other. C'baoth's glare crumbled first, and for a moment it looked as if he was going to fold. But then the old man's jaw jutted out, and once again he was the arrogant Jedi Master. "General Covell was mine to do with as I pleased," he said. "As is everything in my Empire."

"Thank you," Thrawn said. "That's all I need to know. Colonel Selid?"

The huge face vanished and was replaced by Selid's quarter-size image. "Yes, Admiral?"

"Instructions, Colonel," Thrawn told him. "First of all, Master C'baoth is hereby placed under arrest. You may allow him free run of the royal chambers and Emperor's throne room but he is not to leave there. All control circuits from those floors will be disconnected, of course. Secondly, you're to initiate inquiries as to precisely where General Covell's troops were seen within the mountain before they left."

"Why don't we ask the troops themselves, sir?" Selid suggested. "They presumably have comlinks with them."

"Because I'm not certain we could trust their answers," Thrawn told him. "Which brings me to my third order. None of the troops which left the mountain under General Covell's orders are to be allowed back in."

Selid's jaw dropped visibly. "Sir?"

"You heard correctly," Thrawn told him. "Another transport will arrive for them in a few days, at which time they'll be rounded up and taken off the planet. But under no circumstances are they to be allowed back into the mountain."

"Yes, sir," Selid said, floundering. "But—sir, what do I tell them?"

"You may tell them the truth," Thrawn said quietly. "That their orders came not from General Covell, and certainly not from me, but from a traitor to the Empire. Until Intelligence can sort through the details, the entire company will be considered as under suspicion, as unwitting accomplices to treason."

The word seemed to hang before them in the air. "Understood, sir," Selid said at last.

"Good," Thrawn said. "You are of course reinstated as garrison commander. Any questions?"

Selid drew himself up. "No, sir."

"Good. Carry on, Colonel. Chimaera out."

The figure vanished from the hologram pod. "Do you think it's safe to leave C'baoth there, sir?" Pellaeon asked.

"There's nowhere in the Empire safer," Thrawn pointed out. "At least, not yet."

Pellaeon frowned. "I don't understand."

"His use to the Empire is rapidly nearing an end, Captain," Thrawn said, turning and walking beneath the archway into the main section of the bridge. "However, he still has one last role to play in our long-term consolidation of power."

He paused at the aft edge of the command walkway. "C'baoth is insane, Captain—that we both agree on. But such insanity is in his mind. Not in his body."

Pellaeon stared at him. "Are you suggesting we clone him?"

"Why not?" Thrawn asked. "Not at Mount Tantiss itself, certainly, given the conditions there. Most likely not at the speed which that facility allows, either—that's all well and good for techs and TIE fighter pilots, but not a project of this delicacy. No, I envision bringing such a clone to childhood and then allowing it to grow to maturity at a normal pace for its last ten or fifteen years. Under suitable upbringing conditions, of course."

"I see," Pellaeon said, struggling to keep his voice steady. A young C'baoth—or maybe two or ten or twenty of them—running loose around the galaxy. This was an idea that was going to take some getting used to. "Where would you set up this other cloning facility?"

"Somewhere absolutely secure," Thrawn said. "Possibly on one of the worlds in the Unknown Regions where I once served the Emperor. You'll instruct Intelligence to begin searching for a suitable location after we've crushed the Rebels at Bilbringi."

Pellaeon felt his lip twitch. Right: the dangerously ethereal Bilbringi attack. What with this C'baoth thing, he'd almost forgotten the main business of the day. Or his reservations concerning it. "Yes, sir. Admiral, I'm forced to remind you that all the evidence still indicates Tangrene as the probable point of attack."

"I'm aware of the evidence, Captain," Thrawn said. "Nevertheless, they will be at Bilbringi."

He sent his gaze leisurely around his bridge, his glowing red eyes missing nothing. And the crewers knew it. At every station, from the crew pits to the lateral consoles, there were the subtle sounds and movements of men aware that their commander was watching and striving to show him their best. "And so will we," the Grand Admiral added to Pellaeon. "Set course for Bilbringi, Captain. And let us prepare to meet our guests."

Wedge drained the last of his cup and set it back on the chipped and stained wood of the small table, glancing across the noisy Mumbri Storve cantina as he did so. The place was as crowded as it had been when he, Janson, and Hobbie had come in an hour earlier, but the texture of the crowd had changed quite a bit. Most of the younger people had left, couples and groups both, and had been replaced by an older and decidedly seedier-looking bunch. The fringe types were drifting in; which meant it was time for them to be drifting out.

His fellow Rogue Squadron pilots knew it, too. "Time to go?" Hobbie suggested, his voice just audible over the noise.

"Right," Wedge nodded, getting to his feet and fumbling in his pouch for a coin that would cover this last round. His civilian pouch; and he really hated the awkward things. But it would hardly do for them to go wandering around town in full New Republic uniforms, complete with the distinctive Rogue Squadron patches.

He found a proper-size coin and dropped it into the center of the table as the others stood up. "Where to now?" Janson asked, hunching his shoulders slightly to stretch out his back muscles.

"Back to the base, I think," Wedge told him.

"Good," Janson grunted. "Morning's going to come early enough as it is."

Wedge nodded as he turned and headed toward the exit. Morning could come anytime it wanted to, of course: well before then they were going to be off this planet and driving hard toward their assigned rendezvous point outside the Bilbringi shipyards.

They wove their way between the crowded tables; and as they did so, a tall, thin man shoved his chair back almost into Wedge's knees and got unsteadily to his feet. "Watch out," he slurred, half turning to throw his arm across Wedge's shoulders and much of his weight against Wedge's side.

"Easy, friend," Wedge grunted, struggling to regain his balance. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Janson step to the tall man's other side and put a supporting arm around him—

"Easy sounds good to me," the man murmured, the slurring abruptly gone as his arm tightened around Wedge's shoulders. "All four of us—nice and easy now, let's help the poor old drunk out of here."

Wedge stiffened. Tracked, blindsided, and caught . . . and in the flip of an X-wing they had suddenly gone from a simple night on the town to serious trouble. With him and Janson tangled up like this, only Hobbie was left with a clear gun hand. And their assailant surely hadn't forgotten to have some backup around.

The tall man must have felt Wedge's tension. "Hey—play it smooth," he admonished quietly. "Don't remember me, huh?"

Wedge frowned at the face practically leaning against his. It didn't look familiar; but on the other hand, at this range he probably wouldn't recognize his own mother. "Should I?" he murmured back.

The other did a little more staggering. "I'd have thought so," he said in an injured voice. "You go up against a Star Destroyer with someone, he ought to remember you. Especially out in the middle of nowhere."

Wedge frowned a little harder at the face, dimly aware that the whole group had started walking. In the middle of nowhere . . . ?

And suddenly, it hit him. The Katana fleet, and Talon Karrde's people coming out of nowhere to lend their assistance and firepower against the Imperials. And afterwards the brief, preoccupied introductions aboard the Star Cruiser . . . "Aves?"

"That wasn't so hard, was it?" the other said approvingly. "Told you you could do it if you tried. Come on, now—nice and easy and don't let's draw any more attention to ourselves than we need to."

There didn't seem to be any real option other than to comply; but even as Wedge continued toward the exit, he kept his eyes moving, looking for something they could use to get them out of this. Karrde and his people had supposedly agreed to funnel information back to the New Republic, but that was a far way from being allies together. And if the Empire had threatened them . . . or just bought them outright . . .

But no opportunity for escape presented itself before they got out the doors. "This way," Aves said, abandoning his drunk act and hurrying down the dimly lit and sparsely populated street.

Janson caught Wedge's eye and raised his eyebrows questioningly. Wedge shrugged slightly in return and set off after Aves. It could still be some sort of trap, but at this point the vague fears were being rapidly overtaken by simple curiosity. Something was going on, and he wanted to find out what.

He didn't have long to wonder about it. Two buildings down from the Mumbri Storve, Aves turned and disappeared into a darkened entryway. Wedge followed, half expecting to run into a half-dozen blaster muzzles. But Aves was alone. "What now?" he asked as Janson and Hobbie joined them.

Aves nodded toward the street outside the entryway. "Watch," he said. "If I'm right—here he comes."

Wedge looked. A walrus-faced Aqualish strode quickly by, throwing a quick glance into the entryway as he passed. His stride broke, just noticeably; then he caught himself and picked up his pace. He passed the other side of the entryway—

There was a muffled thud, and suddenly the Aqualish was back in the entryway, his slack and obviously unconscious form being supported by two grim-faced men. "Any trouble?" Aves asked.

"Naw," one of the men said as they dropped the Aqualish none too gently to the ground near the back of the entryway. "They're a lot meaner than they are smart."

"This one was smart enough," Aves said. "Take a good look at him, Antilles. Maybe next time you'll recognize an Imperial spy when you pick one up."

Wedge looked down at the alien. "An Imperial spy, huh?"

"A free-lancer, anyway," Aves shrugged. "Just as dangerous."

Wedge looked back at him, trying to keep his expression neutral. "I suppose we ought to thank you," he said.

One of the other men, busy searching the Aqualish's clothing, snorted under his breath. "I'd think you should, yeah," Aves said. "If it hadn't been for us, you'd have been a juicy little item in the next Imperial Intelligence report."

"I suppose we would have," Wedge conceded, exchanging glances with Hobbie and Janson. But then, that had been the idea of the whole charade. To do their bit to convince Grand Admiral Thrawn that Tangrene was still the New Republic's intended target. "What are you going to do with him?" he asked Aves.

"We'll take care of him," Aves said. "Don't worry, he won't be making any reports anytime soon."

Wedge nodded. One evening, shot completely to flinders. Still, it was nice to know Karrde's people were still on their side. "Thanks again," he said, and meant it this time. "I owe you one."

Aves cocked his head. "You want to pay off the debt right now?"

"How?" Wedge asked cautiously.

"We've got a little job in the works," Aves said, waving a hand vaguely toward the night sky. "We know you do, too. It would help a lot if we could time ours to go while you're keeping Thrawn occupied."

Wedge frowned at him. "What, you want me to tell you when our operation is starting?"

"Why not?" Aves said reasonably. "Like I said, we already know it's in the works. Bel Iblis's repeat performance, and all that."

Wedge looked at his pilots again, wondering if they appreciated the irony of this as much as he did. Here they stood, an evening's worth of subtle hints gone straight down the proton tubes; and now they were being asked for an outright confirmation of the whole operation. Colonel Derlin's decoy team couldn't have set things up better if they'd tried. "I'm sorry," he said slowly, putting some genuine regret into his voice. "But you know I can't tell you that."

"Why not?" Aves asked patiently. "Like I said, we already know most of it already. I can prove that if you want."

"Not here," Wedge said quickly. The goal was to plant hints, not to be so obvious that it aroused suspicion. "Someone might hear you."

Janson tapped his arm. "Sir, we need to get back," he murmured. "There's a lot of work yet to do before we leave."

"I know, I know," Wedge said. Good old Janson; just the angle he'd been searching for. "Look, Aves, I tell you what I'll do. Are you going to stick around here for a while?"

"I could. Why?"

"Let me talk to my unit commander," Wedge said. "See if I can get a special clearance for you."

Aves' expression showed pretty clearly what he thought of that idea. "It's worth a try," he said diplomatically instead. "How soon can you get an answer?"

"I don't know," Wedge said. "He's as busy as all the rest of us, you know. I'll try to get back to you one way or the other; but if you haven't heard from me in about twenty-eight hours, don't expect to."

Aves might have smiled slightly. Wedge couldn't tell in the dim light. "All right," he said, grumbling a bit. "I suppose it's better than nothing. You can leave any messages with the night bartender at the Dona Laza tapcafe."

"Okay," Wedge said. "We've got to go. Thanks again."

Together, he and the other two pilots left the entryway and crossed the street. They were two blocks away before Hobbie spoke. "Twenty-eight hours, huh? Pretty clever."

"I thought so," Wedge agreed modestly. "Leaving here then would get us to Tangrene just about on time for the big battle."

"Let's just hope he's planning to sell that information to the Empire," Janson murmured. "It'd be a shame to have wasted the whole evening."

"Oh, he'll sell it, all right," Hobbie snorted. "He's a smuggler. What else would he want it for?"

Wedge thought back to the Katana battle. Maybe that was indeed all Karrde and his gang were: fringe scum, always for sale to the highest bidder. But somehow, he didn't think so. "We'll find out soon enough," he told Hobbie. "Come on. Like Janson said, we've got a lot of work to do."

Chapter 23

The last page scrolled across the display and stopped. SEARCH SUMMARY ENDED. NEXT REQUEST?

"Cancel," Leia said, leaning back in her desk chair and looking out the window. Another dead end. Just like the last one, and the one before that. It was beginning to look like the Research librarians had been right: if there was any information on the old Clone Wars cloning techniques still in the Old Senate Library, it was buried away so deeply that no one would ever find it.

Across the room, she caught a flicker of returning consciousness. Standing up, she crossed to the crib and looked down on her children. Jacen was indeed awake, cooing to himself and making a serious effort to study his fingers. Beside him, Jaina was still asleep, her pudgy lips hanging open just enough to whistle softly with every breath. "Hi, there," Leia murmured to her son, picking him up out of the crib and cradling him in her arms. He looked up at her, his fingers momentarily forgotten, and smiled his wonderful toothless smile. "Well, thank you," she said, smiling back and caressing his cheek. "Come on—let's go see what's happening out in the big world."

She carried him to the window. Beneath them, the Imperial City was in full midmorning mayhem, with ground vehicles and airspeeders buzzing along in all directions like frantic insects. Beyond the city, the snow-tipped peaks of the Manarai Mountains to the south were dazzling in the morning sunshine. Beyond the mountains, the sky was a deep and cloudless blue; and beyond the sky—

She shivered. Beyond the sky was the planetary energy shield. And the Empire's invisible, deadly asteroids.

Jacen gurgled. Leia looked back down at him, found him studying her with what she could almost imagine to be concern. "It's all right," she assured him, holding him a little closer and bouncing him gently in her arms. "It's all right. We'll find them all and get rid of them—don't you worry."

Behind her, the door opened and Winter came into the room, a hover tray floating along in front of her. "Your Highness," she greeted Leia in a soft voice. "I thought you might like some refreshment."

"Yes, I would, thank you," Leia said, sniffing at the gentle aroma of spiced paricha rising from the pot on the tray. "Anything happening downstairs?"

"Nothing interesting," Winter said, pushing the tray over to a side table and starting to unload it. "The search teams haven't found any new asteroids since yesterday morning. I understand General Bel Iblis has been suggesting they may already have cleared them all out."

"I doubt Admiral Drayson believes that."

"No," Winter agreed, holding out a steaming mug and waiting as Leia shifted Jacen to a one-armed grip. "Neither does Mon Mothma."

Leia nodded as she accepted the mug. To be honest, she didn't really believe it herself. No matter how expensive these cloaking shields might be to produce, she couldn't see the Empire going to this much trouble for anything fewer than seventy cloaked asteroids. And there could easily be twice that many. The twenty-one they'd found hardly even scratched the surface.

"How is the research going?" Winter asked, pouring a mug for herself.

"It's not," Leia had to admit. From one insoluble problem to another, it seemed. "Though I don't know why that should surprise me. The Council Research specialists have already been all through the records, and they didn't find anything."

"But you're a Jedi," Winter reminded her. "You have the Force."

"Not enough of it, apparently," Leia shook her head. "At least, not enough to guide me to the right archive. If there is a right archive. I'm not sure anymore that there is."

For a minute they sipped in silence. Leia savored the soft flavor of the hot paricha, acutely aware that this could easily be her last taste of it for a while. All supplies of the root from which the drink was made had to be imported from offplanet.

"I was talking to Mobvekhar yesterday," Winter said into her thoughts. "He said you'd spoken to him about a clue of some sort. Something that Mara Jade had said."

"Something that Mara said, coupled with something Luke did," Leia nodded. "Yes, I remember; and I still think there's an important key in there somewhere. I just can't figure out what it is."

At her waist, her comlink beeped. "I knew it couldn't last," Leia sighed, putting her mug down and pulling the comlink out. Mon Mothma had promised her a complete morning off; obviously, that promise was about to be bent a little. "Councilor Organa Solo," she said into the device.

But it wasn't Mon Mothma. "Councilor, this is Central Communications," a brisk military voice said. "There's a civilian freighter called the Wild Karrde holding position just outside the sentry line. The captain insists on speaking with you personally. Do you want to talk to him, or shall we just go ahead and chase him out of the system?"

So Karrde had finally come to pick up his people. Or else had been listening to rumors and had decided to poke around Coruscant a little for himself. Either way, it was trouble. "Better let me talk to him," she told the controller.

"Yes, Councilor."

There was a quiet click. "Hello, Karrde," Leia said. "This is Leia Organa Solo."

"Hello, Councilor," Karrde's cool, well-modulated voice replied. "It's nice to talk to you again. I trust you received my package?"

Leia had to think back. Right—the macrobinocular record of the Ukio attack. "Yes, we did," she acknowledged. "Allow me to express the New Republic's gratitude."

"Your gratitude has already been amply expressed," Karrde said dryly. "Were there any unpleasant repercussions over the payment arrangements?"

"On the contrary," Leia said, bending the truth only a bit. "We'd be happy to pay equivalent rates for more information of that quality."

"I'm glad to hear that," Karrde said. "Are you by any chance also in the market for technology?"

Leia blinked. It wasn't a question she'd been expecting. "What sort of technology?" she asked.

"The semirare sort," he said. "Why don't you give me clearance to come down and we'll discuss it."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible," Leia said. "All nonessential traffic in and out of Coruscant has been restricted."

"Only the nonessential traffic?"

Leia grimaced. So he had been listening to rumors. "What exactly have you heard?"

"Assorted whispers only," he said. "Only one of which really concerns me. Tell me about Mara."

"What about Mara?" Leia asked guardedly.

"Is she under arrest?"

Leia threw a look at Winter. "Karrde, this isn't something we should be discussing—"

"Don't give me that," Karrde cut her off, his voice suddenly hard. "You owe me. More to the point, you owe her."

"I'm aware of that," Leia countered, letting her own voice cool a degree or two. "If you'll let me finish, this isn't something we should be discussing on an open channel."

"Ah. I see." If he was feeling any embarrassment over his mistake, it didn't show in his voice. "Let's try this. Is Ghent available?"

"He's around somewhere."

"Find him and get him on a terminal with comm system access. Tell him to program in one of my personal encrypt codes—his choice. That should give us enough privacy."

Leia thought about it. It should at least filter out casual eavesdropping by other civilian ships in the system. Whether any Imperial probe droids lurking out there would be fooled was another question. "It's a start, at least," she agreed. "I'll go find him."

"I'll be waiting."

The signal went silent. "Trouble?" Winter asked.

"Probably," Leia said. She looked down at Jacen, a strange tingling in the back of her mind. There it was again: the eerie feeling that a vital piece of information was hovering in the darkness just out of reach. Luke and Mara were involved with it, she'd already decided. Could Karrde be involved, too? "He's come to plead Mara's case . . . and I don't think he's going to be happy to find her gone. Take care of the twins, please—I have to find Ghent and get down to the war room."

The data checklist ran to the end and stopped. "Looks okay," Ghent told Leia, peering at the display and making one final adjustment to the encrypt scheme. "You're not going to lose more than a syllable here or there, anyway. Go ahead."

"Just be careful what you say," Bel Iblis reminded her. "There could still be probe droids out there listening in, and there's no guarantee the Imperials haven't broken Karrde's encrypt codes. Don't say anything they don't already know."

"I understand," Leia nodded. She sat down and tapped the switch the comm officer indicated. "We're ready here, Karrde."

"So am I," Karrde's voice came back. It sounded a bit lower in pitch than normal, but otherwise seemed to be coming through fine. "Why is Mara under arrest?"

"There was a break-in by an Imperial commando team a few weeks ago," Leia said, choosing her words carefully. "The leader of the team implicated Mara as an accomplice."

"That's absurd," Karrde scoffed.

"I agree," Leia said. "But an accusation like that has to be investigated."

"And what have your investigators discovered?"

"What some of us already knew," Leia said. "That she was once a member of the Emperor's personal staff."

"Is that why you're still holding her?" Karrde demanded. "For things she might or might not have done years ago?"

"We're not worried about her past," Leia said, starting to sweat a little. She hated misleading Karrde this way, particularly after all the assistance he'd given them. But if there were probe droids listening, she needed to make it look like Mara was still under suspicion. "Certain members of the Council and high command are concerned about her current loyalties."

"Then those members are fools," Karrde bit out. "I'd like to talk with her."

"I'm afraid that's impossible," Leia said. "She's not being allowed access to external communications."

There was a faint sound from the speaker; an encrypt glitch or a sigh, Leia couldn't tell which. "Tell me why I can't land," Karrde said. "I've heard the rumors. Tell me the truth."

Leia looked up at Bel Iblis. There was a sour look on his face, but he gave a reluctant nod. "The truth is we're under siege," she told Karrde. "The Grand Admiral has placed a large number of cloaked asteroids into orbit around Coruscant. We don't know what their orbits are, or even how many of them are there. Until we find and destroy all of them the planetary shield has to stay up."

"Indeed," Karrde murmured. "Interesting. I'd heard about the Empire's hit-and-fade, but there hasn't been anything at all about any asteroids. Most of the rumors have suggested merely that you'd suffered severe damage and were trying to cover it up."

"That sounds like the sort of story Thrawn would circulate," Bel Iblis growled. "A little jab at our morale to keep him amused between attacks."

"He's adept at all aspects of warfare," Karrde agreed. But to Leia's ear, there was something odd in his tone. "How many of these asteroids have you found so far? I presume you've been looking."

"We've found and destroyed twenty-one," she told him. "That's twenty-two gone, counting the one the Imperials destroyed to keep us from capturing it. But our battle data indicates he could have launched as many as two hundred eighty-seven."

Karrde was silent a moment. "That's still not all that many for the volume of space involved. I'd be willing to risk coming through it."

"We're not worried about you," Bel Iblis put in. "We're thinking of what would happen to Coruscant if a forty-meter asteroid got through the shield and hit the surface."

"I could make it in through a five-second gap," Karrde offered.

"We're not opening one," Leia said firmly. "I'm sorry."

There was another faint sound from the speaker. "In that case, I suppose I have no choice but to make a deal. You said earlier that you'd be willing to pay for information. Very well. I have something you need; and my price is a few minutes with Mara."

Leia frowned up at Bel Iblis, got an equally puzzled look in return. Whatever Karrde was angling for, it wasn't obvious to him, either. What was obvious was that she couldn't very well promise to let him talk to Mara. "I can't make any promises," she told him. "Tell me what the information is, and I'll try to be fair."

There was a moment of silence as he thought it over. "I suppose that's the best offer I'm going to get," he said at last. "All right. You can lower your shield any time now. The asteroids are all gone."

Leia stared at the speaker. "What?"

"You heard me," Karrde said. "They're gone. Thrawn left you twenty-two; you've destroyed twenty-two. The siege is over."

"How do you know?" Bel Iblis asked.

"I was at the Bilbringi shipyards shortly before the Empire's hit-and-fade attack," Karrde told him. "We observed a group of twenty-two asteroids being worked on under close security. At the time, of course, we didn't know what the Empire was doing with them."

"Did you make any records while you were there?" Bel Iblis asked.

"I have the Wild Karrde's sensor data," he said. "If you're ready, I'll drop it to you."

"Go ahead."

The data-feed light went on, and Leia looked up at the master visual display. It was the inside of the Bilbringi shipyards, all right—she recognized it from New Republic surveillance flights. And there in the center, surrounded by support craft and maintenance-suited workers—

"He's right," Bel Iblis murmured. "Twenty-two of them."

"That doesn't prove there aren't any more, sir," the officer at the sensor console pointed out. "They could have put together another group at Ord Trasi or Yaga Minor."

"No," Bel Iblis shook his head. "Aside from the logistics problems involved, I can't imagine Thrawn spreading his cloaking technology around more than he has to. The last thing he can afford would be for us to get our hands on a working model."

"Or even a systems readout," Karrde agreed. "If you found a weakness, one of his chief advantages over you would be gone. All right: I've delivered on my end of the deal. How about yours?"

Leia looked at Bel Iblis helplessly. "Why do you want to talk with her?" the general asked.

"If it matters, one of the hardest parts of being locked up is the feeling that you've been deserted," Karrde said coolly. "I imagine Mara's feeling that—I know I did when I was Thrawn's unwilling guest aboard the Chimaera. I want to let her know—in person—that she hasn't been forgotten."

"Leia?" Bel Iblis murmured. "What do we do?"

Leia stared at the general, hearing his words but not really registering them. There it was, right in front of her: the key she'd been searching for. Karrde's imprisonment aboard the Chimaera . . .

"Leia?" Bel Iblis repeated, frowning.

"I heard you," she said, the words sounding distant and mechanical in her ears. "Let him land."

Bel Iblis threw a glance at the deck officer. "Perhaps we should—"

"I said let him land," Leia snapped with more fire than she'd intended. Suddenly, all the pieces had fallen into place . . . and the picture they formed was one of potential disaster. "I'll take responsibility."

For a moment, Bel Iblis studied her face. "Karrde, this is Bel Iblis," he said slowly. "We'll give you your five-second opening. Stand by for landing instructions."

"Thank you," Karrde said. "I'll talk to you soon."

Bel Iblis gestured to the deck officer, who nodded and got busy. "All right, Leia," he said, turning back to her. "What's going on?"

Leia took a deep breath. "It's the cloning, Garm. I know how Thrawn's growing them so fast."

The whole war room had gone dead quiet. "Tell me," Bel Iblis said.

"It's the Force," she told him. It was so obvious—so utterly obvious—and yet she'd missed it completely. "Don't you see? When you make an exact duplicate of a sentient being, there's a natural resonance or something set up through the Force between that duplicate and the original. That's what warps the mind of a clone that's been grown too fast—there's not enough time for the mind to adapt to the pressure on it. It can't adjust; so it breaks."

"All right," Bel Iblis said dubiously. "How is Thrawn getting around the problem?"

"It's very simple," Leia said, a shiver running through her. "He's using ysalamiri to block the Force away from the cloning tanks."

Bel Iblis's face went rigid. Across the silent war room, someone swore softly. "It was Karrde's rescue from the Chimaera that was the key," Leia went on. "Mara told me that the Empire had taken five or six thousand ysalamiri out of the forests on Myrkr. But they weren't loading them onto their warships, because when she and Luke went after Karrde Luke had no problem using the Force."

"Because the ysalamiri were on Wayland," Bel Iblis nodded. He looked sharply at Leia, the texture of his sense abruptly changing. "Which means that when the team gets to the mountain—"

"Luke will be helpless," Leia nodded, her throat tight. "And he won't even suspect it until it's too late."

She shivered again, the dream she'd had the night of the Imperial attack suddenly coming back to her. Luke and Mara, facing a crazed Jedi and another unknown threat. She'd soothed herself at the time with the knowledge that Luke would be able to sense C'baoth's presence on Wayland and take steps to avoid him. But with the ysalamiri there, he might walk right into the other's hands.

No. Would walk into C'baoth's hands. Somehow, at this instant, she knew that he would. What she'd seen that night hadn't been a dream, but a Jedi vision.

"I'll talk to Mon Mothma," Bel Iblis was saying, his face grim. "Even with Bilbringi, maybe we can shake some ships loose to go to their assistance."

Turning, he headed quickly toward the exit and the turbolifts beyond it. For a moment Leia watched him, listening as the war room broke its self-imposed trance and came slowly back to life. He'd try, she knew; but she also knew that he would fail. Mon Mothma, Commander Sesfan, and Bel Iblis himself had already said it: there simply weren't enough resources available to hit both Wayland and the Bilbringi shipyards at the same time. And she knew all too well that not everyone on the Council would believe that the threat of cloaked asteroids had ended. At least, not enough to call off the Bilbringi attack.

Which meant there was exactly one person left who could go to the aid of her husband and brother.

Taking a deep breath, Leia headed off after Bel Iblis. There was a great deal she had to do before Karrde arrived.

There were three of them waiting when Karrde emerged from the ship, skulking beneath the canopy overhanging the pad accessway tunnel. Karrde spotted them from the top of the Wild Karrde's entrance ramp, and despite the shadows had two of them identified before he was halfway down. Leia Organa Solo was there, with Ghent fidgeting behind her. The third figure, standing behind both of the others, was short and wore the coarse brown robe of a Jawa. What a desert scavenger was doing there Karrde couldn't guess . . . but as the group stepped out of the shadows toward him and he got his first good look at Organa Solo's face, it became clear that he was about to find out. "Good morning, Councilor," he greeted her, inclining his head slightly. "Good to see you, Ghent. I trust you've been making yourself useful?"

"I suppose so," Ghent said, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. Far too nervously, even for him. "They say so, anyway."

"Good." Karrde shifted his attention to the third of the party. "And your friend is . . . ?"

"I am Mobvekhar clan Hakh'khar," a gravelly voice mewed.

Karrde resisted the urge to take a half-step backward. Whatever it was hiding under that robe, it most certainly wasn't a Jawa. "He's my bodyguard," Organa Solo said.

"Ah." With an effort, Karrde pulled his eyes away from whatever it was that was being concealed by the dark hood. "Well," he said, waving a hand toward the accessway. "Shall we go?"

Organa Solo shook her head. "Mara's not here."

Karrde threw a look at Ghent, who was looking even more uncomfortable. "You told me she was."

"I only agreed with you that she'd been arrested," Organa Solo said. "I couldn't say anything more then—there may have been Imperial probe droids listening in."

With an effort, Karrde fought down his annoyance. They were all on the same side here, after all. "Where is she?"

"On a planet called Wayland," Organa Solo said. "Along with Luke and Han and some others."

Wayland? Karrde couldn't recall ever hearing of that world before. "And what's on Wayland that they find so interesting?" he asked.

"Grand Admiral Thrawn's cloning facility."

Karrde stared at her. "You found it?"

"We didn't," Organa Solo said. "Mara did."

Karrde nodded mechanically. So they'd found the cloning facility on their own. All that work he'd put in organizing the other smuggler groups: gone like dumped Kessel spice. The work, the risk, not to mention the money he'd planned to pay them with. "You're certain the cloning facility is there?"

"We'll find out soon enough," Organa Solo said, gesturing to the ship behind him. "I need you to take me there. Right away."

"Why?"

"Because the expeditions in danger," Organa Solo said. "They may not know it yet, but they are. And if they're still on the timetable we were sent, we have a chance of getting to them before it's too late."

"She told me all about it on the way up here," Ghent added hesitantly. "I think we ought to . . ."

He trailed off as Karrde sent a look his way. "I sympathize with your people, Councilor," he said. "But there are other matters that also need my attention."

"Then you abandon Mara," Organa Solo reminded him.

"I have no particular feelings for Mara," Karrde countered. "She's a member of my organization; nothing more."

"Isn't that enough?"

For a moment Karrde gazed at her. She held his gaze evenly, calling his bluff . . . and in her eyes, he could see that she knew perfectly well that it was a bluff. He couldn't simply walk away and abandon Mara to her death, any more than he could abandon Aves or Dankin or Chin. Not if there was anything he could do to prevent it. "It's not that easy," he said quietly "I have responsibilities to the rest of my people, as well. At the moment they're preparing to launch a raid with the hope of obtaining a crystal gravfield trap to sell you."

A flicker of surprise flashed across Organa Solo's face. "A crystal gravfield trap—?"

"It's not the one you're trying for," Karrde assured her. "But we've scheduled it for the same time, hoping your attack will distract the enemy. I need to be there."

"I see," Organa Solo murmured, apparently deciding to pass over the question of how Karrde could have known about the Tangrene raid. "Will the Wild Karrde make all that much difference in that raid?"

Karrde looked at Ghent. It wouldn't make any difference at all, not with Mazzic and Ellor and the others reinforcing the impressive group Aves had already pulled together. The problem was that if they left now—and the way Organa Solo was talking, she meant for him to turn around and head straight back into space—there wouldn't be any chance of turning Ghent loose on the New Republic's computer system and rerouting the funds he needed to pay the other groups.

Unless he could get the money another way. "It can't be done," he told Organa Solo firmly. "I can't simply walk out on my people. At least, not without—"

Abruptly, the Jawa-robed alien snapped his fingers. Karrde paused in midsentence, watching in fascination as the creature slipped noiselessly back into the accessway tunnel, a slender knife appearing somehow in his hand. He disappeared through the door, and for a moment there was silence. Karrde raised his eyebrows at Organa Solo, got a slight shrug in return—

There was a sudden squeal from inside the accessway door, followed by a sudden flurry of half-visible commotion. Karrde found his blaster in his hand; and he was bringing it to bear on the figures when all the activity abruptly stopped. A moment later, the alien reappeared, forcing a half-crouched figure before him.

An all-too-familiar figure. "Well, well," Karrde said, lowering his blaster but not holstering it. "Councilor Fey'lya, I believe. Reduced to eavesdropping at doorways?"

"He is unarmed," the robed alien said in his gravelly voice.

"Release him, then," Organa Solo said.

The alien complied. Fey'lya straightened up, his fur rippling madly across his head and torso as he tried to salvage what he could of his composure. "I protest this improper treatment," he said, his voice somewhat less melodious than the Bothan norm. "And I was not eavesdropping. General Bel Iblis informed me of Councilor Organa Solo's revelation concerning the cloning facility on Wayland. I came here, Captain Karrde, to urge you to assist Councilor Organa Solo in her wish to go to Wayland."

Karrde smiled tightly. "Where she would be conveniently out of your way? Thank you, but I believe we've already been through this together."

The Bothan drew himself up. "This is not about politics. Without her warning, the team on Wayland may not survive. And without their survival, the Emperor's storehouse may not be destroyed before the Grand Admiral can remove some of its contents to a safe place."

His violet eyes locked with Karrde's. "And that would be a disaster. To both the Bothan people and to the galaxy."

For a moment Karrde studied him, wondering what was there that Fey'lya was so worried about. Some weapon or technology that Thrawn hadn't found yet? Or was it more personal than that? Unpleasant or embarrassing information, perhaps, either about Fey'lya or the Bothan people generally?

He didn't know, and he suspected Fey'lya wouldn't tell. But the particulars didn't really matter. "Potential disasters to the Bothan people don't worry me," he told Fey'lya. "How much do they worry you?"

There was an uncertain ripple of the fur across Fey'lya's shoulders. "It would be a disaster for the galaxy as well," he said.

"So you said," Karrde agreed. "I repeat: How much does it worry you?"

And this time Fey'lya got it. His eyes narrowed, his fur rippling with obvious contempt. "How much worry will it take?" he demanded.

"Nothing unreasonable," Karrde assured him. "Merely a credit of, say, seventy thousand?"

"Seventy thousand?" Fey'lya echoed, aghast. "What exactly do you think—"

"That's my price, Councilor," Karrde cut him off. "Take it or leave it. And if Councilor Organa Solo is correct, we don't have time for any long discussions."

Fey'lya hissed like an angry predator. "You're no better than a foul mercenary," he snarled, his voice about as vicious as Karrde had ever heard a Bothan get. "You drain out the lifeblood of the Bothan people—"

"Spare me the lecture, Councilor," Karrde said. "Yes or no?"

Fey'lya hissed again. "Yes."

"Good," Karrde nodded, looking at Organa Solo. "Is the credit line your brother set up for me still there?"

"Yes," she said. "General Bel Iblis knows how to access it."

"You can deposit the seventy thousand there," Karrde told Fey'lya. "And bear in mind that we'll be stopping to check on it before we reach Wayland. In case you had any thoughts about backing out."

"I am honorable, smuggler," Fey'lya snarled. "Unlike others present."

"I'm glad to hear that," Karrde said. "Honorable beings are so difficult to find. Councilor Organa Solo?"

She took a deep breath. "I'm ready," she said.

They were off Coruscant and nearly ready for the jump to lightspeed before Leia finally asked the question she'd worried about since coming aboard. "Are we really going to stop to check on Fey'lya's funds?"

"With time as critical as you suggest?" Karrde countered. "Don't be silly. But Fey'lya doesn't know that."

Leia watched him for a moment as he handled the Wild Karrde's helm. "The money's not really important to you, is it?"

"Don't believe that, either," he advised her coolly. "I have certain obligations to meet. If Fey'lya hadn't been willing to cooperate, your New Republic would have had to do so."

"I see," Leia murmured.

He must have heard something in her voice. "I mean that," he insisted, throwing a brief and entirely unconvincing scowl at her. "I'm here because it suits my purposes. Not for the sake of your war."

"I said I understood," Leia agreed, smiling privately to herself. The words were different; but the look on Karrde's face was almost identical. Look, I ain't in this for your revolution, and I'm not in it for you, Princess. I expect to be well paid. I'm in it for the money. Han had said that to her after that stormy escape from the first Death Star. At the time, she'd believed it.

Her smile faded. He and Luke had saved her life then. She wondered if she'd be in time now to save theirs.

Chapter 24

The entrance to Mount Tantiss was a glint of metal nestled cozily beneath an overhang of rock and vegetation. Between them and it, just visible from their hilltop vantage point, was a clearing with a small city lying in it. "What do you think?" Luke asked.

"I think we find another way in," Han told him, bracing his elbows a little harder into the dead leaves and trying to hold the macrobinoculars steady. He'd been right; there was a stormtrooper guard station just off the metal doors. "You never want the front door, anyway."

Luke tapped his shoulder twice: the signal that he'd picked up someone coming. Han froze, listening. Sure enough, there was a faint sound of clumping feet in the underbrush. A minute later, four Imperial troops in full field gear came out of the trees a few meters further down the hill. They walked straight past Han and Luke without so much as looking up, disappearing back into the trees a few steps later. "Starting to get pretty thick," Han muttered.

"I think it's just the proximity to the mountain," Luke said. "I still don't get any indication that they know we're out here."

Han grunted and shifted his view to the village poking out of the clearing down below them. Most of the buildings were squat, alien-looking things, with one really good-sized one facing into an open square. His angle wasn't all that good, but it looked like there were a bunch of Psadans hanging around near the front of the big one. A town meeting, maybe? "I don't see any sign of a garrison down there," he said, sweeping the macrobinoculars slowly across the village. "Must be working directly out of the mountain."

"That should make it easier to get around it."

"Yeah," Han said, frowning as he swung the macrobinoculars back to the town square. That crowd of Psadans he'd noticed a minute ago had shifted into a sort of semicircle now, facing a couple more of the walking rock piles standing with their backs to the big building. And it was definitely getting bigger.

"Trouble?" Luke murmured.

"I don't know," Han said slowly, wedging his elbows a little tighter and kicking the magnification up a notch. "There's a big meeting going on down there. Two Psadans . . . but they don't seem to be talking. Just holding something."

"Let me try," Luke offered. "There are Jedi techniques for enhancing vision. Maybe they'll work on a macrobinocular image."

"Go ahead," Han said, handing over the macrobinoculars and squinting at the sky. There were a few wispy clouds visible up there, but nothing that looked like it was going to become a general overcast anytime soon. Figure two hours till sundown; another half hour of light after that—

"Hmm," Luke said.

"What is it?"

"I'm not exactly sure," Luke said, lowering the macrobinoculars. "But it looks to me like what they're holding is a data pad."

Han looked out toward the city. "I didn't know they used data pads."

"Neither did I," Luke said, his voice suddenly going all strange.

Han frowned at him. The kid was just staring at the mountain, a funny look on his face. "What's wrong?"

"It's the mountain," he said, staring hard at it. "It's dark. All of it."

Dark? Han frowned at the mountain. It looked fine to him. "What are you talking about?"

"It's dark," Luke repeated slowly. "Like Myrkr was."

Han looked at the mountain. Looked back at Luke. "You mean, like in a bunch of ysalamiri cutting off the Force?"

Luke nodded. "That's what it feels like. I won't know for sure until we're closer."

Han looked back at the mountain, feeling his stomach curling up inside him. "Great," he muttered. "Just great. Now what?"

Luke shrugged. "We go on. What else is there?"

"Getting back to the Falcon and getting out of here, that's what," Han retorted. "Unless you're really hot to walk into an Imperial trap."

"I don't think it's a trap," Luke said, shaking his head thoughtfully. "Or at least, not a trap for us. Remember how that contact I told you about with C'baoth was suddenly cut off?"

Han rubbed his cheek. He could see what Luke was getting at, all right: the ysalamiri were here for C'baoth, not him. "I'm still not sure I buy that," he said. "I thought C'baoth and Thrawn were on the same side. Mara said that herself."

"Maybe they had a falling out," Luke suggested. "Or maybe Thrawn was using him from the start and now doesn't need him anymore. If the Imperials don't know we're here, the ysalamiri must have been meant for him."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't matter much who they were meant for," Han pointed out. "They'll block you just as well as they will C'baoth. It'll be like Myrkr all over again."

"Mara and I did okay on Myrkr," Luke reminded him. "We can handle it here. Anyway, we've come too far to back out now."

Han grimaced. But the lad was right. Once the Empire gave up on this deserted-planet routine, chances were the next New Republic team wouldn't even make it into the atmosphere. "You going to tell Mara before we get there?"

"Of course." Luke looked up at the sky. "But I'll tell her on the way. We'd better get moving while we still have daylight."

"Right," Han said, giving the area one last look before he got to his feet. Force or no Force, it was up to them. "Let's go."

The others were waiting just around the other side of the hill. "How's it look?" Lando asked as Han and Luke rejoined them.

"They still don't know we're here," Han told him, looking around for Mara. She was sitting on the ground near Threepio and Artoo, concentrating on a set of five stones she'd gotten to hover in the air in front of her. Luke had been teaching her this kind of stuff for days, and Han had finally given up trying to talk the kid out of it. It looked like the lessons were going to be a waste of time now, anyway. "You ready to take us to this back door of yours?"

"I'm ready to start looking for it," she said, still keeping the stones in the air. "As I told you before, I only saw the air system equipment from inside the mountain. I never saw the intakes themselves."

"We'll find them," Luke assured her, passing Han and walking over to the droids. "How are you doing, Threepio?"

"Quite well, thank you, Master Luke," the droid answered primly. "This route is so much better than many of the earlier ones." Beside him, Artoo trilled something. "Artoo finds it so, as well," Threepio added.

"Don't get attached to it," Mara warned, finally letting the stones drop as she stood up. "There probably won't be any Myneyrshi trails up the mountain for us to follow. The Empire discouraged native activity anywhere nearby."

"But don't worry," Luke soothed the droids. "The Noghri will help us find a path."

"Freighter Garret's Gold, you're cleared for final approach," the brisk voice of Bilbringi Control came over the Etherway's bridge speaker. "Docking Platform Twenty-five. Straight-vector as indicated to the buoy; it'll feed you the course to follow to the platform."

"Acknowledged, Control," Aves said, keying in the course that had come up on the nav display. "What about the security fields?"

"Stay on the course you're given and you won't run into them," the controller said. "Deviate more than about fifteen meters any direction and you'll get a good bump on the nose. From the looks of it, I don't think your nose can afford any more bumps."

Aves threw a glare at the speaker. One of these days he was going to get real tired of Imperial sarcasm. "Thank you," he said, and keyed off.

"Imperials are such fun to work with, aren't they?" Gillespee commented from the copilot station.

"I like to imagine what his expression is going to be like when we burn out of here with their CGT," Aves said.

"Let's hope we're not around to find out for sure," Gillespee said. "Pretty complicated flight system they've got here."

"It wasn't like this before that raid of Mazzic's," Aves said, gazing ahead through the viewport. Half a dozen shield generators were visible along his approach vector, floating loose around the area and defining the flight path the buoy would supposedly give him. "Probably supposed to keep anyone else from flying around the shipyards any old way they want to."

"Yeah," Gillespee said. "I just hope they've got all the glitches out of the system."

"Me, too," Aves agreed. "I don't want them to know how much of a bump this ship can really take."

He glanced down at his board, confirming his vector and then checking the time. The New Republic fleet ought to be hitting Tangrene in a little over three hours. Just enough time for the Etherway to dock, unload the specially tweaked tractor beam burst capacitors they were courteously donating to the Empire's war effort, and get into backup position for Mazzic's attempt to grab the CGT from the main command center eight docking platforms away.

"There goes Ellor," Gillespee commented, nodding off to starboard.

Aves looked. It was the Kai Mir, all right, with the Klivering running in flanking position beside it. Beyond it, he could see the Starry Ice drifting in toward a docking platform near the perimeter. Near as he could tell, everything seemed to be falling into place.

Though with someone like Thrawn in charge, appearances didn't mean much. For all he knew, the Grand Admiral might already know all about this raid, and was just waiting for everybody to sneak in under the net before wrapping it around them.

"You ever hear anything else from Karrde?" Gillespee asked, a little too casually.

"He's not deserting us, Gillespee," Aves growled. "If he says he has something more important to do, then he has something more important to do. Period."

"I know," Gillespee said, his voice noncommittal. "Just thought some of the others might have asked."

Aves grimaced. Here they went again. He'd have thought that opening up Ferrier's treachery at Hijarna would have settled this whole thing once and for all. He should have known better. "I'm here," he reminded Gillespee. "So are the Starry Ice, the Dawn Beat, the Lastri's Ort, the Amanda Fallow, the—"

"Yeah, right, I get the point," Gillespee interrupted. "Don't get huffy at me—my ships are here, too."

"Sorry," Aves said. "I'm just getting tired of everybody always being so suspicious of everybody else."

Gillespee shrugged. "We're smugglers. We've had a lot of practice at it. Personally, I'm surprised the group's held together this long. What do you think he's doing?"

"Who, Karrde?" Aves shook his head. "No idea. But it'll be something important."

"Sure." Gillespee pointed ahead. "That the marker buoy?"

"Looks like it," Aves agreed. "Get ready to copy the course data. Ready or not, here we go."

The orders came up on Wedge's comm screen, and he gave them a quick check as he keyed for the squadron's private frequency. "Rogue Squadron, this is Rogue Leader," he said. "Orders: we're going in with the first wave, flanking Admiral Ackbar's Command Cruiser. Hold position here until we're cleared for positioning. All ships acknowledge."

The acknowledgments came in, crisp and firm, and Wedge smiled tightly to himself. There'd been some worry among Ackbar's staff, he knew, that the long flight here to the rendezvous point might take the edge off those units that had first had to carry out decoy duty near the supposed Tangrene jump-off point. Wedge didn't know about the others, but it was clear that Rogue Squadron was primed and ready for battle.

"You suppose Thrawn got our message, Rogue Leader?" Janson's voice came into Wedge's thoughts.

Their message . . . ? Oh, right—that little conversation outside the Mumbri Storve cantina with Talon Karrde's friend Aves. The one Hobbie had been firmly convinced would be going straight to Imperial Intelligence. "I don't know, Rogue Five," Wedge told him. "Actually, I sort of hope it didn't."

"Kind of a waste of time if it didn't."

"Not necessarily," Wedge pointed out. "Remember, he said they had some other scheme on line that they wanted to coordinate with ours. Anything that hits or distracts the Empire can't help but do us some good."

"They've probably just got some smuggling drop planned," Rogue Six sniffed. "Hoping to run it through while the Imperials are looking the other way."

Wedge didn't reply. Luke Skywalker seemed to think Karrde was quietly on the New Republic's side, and that was good enough for him. But there wasn't any way he was going to convince the rest of his squadron of that. Someday, maybe, Karrde would be willing to take a more open stand against the Empire. Until then, at least in Wedge's opinion, everyone who wasn't on the Grand Admiral's side was helping the New Republic, whether they admitted it or not.

Sometimes, even, whether they knew it or not.

His comm display changed: the vanguard cone of Star Cruisers had made it into their launch formation. Time for their escort ships to do the same. "Okay, Rogue Squadron," he told the others. "We've got the light. Let's get to our places."

Easing power to his X-wing's drive, he headed off toward the running lights ahead. Two and a half hours, if the rest of the fleet assembly stayed on schedule, and they'd be dropping out of lightspeed within spitting distance of the Bilbringi shipyards.

A shame, he thought, that they wouldn't be able to see the looks on the Imperials' faces.

The latest group of reports from the Tangrene region scrolled across the display. Pellaeon skimmed through them, scowling blackly to himself. No mistake—the Rebels were still there. Still slipping forces into the region; still doing nothing to draw attention to themselves. And in two hours, if Intelligence's projections were even halfway accurate, they would be launching an attack on an effectively undefended system.

"They're doing quite well, aren't they, Captain?" Thrawn commented from beside him. "A very convincing performance all around."

"Sir," Pellaeon said, fighting to keep his voice properly deferential. "I respectfully suggest that the Rebel activity is not any kind of performance. The preponderance of evidence points to Tangrene as their probable target. Several key starfighter units and capital ships have clearly been assembled at likely jump-off points—"

"Wrong, Captain," Thrawn cut him off coolly. "That's what they want us to believe, but it's nothing more than a carefully constructed illusion. The ships you refer to pulled out of those sectors between forty and seventy hours ago, leaving behind a few men with the proper uniforms and insignia to confuse our spies. The bulk of the force is even now on its way to Bilbringi."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said with a silent sigh of defeat. So that was it. Once again, Thrawn had chosen to ignore his arguments—as well as all the evidence—in favor of nebulous hunches and intuitions.

And if he was wrong, it wouldn't be simply the Tangrene Ubiqtorate base that would be lost. An error of that magnitude would shake the confidence and momentum of the entire Imperial war machine.

"All war is risk, Captain," Thrawn said quietly. "But this is not as large a risk as you seem to think. If I'm wrong, we lose one Ubiqtorate base—important, certainly, but hardly critical." He cocked a blue-black eyebrow. "But if I'm right, we stand a good chance of destroying two entire Rebel sector fleets. Consider the impact that will have on the current balance of power."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said dutifully.

He could feel Thrawn's eyes on him. "You don't have to believe," the Grand Admiral told him. "But be prepared to be proved wrong."

"I very much hope so, sir," Pellaeon said.

"Good. Is my flagship ready, Captain?"

Pellaeon felt his back stiffen a bit in old parade-ground reflex. "The Chimaera is fully at your command, Admiral."

"Then prepare the fleet for hyperspace." The glowing eyes glittered. "And for battle."

There were no real paths up Mount Tantiss; but as Luke had predicted, the Noghri had a knack for terrain. They made remarkably good time, even with the droids slowing them down, and as the sun was disappearing below the trees, they reached the air intakes.

It was not, however, exactly the way Luke had envisioned it.

"Looks more like a retractable turbolaser turret than an air system," he commented to Han as they moved cautiously through the trees toward the heavy metal mesh and the even heavier metal structure the mesh was set into.

"Reminds me of the bunker we had to break into on Endor," Han muttered back. "Except with a screen door. Easy—they might have intruder detectors."

Anywhere else, Luke would have reached out into the tunnel with the Force. Here, within the ysalamiri effect surrounding him, it was like being blind.

Like being on Myrkr again.

He looked at Mara, wondering if she was having similar thoughts and memories. Perhaps so. Even in the fading light, he could see the tension in her face, an anxiety and fear that hadn't been there before they entered the ysalamiri bubble. "So what now?" she growled, flashing a brief glare at him before looking away again. "We just sit around until morning?"

Han had his macrobinoculars trained on the intake. "Looks like a computer outlet there on the wall under the overhang," he said. "The rest of you stay put—I'll take Artoo over and try plugging him in."

Beside Han, Chewbacca rumbled a warning. "Where?" Han muttered, drawing his blaster.

The Wookiee pointed with one hand as he unlimbered his bowcaster with the other.

The whole group froze, weapons ready . . . and it was then that Luke first heard the faint sounds of distant blaster fire. From several kilometers away, he thought, possibly somewhere down the mountain. But without his Jedi enhancement techniques, there was no way to know for sure.

From much closer came a birdlike warbling. "A group of Myneyrshi approach," Ekhrikhor said, listening intently to the signaling. "The Noghri have stopped them. They wish to come forward and speak."

"Tell them to stay there," Han said, hesitating just a second before holstering his blaster. Pulling the bleached satna-chakka clawbird out of a pocket of his jacket, he beckoned to Threepio. "Come on, Goldenrod, let's go find out what they want."

Ekhrikhor muttered an order, and one of the Noghri moved silently to Han's side. Chewbacca stepped to the other side, and with a helplessly protesting Threepio trailing along they all headed off into the trees.

Artoo gurgled uncomfortably, his dome head swiveling back and forth between Luke and the departing Threepio. "He'll be all right," Luke assured him. "Han won't let anything happen to him."

The squat droid grunted, probably expressing his opinion of the depths of Han's concern for Threepio. "We may have more problems than Threepio's health to worry about in a minute," Lando said grimly. "I thought I heard blaster fire from down the mountain."

"I did, too," Mara nodded. "Probably coming from the storehouse entrance."

Lando looked over his shoulder at the massive air intake. "Let's see if we can get that vent open. At least it'll give us another direction to go if we need to jump."

Luke looked at Mara, but she was avoiding his eyes again. "All right," he told Lando. "I'll go first; you bring Artoo."

Cautiously, he moved through the trees toward the intakes. But if there were any anti-intruder defenses, they didn't seem to be working anymore. He made it in under the metal overhang without incident, and with the wind of the inrushing air ruffling through his hair he studied the mesh. At this distance he could see that it was more like a heavy grating, with each strand of what had looked like mesh actually a plate extending several centimeters back into the tunnel. A formidable barrier, but nothing his lightsaber couldn't handle.

There was the sound of a footstep through leaves, and he turned as Lando and Artoo came up. "The outlet's over there, Artoo," he told the droid, pointing to the socket in the side wall. "Plug in and see what you can find out."

The droid warbled acknowledgment, and with Lando's help maneuvered his way across the rough ground.

"It's not just going to open up for you," Mara said from behind him.

"Artoo's going to check it out," Luke told her, peering at her face. "You all right?"

He'd expected a sarcastic comment or at least a withering glare. He wasn't prepared for her to reach out and grip his hand. "I want you to promise me something," she said in a low voice. "Whatever it costs, don't let me go over to C'baoth's side. You understand? Don't let me join him. Even if you have to kill me."

Luke stared at her, an eerie chill running through him. "C'baoth can't force you to his side, Mara," he said. "Not without your cooperation."

"Are you sure of that? Really sure?"

Luke grimaced. There was so much he didn't know yet about the Force. "No."

"Neither am I," Mara said. "That's what worries me. C'baoth told me back on Jomark that I'd be joining him. He said it again here, too, the night he arrived."

"He may have been mistaken," Luke suggested hesitantly. "Or lying."

"I don't want to risk it." She gripped Luke's hand tighter. "I'm not going to serve him, Skywalker. I want you to promise that you'll kill me before you let him do that to me."

Luke swallowed hard. Even without the Force, he could hear in her voice that she meant it. But for a Jedi to promise to cut someone down in cold blood . . . "I'll promise you this," he said instead. "Whatever happens in there, you won't have to face him alone. I'll be there to help you."

She turned her face away. "What if you're already dead?"

So it was down to this: the same battle she'd been fighting with herself since the day they met. "You don't have to do it," he said quietly. "The Emperor's dead. That voice you hear is just a memory he left behind inside you."

"I know that," she snapped, a touch of fire flickering through the cold dread. "You think that makes it any easier to ignore?"

"No," he conceded. "But you can't use the voice as an excuse, either. Your destiny is in your hands, Mara. Not C'baoth's or the Emperor's. In the end you're the one who makes the decisions. You have that right . . . and that responsibility."

From the forest came the sound of footsteps. "Fine," Mara growled, dropping Luke's hand and taking a step back away from him. "You spout philosophy if you want to. Just remember what I said." Spinning around, she turned to face the approaching group. "So what's going on, Solo?"

"We've picked up some allies," he said, throwing what looked like a frown in Luke's general direction. "Sort of allies, anyway."

"Hey—Threepio," Lando called, waving to him. "Come over here, will you, and tell me what Artoo's all excited about."

"Certainly, sir," Threepio said, shuffling over to the computer terminal.

Luke looked back at Han. "What do you mean, sort of allies?"

"It's kind of confusing," Han said. "At least the way Threepio translates it. They don't want to help us, they just want to go in and fight the Imperials. They followed us because they figured we'd find a back door they could get in through."

Luke studied the group of silent four-armed aliens towering over the Noghri guarding them. All wore four or more long knives and carried crossbows—not exactly the sort of weapons to use against armored Imperial troops. "I don't know. What do you think?"

"Hey, Han," Lando called softly before Han could answer. "Come here. You'll want to hear this."

"What?" Han asked as they went over to the computer terminal.

"Tell them, Threepio," Lando said.

"Apparently, there is an attack taking place at the main entrance to the mountain," Threepio said in that perennially surprised manner of his. "Artoo has picked up several reports detailing perimeter-guard troop movements into the area—"

"Who's attacking?" Han cut him off.

"Apparently, some of the Psadans from the city," Threepio said. "According to the gate reports, they demanded the release of their Lord C'baoth before they attacked."

Han looked at Luke. "The data pad."

"Makes sense," Luke agreed. A message from C'baoth, inciting them to attack. "I wonder how he managed to smuggle it out to them."

"Confirms he's been locked up, anyway," Mara put in. "I hope they've got some good guards on his cell."

"Pardon me, Master Luke," Threepio said, cocking his head to one side, "but as to the data pad Captain Solo mentioned, I would suggest it arrived the same way the weapons did. According to reports—"

"What kind of weapons?" Han said.

"I was getting to that, sir," Threepio said, sounding a bit huffy. "According to gate reports, the attackers are armed with blasters, portable missile launchers, and thermal detonators. All quite modern versions, if reports are to be believed."

"Never mind where they got them from," Lando said. "The point is that we've got a custom-cut diversion here. Let's use it while it's still there."

Chewbacca rumbled suspiciously. "You're right, pal," Han agreed, peering into the grating. "It's awfully convenient timing. But Lando's right—we might as well go for it."

Lando nodded. "Okay, Artoo. Shut it all down."

The squat droid chirped acknowledgment, his computer arm rotating in the socket. The inflow of air across Luke's face began to decrease, and a minute later had stopped completely.

Artoo warbled again. "Artoo reports that all operating systems for this intake have been shut down," Threepio announced. "He warns, however, that once the duty cycle has ended, the dust barriers and driving fields may be reactivated from a central location."

"Better get moving, then," Luke said, igniting his lightsaber and stepping over to the intake. Four careful slices later, they had their entrance.

"Looks clear," Han said, climbing gingerly through the opening and stepping over to the limited protection of the side wall. "Got maintenance lights showing up down the tunnel a ways. Artoo, you get us any floor plans for this place?"

The droid jabbered as he rolled through the opening. "I'm terribly sorry, sir," Threepio said. "He has full schematics for the air-duct system itself, but he says that further information on the facility was not available at this terminal."

"There'll be other terminals down the line," Lando said. "Are we leaving a rear guard?"

"One of the Noghri will stay," Ekhrikhor mewed at Han's elbow. "He will keep the exit clear."

"Fine," Han said. "Let's go."

They were fifty meters down the tunnel and approaching the first of the dim maintenance lights Han had spotted before Luke suddenly noticed that the silent Myneyrshi had followed them in. "Han?" he murmured, gesturing behind them.

"Yeah, I know," Han said. "What did you want me to do, tell them to go home?"

Luke looked back again. He was right, of course. But knives and crossbows against blasters . . . "Ekhrikhor?"

"What is your command, son of Vader?"

"I want you to assign two of your people to go with those Myneyrshi," he told the Noghri. "They're to guide them and help them with their attacks."

"But it is you we must protect, son of Vader," Ekhrikhor objected.

"You will be protecting me," Luke said. "Every Imperial the Myneyrshi can pin down will be one less for us to worry about. But they can't pin any troops down if they're killed in the first sortie."

The Noghri made an unhappy-sounding noise in the back of his throat. "I hear and obey," he said reluctantly. He gestured to two of the Noghri; and as Luke watched them drop back down the tunnel he caught a quick look at Mara's face as she passed one of the lights. The dread was still there, but along with it was a grim determination. Whatever was waiting ahead for them, she was ready to face it.

He could only hope that he was, too.

"There it is," Karrde announced, pointing ahead to the mountain rising out of the forest and the gathering shadows of twilight.

"You sure?" Leia asked, stretching out with the Force as hard as she could. Back at Bespin, during that mad escape from Lando's Cloud City, she'd been able to sense Luke's call from almost this far away. Here, now, there was nothing at all.

"That's where their nav feed seems to be leading us," Karrde told her. "Unless they've seen through Ghent's little deception and are sending us to some sort of decoy spot." He glanced over his shoulder at her. "Anything?"

"No." Leia looked out at the mountain, her stomach tightening painfully. After all their hopes and effort, they were too late. "They must already be inside."

"They're heading into trouble, then," Ghent spoke up from the comm station where he was still fiddling with the fine-tuning on his counterfeit Imperial ID code. "Flight control says they've got a riot going on at the entrance. They're diverting us to a secondary maintenance area about ten kilometers north."

Leia shook her head. "We're going to have to risk contacting them."

"Too dangerous," Dankin, the copilot, said. "If they catch us using a non-Imperial comlink channel, we're likely to get shot down."

"Perhaps there is another way," Mobvekhar said, moving to Leia's side. "Ekhrikhor clan Bakh'tor will have left a guard at their entrance point. There is a Noghri recognition signal that can be created with landing lights."

"Go ahead," Karrde said. "We can always claim a malfunction if the garrison notices. Chin, Corvis—watch your scopes."

Stepping over to Dankin's board, the Noghri keyed the landing lights on and off a half-dozen times. Leia stared out the viewport, trying to watch the whole mountain at once. If Han and the others had gone in above the dusk line—

"Got it," Corvis's voice came from his turbolaser turret. "Bearing zero-zero-three mark seventeen."

Leia looked over Karrde's shoulder as the coordinates came up on his nav display. There it was, faint but visible: a flickering light. "They are there," Mobvekhar confirmed.

"Good," Karrde said. "Ghent, acknowledge that we're proceeding to that secondary maintenance area as ordered. Better find a seat and strap down, Councilor; we're about to have an unexpected repulsorlift malfunction."

Between the trees and eroded rock outcroppings it looked to Leia like an impossible place for a ship the size of the Wild Karrde to land. But Karrde and his crew had clearly pulled this trick before, and with a last-second sputter of precision-aimed turbolaser fire they created just enough of a gap to put down into.

"Now what?" Dankin asked as Karrde cycled back the repulsorlifts.

Karrde looked at Leia, raised an eyebrow in question. "I'm going in," Leia told him, the vision of Luke and Mara in danger hovering before her eyes. "You don't have to come along."

"The Councilor and I will go look for her friends," Karrde answered Dankin, unstrapping and getting to his feet. "Ghent, you'll try to convince the garrison that we don't need any assistance."

"What about me?" Dankin asked.

Karrde smiled tightly. "You'll stay ready in case they don't believe him. Come on, Councilor."

The Noghri who'd returned their signal was nowhere in sight as they stepped out onto the Wild Karrde's ramp. "Where is he?" Karrde asked, looking around.

"Waiting," Mobvekhar said, putting a hand to the side of his mouth and giving a complex whistle. An answering whistle came, shifted into a complex warble. "Our identity is confirmed," he said. "He bids us come quickly. The others are no more than a quarter hour ahead."

A quarter hour. Leia stared out at the starlit darkness of the mountain. Too late to warn them, but maybe not too late to help. "Come on—we're wasting time," she said.

"Just a minute," Karrde said, looking past her shoulder. "We have to wait for—ah."

Leia turned. Coming down the corridor toward them from the aft section of the ship was a middle-aged man with a pair of long-legged quadruped animals in tow. "Here you go, Capt'," the man said, holding out the leashes.

"Thank you, Chin," Karrde said, taking them as he squatted down to scratch both animals briefly behind the ears. "I don't believe you've met my pet vornskrs, Councilor. This one's named Drang; the somewhat more aloof one there is Sturm. On Myrkr they use the Force to hunt their prey. Here, they're going to use it to find Mara. Right?"

The vornskrs made a strange sound, rather like a cackling purr. "Good," Karrde said, straightening up again. "I believe we're ready now, Councilor. Shall we go?"

Chapter 25

The alarms were still hooting in the distance as Han carefully leaned one eye around the corner. According to the floor plans Artoo had pulled up, this should be the major outer defense monitor station in this sector of the garrison. There were likely to be guards, and those guards were likely to be alert.

He was right on both counts. Five meters away down the entry corridor, flanking a heavy blast door, stood a pair of stormtroopers. And they were alert enough to notice the skulking stranger looking at them and to snap their blaster rifles up into firing position.

The smart thing to do—the thing any reasonably nonsuicidal person would do—would be to duck back behind the corner before the shooting started. Instead, Han gripped the corner with his free hand, using the leverage to throw himself completely across the entry corridor. He made it to the other side millimeters ahead of the tracking blaster bolts, flattening himself against the wall as the rapid fire blew out chunks of paneling metal behind him.

They were still firing as Chewbacca leaned around the corner Han had just left and ended the discussion with two quick bowcaster shots.

"Good job, Chewie," Han grunted, throwing a quick look behind him and then slipping back around the corner. The stormtroopers were out of the fight, all right, leaving nothing in their way but a massive metal door.

Which, like the stormtroopers themselves, was no big deal. At least, not for them. "Ready?" he asked, dropping into a half-crouch at one side of the door and raising his blaster. There would be another pair of guards inside.

"Ready," Luke confirmed. There was the snap-hiss of the lad's lightsaber, and the brilliant green blade whipped past Han's head to slice horizontally through the heavy metal of the blast door. Somewhere along the way it caught the internal release mechanism, and as Luke finished the cut the top part of the door shot up along its track into the ceiling.

From the way the stormtroopers were facing the door, it was clear they'd heard the short fight outside. It was also clear that they hadn't expected anyone to be coming through this soon. Han shot one of them as he tried to bring his blaster rifle to bear; Luke lunged half over the bottom part of the door, lightsaber swinging, and took out the other.

The group of Imperials manning their sensor consoles weren't expecting company, either. They were fumbling for sidearms and scrambling for cover as Han and Chewbacca took them out. A dozen shots after that, the room had been reduced to a smoldering collection of junk.

"That ought to do it," Han decided. "Better get lost before the reinforcements get here."

But between the riot down at the main entrance and the wandering band of Myneyrshi, Imperial response time was down. The three intruders made it back along the corridor to the emergency stairway and three levels down to the pump room where they'd left the others.

Two of the Noghri were standing silent guard just inside the door as Han keyed it open. "Any trouble?" Lando called from somewhere in the tangle of pipes that seemed to fill two thirds of the room.

"Not really," Han said as Chewbacca closed and locked the door behind them. "Wouldn't want to try it again, though."

Lando grunted. "I don't think you'll have to. They should be adequately convinced that there's a major aerial attack on the way."

"Let's hope so," Han said, stepping around to where Lando was fiddling with an archaic-looking control board. Artoo was plugged into a computer socket on the side of the board, while Threepio hovered off to the side like a nervous mother bird. "Vintage stuff, huh?"

"You've got that," Lando agreed. "I think the Emperor must have just picked up the cloning complex and dropped it in here whole."

Artoo gibbered indignantly. "Right—including the programming," Lando said dryly. "I know a little about this stuff, Han, but not enough to do any permanent damage. I think we're going to have to use the explosives."

"Fine with me," Han said. He would have hated lugging them all the way across Wayland for nothing, anyway. "Where's Mara?"

"Out there," Lando said, nodding toward another door half hidden by the pipes. "In the main room."

"Let's check it out, Luke," Han said. He didn't like the idea of Mara wandering around alone in this place. "Chewie, stay here with Lando. See if there's anything worth blowing up."

Crossing to the door, he keyed it open. Beyond was a wide circular walkway running around the inside of what seemed to be a huge natural cavern. Directly ahead, framed against a massive equipment column that extended downward from the ceiling through the center of the cavern, Mara was standing at the walkway's railing. "This the place?" he asked her, glancing around as he started toward her. About twenty other doors opened up onto the walkway at more or less regular intervals, and there were four retractable bridges extending out to a work platform encircling the central equipment column. Aside from a couple of their Noghri skulking around doing guard duty there was no one else in sight.

But there were sounds. A muted hum of machinery and voices was coming from somewhere, punctuated by the faint clicks of relays and a strange rhythmic pulsing or whooshing sound. Like the whole cavern was breathing . . .

"It's the place," Mara confirmed, her voice sounding strange. Maybe she thought it sounded like breathing, too. "Come and see."

Han threw a glance at Luke, and together they stepped to Mara's side and looked down over the railing.

And it was, indeed, the place.

The cavern was huge, extending downward at least ten stories below their walkway. It was laid out like a sport arena, with each level being a kind of circular balcony running around the inside of the cavern. Each balcony was a little wider than the one above it, extending further into the center of the cavern and making for a smaller hole around the big equipment column. There were pipes everywhere: huge ones coming off the ducts of the central column, smaller ones running around the edges of each of the balconies, and little ones feeding off them into the neatly arranged metal circles that filled the balconies and main floor.

Thousands of little circles. Each one the top cover plate of a Spaarti cloning cylinder.

Beside Han, Luke made a strange sound in the back of his throat. "It's hard to believe," he said, sounding about halfway between awestruck and dumbfounded.

"Believe it," Han advised him grimly, pulling out his macrobinoculars and focusing them on the main floor below. The ductwork blocked a lot of the view, but he could catch glimpses of men in medtech and guard uniforms scurrying around. They were on some of the balconies, too. "They're stirred up like a rats' nest down there," he said. "Stormtroopers on the main floor and everything."

He threw a sideways look at Mara. Her expression was tight as she stared down at the cloning tanks, with the haunted look of someone gazing back into the past. "Bring back memories?" he asked.

"Yes," she said mechanically. She stood there a moment longer, then slowly straightened up. "But we can't allow it to stand."

"Glad you agree," Han said, studying her face. She looked and sounded okay now, but there was a lot of stuff going on under the surface. Hold it together, kid, he told her silently. Just a little longer, okay? "That column in the middle looks like our best shot. You know anything about it?"

She looked across the cavern. "Not really." She hesitated. "But there might be another way. The Emperor wasn't one for leaving things behind for other people to use. Not if he could help it."

Han threw a glance at Luke. "You mean this whole place might have a self-destruct?"

"It's possible," she said, that haunted look back in her eyes again. "If so, the control will be up in the throne room. I could go and take a look."

"I don't know," Han said, looking down into the cloning cavern. It was an awfully big place for them to take on with a single sack of explosives—he'd give her that much. A destruct switch would simplify things a lot. But the idea of Mara and her memories up there in the Emperor's throne room didn't sound so good, either. "Thanks, but I don't think any of us ought to go wandering around this place alone."

"I'll go with her," Luke volunteered. "She's right—it's worth checking out."

"It'll be safe enough," Mara added. "There's a servicedroid turbolift along the walkway that'll get us most of the way there. Most of the Imperials' attention should be focused on the riot at the entrance, anyway."

Han grimaced. "All right, get going," he growled. "Don't forget to let us know before you pull the switch, okay?"

"We wont," Luke assured him with a tight grin. "Come on, Mara."

They headed down the walkway. "Where are they going?" Lando asked from behind Han.

"Emperor's throne room," Han said. "She thinks he might have put a self-destruct switch up there. You find anything?"

"Artoo's finally got a connection into the main computer," Lando told him. "He's looking for schematics of that thing." He gestured toward the central column.

"We can't wait," Han decided, turning back as Chewbacca emerged from the pump room with their bag of explosives over one shoulder. "Chewie, you and Lando take one of those bridges across and get busy."

"Right," Lando said, taking a cautious look over the railing. "What about you?"

"I'm going to go lock us in," Han told him, pointing to the other doors opening out onto the walkway. "You— Noghri—come here."

The two Noghri who'd been standing guard moved silently to him as Lando and Chewbacca headed toward the nearest bridge. "Your command, Han clan Solo?" one of them asked.

"You—stay here," he told the nearest one. "Watch for trouble. You—" He pointed to the other. "Help me seal off those doors. One good blaster shot into each control box ought to do it. I'll go this way; you go the other."

He was about two thirds of the way around his side of the walkway when he heard something over the eerie mechanical breathing sounds of the cavern below him. Looking back, he saw Threepio calling and beckoning to him from the pump room door. "Great," he muttered. Leave it to Threepio, and sooner or later he'd make a mess of it. Finishing the door he was on, he turned and hurried back.

"Captain Solo!" Threepio gushed in relief as Han came up to him. "Thank the Maker. Artoo says—"

"What are you trying to do?" Han snapped. "Bring the whole garrison down on us?"

"Of course not, sir. But Artoo says—"

"You want to talk to me, you come out and find me. Right?"

"Yes, sir. But Artoo says—"

"If you don't know where to look, you use your comlink," Han said, jabbing a finger at the little cylinder the droid was clutching. "That's why you've got one. You don't just shout around. You got that?"

"Yes, sir," Threepio said, his mechanical patience sounding more than a little strained. "May I continue?"

Han sighed. So much for the lecture. He'd do better talking to a bantha. "Yeah, what is it?"

"It's about Master Luke," Threepio said. "I overheard one of the Noghri say that he and Mara Jade were on their way to the Emperor's throne room."

"Yeah. So?"

"Well, sir, in the course of his inquiries Artoo has just learned that the Jedi Master Joruus C'baoth is imprisoned in that area."

Han stared at him. "What do you mean, that area? Isn't he in the detention center?"

"No, sir," Threepio said. "As I said—"

"Why didn't you say so?" Han demanded, yanking out his comlink and thumbing it on.

And just as fast thumbing it off. "The comlinks appear to be inoperable," Threepio said primly. "I discovered that when I attempted to contact you."

"Great," Han snarled, the burst of jamming static still echoing in his ears as he looked around. Luke and Mara, walking right into C'baoth's arms. And no way to warn them.

No way except one. "Keep Artoo busy looking for those schematics," he told Threepio, shoving the comlink back into his belt. "While he's at it, tell him to see if he can find out where the jamming is coming from. If he can, send a couple of the Noghri to try and get rid of it. Then get out to that work platform and tell Chewie and Lando where I've gone."

"Yes, sir," Threepio said, sounding a little surprised by the flurry of orders and command authority. "Pardon me, sir, but where will you have gone?"

"Where do you think?" Han retorted over his shoulder as he started down the walkway. It never failed, he thought sourly. One way or the other, no matter where they were or what they were doing, somehow he always wound up chasing off after Luke.

And it was starting to look more and more like a good thing he'd come along.

"All right, Garret's Gold, hatchways here are sealed," the controller's voice said. "Stand by to receive outbound course data."

"Acknowledged, Control," Aves said, easing the Etherway back from the docking arm and starting a leisurely turn. They were ready here; and from the looks of things, so was everyone else.

"There he is," Gillespee muttered, pointing out the viewport. "Right on schedule."

"You sure that's Mazzic?" Aves asked, peering out at the ship.

"Pretty sure," Gillespee said. "Want me to try giving him a call?"

Aves shrugged, looking around the shipyards. They'd set up the rest of the group with a good encrypt code, but it wouldn't be a smart idea to tempt trouble by using it before they had to. "Let's hold off a minute," he told Gillespee. "Wait until we've got something to talk about."

The words were barely out of his mouth when the whole thing went straight to hell.

"Star Destroyers!" Faughn barked from the comm console. "Coming in from lightspeed."

"Vectors?" Gillespee snapped.

"Don't bother," Aves told him, a cold knife twisting in his gut. He could see the Star Destroyers ahead, all right, appearing out of hyperspace at the edge of the shipyards. And the Dreadnaughts, and the Lancer Frigates, and the

Strike Cruisers, and the TIE squadrons. A complete assault fleet, and then some.

And practically every fighting ship of Karrde's smuggler confederation was here. Right in the middle of it.

"So it was a trap," Gillespee said, his voice icy calm.

"I guess so," Aves said, staring out at the armada still moving into formation. A formation that seemed wrong, somehow.

"Aves, Gillespee, this is Mazzic," the other smuggler's voice came over the comm. "Looks like we've been sold out after all. I'm not going to surrender. How about you?"

"I think they deserve to lose at least a couple of Star Destroyers for this," Gillespee agreed.

"That was my idea," Mazzic said. "Too bad Karrde isn't here to see us go out in a blaze of glory."

He paused, and Aves could feel Gillespee's and Faughn's eyes on him. They would, he knew, go to their deaths believing Karrde had betrayed them. All of them would. "I'm with you, too," he told the others quietly. "If you want, Mazzic, you can have command."

"Thanks," Mazzic said. "I was going to take it anyway. Stand by: we might as well deliver our first punch together."

Aves took one last look at the armada. .. and suddenly he had it. "Hold it," he snapped. "Mazzic—everyone—hold it. That assault force isn't here for us."

"What are you talking about?" Gillespee demanded.

"Those Interdictor Cruisers out there," Aves said. "Out past that Star Destroyer group—see them? Look at their positioning."

There was a moment of silence. Mazzic got it first. "That's not an enclosure configuration," he said.

"You're right, it's not," Gillespee agreed. "Look—you can see a second group of them farther back."

"It's an entrapment configuration," Mazzic said, sounding like he didn't believe his own words. "They're setting up to pull someone out of hyperspace. And then keep him here long enough to pound him."

Aves looked at Gillespee, found him looking back. "No," Gillespee breathed. "You don't suppose . . . ? I thought they were supposed to be hitting Tangrene."

"So did I," Aves told him grimly, the twisting knife back in his gut. "I guess we were wrong."

"Or else Thrawn is." Gillespee looked out at the armada and shook his head. "No. Probably not."

"All right, let's not panic," Mazzic said. "If the New Republic comes, it just means that much more to occupy the Imperials' attention. Let's stay on schedule and see what happens."

"Right," Aves sighed. Square in the middle of an Imperial base during a New Republic attack. Terrific.

"Tell you something, Aves," Gillespee commented. "If we get out of this, I'm going to go have some words with your boss."

"No argument." Aves looked out at Thrawn's armada. "Matter of fact, I think maybe I'll go with you."

Carefully, Mara eased her head out of the emergency stairway and took a look into the corridor beyond. The caution was wasted; this level was as deserted as the three below it had been. "All clear," she murmured, stepping out into the corridor.

"No guards here, either?" Skywalker asked, looking around as he joined her.

"No point to it," she told him. "Except for the throne room and the royal chambers, there was never much of anything on these top levels."

"I guess there still isn't. Where's this private turbolift?"

"To the right and around that corner," she said, pointing with her blaster.

More from habit than any real need, she tried to keep her footsteps quiet as she led the way down the corridor. She reached the cross corridor and turned into it.

There, ten meters dead ahead, two stormtroopers stood flanking the turbolift door, their blaster rifles already lifting to track toward her.

Half a step into the corridor, all her momentum going the wrong direction, there was nowhere for Mara to go but down. She dived for the deck, firing toward them as she fell. One of the stormtroopers toppled back as a burst of flame erupted in his chest armor. The second rifle swung toward her face—

And jerked reflexively away as Skywalker's lightsaber came spinning down the corridor toward him.

It didn't do any real damage, of course—at that distance, and without the Force, Skywalker wasn't that good a shot. But it did a fine job of distracting the stormtrooper, and that was all Mara needed. Even as the Imperial ducked away from the whirling blade, she caught him with two clean shots. He hit the deck and stayed there.

"I guess they don't want anyone going in there," Skywalker said, coming up beside her.

"I guess not," Mara agreed, ignoring the hand he offered and getting up on her own. "Come on."

The turbolift car had been locked at this level, but it took Mara only a minute to release it. There were only four stops listed: the one they were on, the emergency shuttle hangar, the royal chambers, and the throne room itself. She keyed for the last, and the door slid shut behind them. The trip upward was a short one, and a few seconds later the door on the opposite side of the car slid open. Bracing herself, Mara stepped out.

Into the Emperor's throne room . . . and into a flood of memories.

It was all here, just as she remembered it. The muted sidelights and brooding darkness the Emperor had found so conducive to meditation and thought. The raised section of floor at the far end of the chamber, allowing him to look down from his throne as visitors climbed the staircase into his presence. Viewscreens on the walls on either side of the throne, darkened now, which had enabled him to keep track of the details of his domain.

And for an overview of that domain . . .

She turned to her left, gazing over the railing of the walkway into the huge open space that faced the throne. Floating there in the darkness, a blaze of light twenty meters across, was the galaxy.

Not the standard galaxy hologram any school or shipping business might own. Not even the more precise versions that could be found only in the war rooms of select sector military headquarters. This hologram was sculpted in exquisite and absolutely unique detail, with a single accurately positioned spot of light for each of the galaxy's hundred billion stars. Political regions were delineated by subtle encirclements of color: the Core systems, the Outer Rim Territories, Wild Space, the Unknown Regions. From his throne the Emperor could manipulate the image, highlighting a chosen sector, locating a single system, or tracking a military campaign.

It was as much a work of art as it was a tool. Grand Admiral Thrawn would love it.

And with that thought, the memories of the past faded reluctantly into the realities of the present. Thrawn was in command now, a man who wanted to re-create the Empire in his own image. Wanted it badly enough to unleash a new round of Clone Wars if that would gain it for him.

She took a deep breath. "All right," she said. The words echoed around the chamber, pushing the memories still further away. "If it's here, it'll be built into the throne."

With an obvious effort, Skywalker pulled his gaze away from the hologram galaxy. "Let's take a look."

They headed down the ten-meter walkway that led from the turbolift into the main part of the throne room, walking beneath the overhead catwalk that ran across the front edge of the hologram pit and between the raised guard platforms flanking the stairway. Mara glanced at the platforms as she and Skywalker walked up the steps to the upper level, remembering the red-cloaked Imperial guards who had once stood there in silent watchfulness. Beneath the upper-level floor, visible between the steps as they climbed, the Emperor's monitor and control area was dark and silent. Aside from the galaxy hologram, all of the systems up here appeared to have been shut down.

They reached the top of the steps and headed across toward the throne itself, turned away from them toward the polished rock wall behind it. Mara was looking at it, wondering why the Emperor had left it facing away from his galaxy, when it began to turn around.

She grabbed Skywalker's arm, snapping her blaster up to point at the throne. The massive chair completed its turn—

"So at last you have come to me," Joruus C'baoth said gravely, gazing out at them from the depths of the throne. "I knew you would. Together we will teach the galaxy what it means to serve the Jedi."

Chapter 26

"I knew you would be coming to me tonight," C'baoth said, rising slowly from the throne to face them. "From the moment you left Coruscant, I knew you would come. That was why I set this night for the people of my city to attack my oppressors."

"That wasn't necessary," Luke told him, taking an involuntary step backward as the memories of those near-disastrous days on Jomark came rushing back to him. C'baoth had tried there to subtly corrupt him to the dark side . . . and when he'd failed at that, he'd tried to kill Luke and Mara both.

But he wouldn't be trying that again. Not here. Not without the Force.

"Of course it was necessary," C'baoth said. "You needed a distraction to gain entrance to my prison. And they, like all lesser beings, needed purpose. What better purpose could they have than the honor of dying in the service of the Jedi?"

Beside him, Mara muttered something. "I think you have that backwards," Luke said. "The Jedi were the guardians of peace. The servants of the Old Republic, not its masters."

"Which is why they and the Old Republic failed, Jedi Skywalker," C'baoth said, jabbing a finger toward him in emphasis. "Why they failed, and why they died."

"The Old Republic survived a thousand generations," Mara put in. "That doesn't sound like failure to me."

"Perhaps not," C'baoth said with obvious disdain. "You are young, and do not yet see clearly."

"And you do, of course?"

C'baoth smiled at her. "Oh, yes, my young apprentice," he said softly. "I do indeed. As will you."

"Don't count on it," Mara growled. "We aren't here to get you out."

"The Force does not rely on what you think are your goals," C'baoth said. "Nor do the true masters of the Force. Whether you knew it or not, you came here at my summons."

"You just go ahead and believe that," Mara said, motioning to the side with her blaster. "Move over there."

"Of course, my young apprentice." C'baoth took three steps in the indicated direction. "She has great strength of will, Jedi Skywalker," he added to Luke as Mara moved warily over to the throne and crouched down to examine the armrest control boards. "She will be a great power in the galaxy which we shall build."

"No," Luke said, shaking his head. This was, perhaps, his last chance to bring the insane Jedi back. To save him, as he had saved Vader aboard the second Death Star. "You aren't in any shape to build anything, Master C'baoth. You're not well. But I can help you if you'll let me."

C'baoth's face darkened. "How dare you say such things?" he demanded. "How dare you even think such blasphemy about the great Jedi Master C'baoth?"

"But that's just it," Luke said gently. "You're not the Jedi Master C'baoth. Not the original one, anyway. The proof is there in the Katana's records. Jorus C'baoth died a long time ago during the Outbound Flight Project."

"Yet I am here."

"Yes," Luke nodded. "You are. But not Jorus C'baoth. You see, you're his clone."

C'baoth's whole body went rigid. "No," he said. "No. That can't be."

Luke shook his head. "There's no other explanation. Surely that thought has occurred to you before."

C'baoth took a long, shuddering breath . . . and then, abruptly, he threw his head back and laughed.

"Watch him," Mara snapped, eyeing the old man warily over the throne's armrest. "He pulled this same stunt on Jomark, remember?"

"It's all right," Luke said. "He can't hurt us."

"Ah, Skywalker, Skywalker," C'baoth said, shaking his head. "You, too? Grand Admiral Thrawn, the New Republic, and now you. What is this sudden fascination with clones and cloning?"

He barked another laugh; and then, without warning, turned deadly serious. "He does not understand, Jedi Skywalker," he said earnestly. "Not Grand Admiral Thrawn—not any of them. The true power of the Jedi is not in these simple tricks of matter and energy. The true might of the Jedi is that we alone of all those in the galaxy have the power to grow beyond ourselves. To extend ourselves into all the reaches of the universe."

Luke glanced at Mara, got a shrug and puzzled look in return. "We don't understand, either," he told C'baoth. "What do you mean?"

C'baoth took a step toward him. "I have done it, Jedi Skywalker," he whispered, his eyes glittering in the dim light. "With General Covell. What even the Emperor never did. I took his mind in my hands and altered it. Re-formed it and rebuilt it into my own image."

Luke felt a cold shiver run through him. "What do you mean, rebuilt it?"

C'baoth nodded, a secret sort of smile playing around his lips. "Yes—rebuilt it. And that was only the start. Beneath us, down in the depths of the mountain, the future army of the Jedi even now stands in readiness to serve us. What I did with General Covell I will do again, and again, and again. Because what Grand Admiral Thrawn has never realized is that the army he thinks he is creating for himself he is instead creating for me."

And suddenly Luke understood. The clones growing down in that cavern weren't just physically identical to their original templet. Their minds were identical, too, or close enough to be only minor variations of the same pattern. If C'baoth could learn how to break the mind of any one of them, he could do the same to all the clones in that group.

Luke looked at Mara again. She understood, too. "You still think he can be saved?" she demanded grimly.

"I need no one to save me, Mara Jade," C'baoth told her. "Tell me, do you really believe I would simply stand by and allow Grand Admiral Thrawn to imprison me this way?"

"I didn't think he'd asked your permission," Mara bit out, stepping away from the throne. "There's nothing here for us, Skywalker. Let's get out of here."

"I did not grant you permission to leave," C'baoth said, his voice suddenly loud and regal. He raised his hand, and Luke saw that he was holding a small cylinder. "And you shall not."

Mara gestured with her blaster. "You're not going to stop us with that," she said with thinly veiled contempt. "A remote activator has to have something to activate."

"And so it does," C'baoth said, smiling thinly. "I had my soldiers prepare it for me. Before I sent them outside the mountain with the weapons and orders for my people."

"Sure." Mara took a step back toward the stairs, throwing a wary glance at the ceiling above her as her left hand found the guardrail that separated the raised section of the throne room from the lower level. "We'll take your word for it."

C'baoth shook his head. "You won't have to," he said softly, pressing the switch. In the back of Luke's mind, something distant and very alien seemed to shriek in agony—

And suddenly, impossibly, he 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.

The Force was again with him.

"Mara!" he snapped. But it was too late. Mara's blaster had already wrenched itself from her grip and been flung back across the room; and even as Luke leaped toward her C'baoth's outstretched hand erupted into a brilliant blaze of blue-white lightning.

The blast caught Mara square in the chest, throwing her backward to slam into the guardrail behind her. "Stop it!" Luke shouted, getting in front of her and igniting his lightsaber. C'baoth ignored him, firing a second burst. Luke caught most of it on his lightsaber blade, grimacing as the part he missed jolted through his muscles. C'baoth fired a third burst, and a fourth, and a fifth—

And then, abruptly, he lowered his hands. "You will not presume to give me commands, Jedi Skywalker," he said, his voice strangely petulant. "I am the master. You are the servant."

"I'm not your servant," Luke told him, stepping back and throwing a quick look at Mara. She was still pretty much on her feet, clutching the guardrail for support. Her eyes were open but not fully aware, her breath making little moaning sounds as she exhaled between clenched teeth. Laying his free hand on her shoulder, wincing at the stink of ozone, Luke began a quick probe of her injuries.

"You are indeed my servant," C'baoth said, the earlier petulance replaced now by a sort of haughty grandeur. "As is she. Leave her alone, Jedi Skywalker. She required a lesson, and she has now learned it."

Luke didn't answer. None of her burns seemed too bad, but her muscles were still twitching uncontrollably. Reaching out with the Force, he tried to draw away some of the pain.

"I said leave her alone," C'baoth repeated, his voice echoing eerily across the throne room. "Her life is not in danger. Save your strength rather for the trial that awaits you." Dramatically, he lifted a hand and pointed.

Luke turned to look. There, silhouetted against the shimmering galaxy holo, stood a figure dressed in what looked like the same brown robe C'baoth was wearing. A figure that seemed somehow familiar . . .

"There is no choice, my young Jedi," C'baoth said, his voice almost gentle now. "Don't you understand? You must serve me, or we will not be able to save the galaxy from itself. You must therefore face death and emerge at my side . . . or you must die that another may take your place." He lifted his eyes to the figure and beckoned. "Come," he called. "And face your destiny."

The figure moved forward toward the stairs, unhooking a lightsaber from his belt as he came. With the blaze of light from the hologram behind him, the figure's face was still impossible to make out.

Luke stepped away from Mara, a strange and unpleasant buzzing pressure beginning to form against his mind. There was something disturbingly familiar about this confrontation. As if he were about to face someone or something he'd faced once before . . .

Abruptly, the memory clicked. Dagobah—his Jedi training—the dark side cave Yoda had sent him into. His brief dreamlike battle with a vision of Darth Vader . . .

Luke caught his breath, a horrible suspicion squeezing his heart. But no—the silent figure approaching him wasn't tall enough to be Vader. But then who . . . ?

And then the figure stepped into the light. . . and, too late, Luke remembered how that dream battle in the dark side cave had ended. Vader's mask had shattered, and the face behind it had been Luke's own.

As was the face that gazed emotionlessly up at him now.

Luke felt himself moving back from the steps, his mind frozen with shock and the buzzing pressure growing against it. "Yes, Jedi Skywalker," C'baoth said quietly from behind him. "He is you. Luuke Skywalker, created from the hand you left behind in the Cloud City on Bespin. Wielding the lightsaber you lost there."

Luke glanced at the weapon in the clone's hands. It was his, all right. The lightsaber Obi-wan had told him his father had left for him. "Why?" he managed.

"To bring you to true understanding," C'baoth said gravely. "And because your destiny must be fulfilled. One way or another, you must serve me."

Luke threw a quick glance at him. C'baoth was watching him, his eyes glowing with anticipation. And with madness.

And in that moment, the clone Luuke struck.

He leaped to the top of the stairway, igniting his lightsaber and slashing the blue-white blade viciously toward Luke's chest. Luke jumped to the side, whipping his own weapon up to block the attack. The blades came together with an impact that threw him off balance and nearly tore the lightsaber from his grip. The clone Luuke jumped after him, lightsaber already swinging to the attack; reaching out to the Force, Luke threw himself backwards, flipping over the guardrail and onto one of the raised guard platforms rising from the lower part of the throne room floor. He needed time to think and plan, and to find a way past the distraction of the buzzing in his mind.

But the clone Luuke wasn't going to give him that time. Stepping to the guardrail, he hurled his lightsaber downward at the base of the platform Luke was standing on. It wasn't a clean hit—the blade probably sliced through only half of the base—but it was enough to throw the platform into a sudden tilt. Reaching out again to the Force, Luke did another backflip, trying to reach the overhead catwalk that spanned the throne room five meters behind him.

But the distance was too great, or else his mind too distracted by the buzzing to properly draw on the Force. The back of his knee hit the edge of the catwalk, and instead of landing on his feet he flipped over to slam into it on his back.

"I did not wish to do this to you, Jedi Skywalker," C'baoth's voice called out. "I do not wish it still. Join me—let me teach you. Together we can save the galaxy from the lesser peoples who would destroy it."

"No," Luke said hoarsely, grabbing a support strut and pulling himself up as he fought to catch his breath. The clone Luuke had retrieved his lightsaber now, and was starting down the stairs toward him.

The clone. His clone. Was that what was causing this strange pressure in his mind? The close presence of an exact duplicate that was itself drawing on the Force?

He didn't know, any more than he knew what C'baoth's purpose was in throwing the two of them together. Obi-wan and Master Yoda had both warned him that killing in anger or hatred would lead toward the dark side. Would killing a clone duplicate of himself do the same thing?

Or had C'baoth meant something entirely different? Had he meant that killing his own clone would drive Luke insane?

Either way, it wasn't something Luke was anxious to find out firsthand. And it occurred to him that he really didn't have to. He could drop off the far side of the catwalk, get to the turbolift he and Mara had come up on, and escape.

Leaving Mara here to face C'baoth alone.

He raised his eyes. Mara was still leaning against the guardrail. Possibly not fully conscious. Certainly in no shape to travel.

Setting his teeth together, Luke pulled himself to his feet. Mara had asked him—begged him—to kill her rather than leave her in C'baoth's hands. The least he could do was to stay with her to the end.

Whether it was her end . . . or his.

The explosion drifted up from the cavern below like a distant thunderclap, clearly audible and yet curiously dampened. "You hear that, Chewie?" Lando asked, leaning back to throw a cautious look over the edge of their work platform. "You suppose something down there blew up?"

Chewbacca, his hands full of cables and leads as he dug in and around the support lattice of the equipment column, growled a correction: it hadn't been one large explosion, but many simultaneous small ones. Small blasting disks, or something of equally low power. "You sure?" Lando asked uneasily, peering at the cloning tanks on the balcony one level beneath where they were working. This didn't sound like any normal malfunction.

He stiffened. Thin wisps of smoke could be seen now, rising lazily into the air above the nutrient pipes feeding into the tops of the cloning tanks. A lot of wisps of smoke, and they seemed to be rising in a reasonably regular pattern. As if something in each cluster of Spaarti cylinders had blown up . . .

There was the muffled clink of metal on metal behind him. Lando twisted around, to find Threepio stepping gingerly from the bridge onto the work platform, his head tilted to look down into the cavern. "Is that smoke?" the droid asked, sounding like he wasn't sure he really wanted to know.

"Looks like smoke to me," Lando agreed. "What are you doing here?"

"Ah . . ." Resolutely, the droid looked away from whatever was happening below. "Artoo has found the schematics for that equipment column," he said, offering Lando a data card. "He suggests that the negative flow coupler on the main power line might be worth investigating."

"We'll keep that in mind," Lando said, sliding the data card into his data pad and throwing a quick look over the platform railing as he handed the data pad to Chewbacca. He and the Wookiee weren't all that visible against the drab colors of the equipment column and the rocky cavern ceiling two meters above them, but Threepio would stand out like a lump of gold on a mud flat. "Now get out of here before someone spots you."

"Oh," Threepio said, stiffening a little more than usual. "Yes, of course. Also, Artoo has located the source of the comlink jamming in this vicinity. Captain Solo requested that if we found that—"

"Right," Lando interrupted him. Was that someone moving behind one of the banks of Spaarti cylinders on the next level down? "I remember. You and Artoo go ahead. And take the Noghri with you."

The droid seemed taken aback. "Artoo and me? But sir—"

And with a sound like a spitting tauntaun, a brilliant ripple of blue flashed upward from the cloning balcony below.

"Stun blast!" Lando barked, dropping flat on the work platform and feeling the heavy thud as Chewbacca landed beside him. A second stun blast rippled out, ricocheting off the column above his head as he yanked out his blaster. "Threepio, get out of here."

The droid didn't need any encouragement. "Yes, sir," he called over his shoulder, already scuttling away down the bridge.

Chewbacca growled a question. "Over there somewhere," Lando told him, gesturing with his blaster. "Watch it, though, they're bound to have more moving in."

A third stun blast slammed uselessly into the underside of the work platform, and this time Lando spotted the soldier skulking behind one of the cloning cylinders. He fired twice, dropping the Imperial to the floor and making a mess of the cloning cylinder itself. Behind him, another blue ripple sizzled by overhead, followed a split second later by the heavy bark of Chewbacca's bowcaster.

Lando grinned tightly to himself. They were in trouble, but not nearly as much as they could have been. As long as they were sitting up next to all this critical equipment, the Imperials didn't dare use anything stronger than stun settings on them. But at the same time, the Imperials themselves had absolutely no cover down there on the balconies except the cloning tanks. Which meant all they really could do was stay there, probably not bothering their targets any, and get themselves and a lot of valuable equipment blown to bits.

Or else they could simply come one level up and blast away at them from an angle where the heavy metal of the work platform wouldn't keep getting in their way.

From the other side of the equipment column, Chewbacca rumbled: the Imperials were pulling back. "Probably coming up here," Lando agreed, glancing around their level at the doors lining the outer walkway. They looked pretty strong, probably only a step or two down from warship-type blast doors. If Han and the Noghri had done a good job of sealing them off, they ought to hold off even a determined group of stormtroopers for a while.

Except for the door to the pump room that Artoo had been working in. Han would have left that one open for them to get out through.

Lando grimaced; but there was nothing for it. Bracing his gun hand against the bottom section of the railing, he took careful aim at the door's control box and fired. The box cover flashed and crumpled, and for a couple of seconds he could see a faint sputtering of sparks through the smoke.

And that was that. The Imperials were locked out. And he and Chewbacca were locked in.

Keeping low, he crept around to the other side of the column. Chewbacca was already back at work, his grease-slicked hands digging back through the cables and pipes, the data pad on the floor by his feet. "Making any progress?" Lando asked.

Chewbacca growled, tapping at the data pad awkwardly with one foot, and Lando craned his neck to look. It was a schematic of a section of the power cable, showing a coupling with eight leads coming off it.

And just above the coupling, clearly marked, a positive flow regulator. "Uh-huh," Lando said, a not entirely pleasant sensation running through him. "You're not by any chance thinking of running that into the negative flow coupler Threepio mentioned, are you?"

In answer, the Wookiee withdrew his hand from the tangle of cables, pulling the partially disconnected negative flow coupler with it. "Wait a minute," Lando said, eyeing the coupler warily. He'd heard stories about what happened when you ran a negative flow coupler into a positive flow detonator, and using a positive flow regulator instead of a detonator didn't sound a lot safer. "What exactly is this supposed to do?"

The Wookiee told him. He'd been right: using a regulator wasn't any safer. In fact, it was a whole lot more dangerous. "Let's not go overboard on this, Chewie," he warned. "We came here to destroy the cloning cylinders, not bring the whole storehouse down on top of us."

Chewbacca rumbled insistently. "All right, fine, we'll keep it in reserve," Lando sighed.

The Wookiee grunted agreement and got back to work. Grimacing, Lando laid his blaster down and pulled two charges out of their explosives bag. He might as well keep himself busy while he tried to figure out how they were going to get out through locked blast doors and a corridor full of stormtroopers.

And if they wound up falling back on Chewbacca's power core arhythmic resonance scheme . . . well, in that case, getting out of here would probably become an academic question anyway.

Prying open a gap in the power cables with one hand, he got to work.

The timing counter buzzed its five-second warning, and Wedge took a deep breath. This was it. He reached for the hyperspace levers—

And abruptly, the mottled sky of hyperspace faded into starlines and into stars. Around him, the rest of Rogue Squadron flashed into view, still in formation; ahead, the distinctive light patterns and layout of a shipyard could be seen.

They'd arrived at the Bilbringi shipyards. Only they'd arrived too far out. Which could only mean—

"Battle alert!" Rogue Two snapped. "TIE interceptors coming in—bearing two-nine-three mark twenty."

"All ships—emergency combat status," Admiral Ackbar's gravelly voice cut in on the comm. "Defensive configuration: Starfighter Command to screen positions. It appears to be a trap."

"Sure does," Wedge muttered to himself, pulling hard to portside and risking a quick look at his displays. Sure enough, there were the Interdictor Cruisers that had brought them out of hyperspace, staying well back from the massive fleets that were beginning to jockey for battle position. And judging from the way they'd been deployed, the New Republic fleet wasn't going to be jumping to lightspeed anytime soon.

And then the TIE interceptors were on them, and there was no time left to wonder why their carefully planned surprise attack had failed before it had even begun. For the moment the only question was that of survival, one ship and one engagement at a time.

The stealthy footsteps came around the corner ten meters away and continued toward him; and Han, pressed painfully back into the slightly recessed doorway that was the only cover for those same ten meters, abandoned the faint hope that his pursuers would miss him and prepared for the inevitable firefight.

They should have turned off. In fact, by all rights they shouldn't have been up here at all. From the snatches of status reports he'd been able to catch while passing by deserted checkpoints, it sounded like everyone who could carry a blaster was supposed to be twenty levels down fighting the natives who were running loose through the garrison. These upper levels didn't seem to even be occupied, and there sure wasn't anything up here except maybe C'baoth that needed any protection.

The footsteps were getting closer. It would be just his luck, Han thought sourly, to run into a couple of deserters looking for a place to hide.

And then, maybe five meters away, the footsteps abruptly stopped . . . and in the sudden silence he heard a stifled gasp.

He'd been spotted.

Han didn't hesitate. Pushing hard off the door behind him, he leaped across the corridor, trying to duplicate that trick down at the defense station, or at least do the best he could without Chewbacca here to back him up. There were fewer of them out there than he'd expected, and further to the side than he expected, and he lost a vital half-second as his blaster tracked toward them—

"Han!" Leia shouted. "Don't shoot!"

The sheer surprise of it caught Han's timing straight across the knees, and he slammed rather ingloriously into the wall on the opposite side of the corridor. It was Leia, all right. Even more surprising, Talon Karrde was with her, along with those two vornskr pets of his. "What in blazes are you doing here?" he demanded.

"Luke's in trouble," Leia said breathlessly, rushing forward and giving him a quick, tense hug. "He's ahead somewhere—"

"Whoa, sweetheart," Han assured her, hanging on to her arm as she tried to pull away. "It's okay—we knew the ysalamiri were here going in."

Leia shook her head. "That's just it: they're not. The Force is back. Just before you jumped out of cover."

Han swore under his breath. "C'baoth," he muttered. "Has to be him."

"Yes," Leia said, shivering. "It is."

Han threw a look at Karrde. "I was hired to destroy the Emperor's storehouse," the smuggler said evenly. "I brought Sturm and Drang along to help us find Mara."

Han glanced at the vornskrs. "You have anyone else with you?" he asked Leia.

She shook her head. "We ran into a squad of troops three levels down moving this way. Our two Noghri stayed behind to hold them off."

He looked at Karrde. "How about your people?"

"They're all in the Wild Karrde," he said. "Guarding our exit, should we have the chance to use it."

Han grunted. "Then I guess it's just us," he said, shifting his grip on Leia's arm and heading down the corridor. "Come on. They're up in the throne room—I know the way."

And as they ran, he tried not to think about the last time he'd faced a Dark Jedi. In Lando's Cloud City on Bespin, when Vader had tortured him and then had him frozen in carbonite.

Somehow, from what Luke had told him, he didn't expect C'baoth to be even that civilized.

Chapter 27

The lightsabers flashed, blue-white blade against green-white blade, sizzling where they struck each other, slashing through metal and cable where they hit anything else. Gripping the guardrail with both hands, fighting against the turmoil roiling through her own mind, Mara watched in helpless fascination as the battle raged across the throne room floor. It was like a twisted inversion of that last horrifying vision the Emperor had given her at the instant of his destruction nearly six years ago.

Except that this time it wasn't the Emperor who was facing death. It was Skywalker.

And it was no vision. It was real.

"Watch them closely, Mara Jade," C'baoth said from where he stood at the top of the steps, his voice hard yet strangely wistful. "Unless you bow willingly to my authority, you will someday face this same battle."

Mara threw a sideways look at him. C'baoth was watching this duel he'd orchestrated with a fascination that bordered on the grisly. She'd called it, all right, back when she'd first met him on Jomark. The work he'd done for Thrawn had given him a taste of power; and like the Emperor before him, that taste had not been enough.

But unlike the Emperor, he was not going to be content merely with the control of worlds and armies. His would be a more personal form of empire: minds re-formed and rebuilt into his own conception of what a mind should be.

Which meant that Mara had been right on the other count, too. C'baoth was thoroughly insane.

"It is not insanity to offer the richness of my glory to others," C'baoth murmured. "It is a gift which many would die for."

"You're giving Skywalker a good shot at that part, anyway," Mara bit out, shaking her head to try and clear it. Between her own memories, an echo of the strange buzzing pressure she was picking up from Skywalker's mind, and C'baoth's overbearing presence two meters away, trying to hang on to a line of thought was like trying to fly an airspeeder in a winter windstorm.

But there was a mental pattern the Emperor had taught her long ago, a pattern for those times when he'd wanted his instructions hidden even from Vader. If she could just clear her mind enough to get it in place—

Through the turmoil came a sudden jolt of pain. "Do not attempt to hide your thoughts from me, Mara Jade," C'baoth admonished her sharply. "You are mine now. It is not right for an apprentice to hide her thoughts from her master."

"So I'm already your apprentice, huh?" Mara growled, gritting her teeth against the pain and making another try at the pattern. This time, she made it. "I thought I had at least until I'd knelt at your feet."

"You mock my vision," C'baoth said, his voice darkly petulant. "But you shall kneel before me."

"Just like Skywalker will, right? Assuming he lives through this?"

"He will be mine," C'baoth agreed, quietly confident. "As will his sister and her children."

"And then together you'll heal the galaxy," Mara said, watching his face and listening to the turmoil in her mind. Yes; the barrier seemed to be keeping C'baoth back. Now if she could just hold on to that privacy a little longer . . .

"You disappoint me, Mara Jade," C'baoth said, shaking his head. "Do you truly believe I need to hear your thoughts in order to read your heart? Like the lesser peoples of the galaxy, you seek my destruction. A foolish notion. Did the Emperor teach you nothing about our destiny?"

"He didn't do a good job of reading his own, I know that much," Mara retorted, listening to her heart thudding as she watched C'baoth. If that erratic mind of his decided she was a genuine threat and launched another of those lightning bolt attacks . . .

C'baoth smiled, holding his arms out to the sides. "Do you feel the need to measure your strength against mine, Mara Jade? Come, then, and do so."

For a pair of heartbeats she eyed him, almost tempted to try. He looked so old and helpless; and she had her mental barrier and some of the best unarmed combat training the Empire at its height could provide. It would take just a few seconds. .. .

She took a deep breath and lowered her eyes. No; not now. Not like this. Not with these pressures and distractions spinning through her mind. She'd never make it. "You kill me now and I won't be able to kneel for you," she muttered, letting her shoulders slump in an attitude of defeat.

"Very good," C'baoth purred. "You have wisdom of a sort, after all. Watch, then, and learn."

Mara turned back to the guardrail. But not to watch the lightsaber duel. Somewhere down there was the blaster C'baoth had torn from her grip when he did whatever it was he'd done to the mountain's ysalamiri and gotten to the Force again. If she could find it before C'baoth realized that she hadn't really given up . . .

Across the floor, Skywalker leaped up again to the catwalk. The clone was ready for the move, hurling his lightsaber upward right behind him. The blue-white blade missed Skywalker by a hair, slicing instead most of the way through the catwalk floor and one of the support struts holding it to the ceiling. With a tooth-jarring shriek, the strained metal twisted under Skywalker's weight, dumping him back off.

He hit the floor more or less on his feet, dropping down to land on one knee. His hand reached out, and the lightsaber that had been falling toward the clone suddenly changed direction. It arced toward Skywalker's hand—

And stopped dead in midair. Skywalker strained, the muscles of his hand tightening visibly as his mind stretched out. "Not that way, Jedi Skywalker," C'baoth said reprovingly; and Mara glanced over to see that his hand, too, was stretched out toward the errant lightsaber. The clone, for his part, was just standing there in his brown robe, as if he knew that C'baoth would be on his side in this battle.

Maybe he did. Maybe there was nothing left in that body but an extension of C'baoth's own mind.

"This duel must be to the death," C'baoth continued. "It must be weapon against weapon, mind against mind, soul against soul. Anything less will not bring you to the knowledge you must have if you are to properly serve me."

Skywalker was good, all right. With the strange buzzing pressure in his mind he must have known he couldn't match C'baoth strength for strength. Mara felt the subtle change in his concentration; and suddenly he swung his own lightsaber over his shoulder, the green-white blade scything toward a point midway along the other lightsaber handle.

But if C'baoth wouldn't let Skywalker disarm his opponent, he wouldn't let him destroy the weapon, either. Even as the blade sliced downward, a small object shot out of the shadows to Skywalker's right, slamming into his shoulder and deflecting his arm just far enough for his blade to sweep through empty air. An instant later the old Jedi had torn the clone's lightsaber from Skywalker's mental grip, sending it back across the room to its owner. The clone raised it to en guard position; wearily, Skywalker got to his feet and prepared to continue the battle.

But for the moment Mara wasn't interested in the lightsabers. Lying on the floor, maybe two meters back from Skywalker's feet, was the object C'baoth had thrown at him.

Mara's blaster.

She looked sideways at C'baoth, wondering if he was watching her. He wasn't. In fact, he wasn't looking at much of anything. His eyes were unfocused, staring across the throne room, a strangely childlike smile on his face. "She has come," he said, his voice almost inaudible over the clash of the lightsabers below. "Just as I knew she would." Abruptly, he looked at Mara. "She is here, Mara Jade," he said, pointing dramatically toward the turbolift she and Skywalker had come up.

Frowning, not sure she should take her eyes off him, Mara turned her head to look. The turbolift door slid open and Solo stepped out, his blaster ready. And right behind him—

Mara caught her breath, her whole body going tense. It was Leia Organa Solo, holding a blaster in one hand and her lightsaber in the other. And behind her, his pet vornskrs in front of him on leashes—

It was Karrde.

Organa Solo? And Karrde?

"Leia—Han—go back," Skywalker called to them over the clash of the lightsabers as the newcomers moved along the walkway past the galaxy hologram and on into the main part of the throne room. "It's too danger—"

"Welcome, my new apprentice!" C'baoth shouted joyfully, his voice drowning out Skywalker's as it echoed grandly in the open space. "Come to me, Leia Organa Solo. I will teach you the true ways of the Force."

Solo had a different sort of lesson in mind. He reached the end of the walkway, sighted along the barrel of his blaster, and fired.

But even wallowing in self-delusion, a Jedi of C'baoth's power couldn't be taken out that easily. In a blur of motion, Mara's blaster leaped upward from the floor into the path of the shot, its grip shattering into a shower of sparks as Solo's shot expended its energy there. The second shot was likewise blocked; the third caught the blaster's power pack, turning the weapon into a spectacular fireball. The blaster was torn from Solo's grip before he could fire a fourth.

And C'baoth went berserk.

He screamed, a horrible shriek of rage and betrayal that seemed like it would set the air on fire. Mara jerked back as the piercing sound cut through her ears—

And an instant later nearly fell over the guardrail as the Force equivalent of the scream slammed into her.

It was like nothing she'd ever experienced before; not from Vader, not from the Emperor himself. The utter, animal ferocity—the total loss of every shred of self-control—it was like standing alone in the middle of a sudden violent storm. Wave after wave of fury swept over her, ripping through the mental barrier she'd created and battering her mind with a numbing combination of hatred and pain. Dimly, she saw Skywalker and Organa Solo staggering under the assault; heard Karrde's vornskrs' howling in pain of their own.

And from C'baoth's outstretched hands erupted a blaze of lightning.

Mara winced in sympathetic pain as Solo was thrown backwards into the guardrail at the front of the hologram pit. Through the crackle of the lightning she heard Organa Solo shout her husband's name and jump to his side, dropping her blaster and igniting her lightsaber just in time to catch the third blast of lightning on the green-white blade. Abruptly, C'baoth shifted his aim upward to the damaged catwalk hanging precariously over their heads. The lightning flashed again—

And with a crack of exploding metal the center of the catwalk split apart. Pivoting on its last remaining support strut, it toppled ponderously downward toward Organa Solo.

She saw it coming, or maybe Skywalker's training had taught her how to use the Force to anticipate danger. As the heavy metal swung down on her, she slashed upward with her lightsaber, cutting through the catwalk far enough to the side that the main part missed her and Solo as it swung past to crash into the floor in front of Karrde and the vornskrs. But there was no time for her to get out from under the end she had cut off. It caught her across her head and shoulder, knocking the lightsaber from her hand and hammering her to the floor beside Solo.

"Leia!" Skywalker shouted, throwing an anguished glance at his sister. Suddenly the debilitating buzzing in his mind seemed to be forgotten as his fighting abruptly shifted from groggy defense to furious attack. The clone fell back before the onslaught, barely managing to block Skywalker's blows. He jumped up onto the stairway, hastily backed two steps further up toward C'baoth as Skywalker charged after him, then leaped over onto the remaining guard platform. For a second Mara thought Skywalker was going to pursue him up there, or else cut through the platform base and bring him down.

He didn't do either. Standing halfway up the stairs, a sheen of sweat glistening on his face, he gazed up at C'baoth with an expression that sent a shiver down Mara's back.

"Do you also seek to destroy me, Jedi Skywalker?" C'baoth said, his voice quietly deadly. "For such thoughts are foolish. I could crush you like a small insect beneath my heel."

"Perhaps," Skywalker said, breathing heavily. "But if you do, you'll never have the chance to control my mind."

C'baoth studied him. "What do you want?"

Skywalker jerked his head back toward his sister and Solo. "Let them leave. All of them. Now." His eyes flicked to Mara. "Mara, too."

"And if I do?"

A muscle in Skywalker's cheek twitched. His finger moved, and with a sputtering hiss his lightsaber blade disappeared. "Let them go," he said quietly, "and I'll stay."

From somewhere nearby a dull thudding noise began, adding an irregular pulsebeat to the eerie breathing sounds whispering through the cloning cavern. A blaster rifle pounding against heavy metal, Lando decided, giving the doors around the walkway a quick look. So far they all seemed secure, but he knew that wouldn't last. The stormtroopers out there weren't firing at the doors just for target practice, and there was bound to be a bag of shaped explosives on their way.

From the other side of the equipment column, Chewbacca rumbled a warning. "I am keeping my head down," Lando assured him, peering into the gap between two large ducts at the maze of multicolored wiring and piping beyond. Now, where was that repulsor pump connection again . . . ?

He had located the spot and was reaching in with the charge when the callbeep from his comlink unexpectedly went off, echoed a fraction of a second later from Chewbacca's comlink. Frowning, half expecting it to be some hotshot Imperial tech who'd found his channel, he pulled it out. "Calrissian," he said.

"Ah—General Calrissian," Threepio's precise voice came back. "I see Artoo has been successful in eliminating the jamming. Surprising, actually, given all the trouble which we've been required to—"

"Tell him good job," Lando cut him off. Now was decidedly not the time for a pleasant little chat with Threepio. "Was there anything else?"

"Ah, yes, sir, there is," the droid said. "The Noghri instructed me to ask whether you wish us to return to assist you."

There was another thud, a louder one this time. "I wish you could," Lando sighed. "But you'd never make it back in time." The thud came again, and this time he distinctly saw the door opposite their bridge shake with the impact. "We'll just have to get out of here by ourselves."

From the other side of the work platform, Chewbacca rumbled his less-than-enthusiastic opinion of that. "But if Chewbacca wishes us to return—"

"You won't get here in time," Lando told him firmly. "Tell the Noghri if they want to be useful they should head up to the throne room and give Han a hand."

"It's too late for that," a new voice put in, almost too quiet to hear.

Lando frowned at the comlink. "Han?"

"No, it's Talon Karrde," the other identified himself. "I came in with Councilor Organa Solo. We're up in the throne room—"

"Leia's here?" Lando asked. "What in—?"

"Shut up and listen," Karrde cut him off. "That Jedi Master of Luke's—Joruus C'baoth—is up here, too. He's taken out Solo and Organa Solo both, and has Skywalker fighting what looks to be a clone of himself. He's not paying any attention to me at the moment—there's some kind of face-off going on up there. But he would the minute I tried anything."

"I thought Luke said the Force was being blocked."

"It was. Somehow, C'baoth got it back. Are you down with the cloning tanks?"

"We're above them, yes. Why?"

"Organa Solo suggested earlier that there should be a large number of ysalamiri scattered around that area," Karrde said. "If you can pull a few of them off their nutrient frames and get them up here, we might have a chance of stopping him."

Chewbacca growled mournfully, and Lando felt his lip twist as he nodded agreement. So that was what all those blasting disk explosions had been about. "It's too late for that, too," he told Karrde. "C'baoth's already had them all killed."

For a long moment the comlink was silent. "I see," Karrde said at last. "Well, that explains that. Any suggestions?"

Lando hesitated. "Not really," he said. "If we come up with anything, we'll let you know."

"Thank you," Karrde said, a little too dryly. "I'll be waiting."

There was a click as he left the channel. "Threepio, you still there?" Lando asked.

"Yes, sir," the droid answered.

"Get Artoo back on the computer," Lando told him. "Have him do whatever he can to shift troops away from that air intake we came in through. Then you and the Noghri start heading that way."

"We're leaving, sir?" Threepio asked, sounding astonished.

"That's right," Lando told him. "And Chewie and I will be right behind you, so you'd better move fast if you don't want to get stepped on. Better alert the two Noghri that Luke sent with that Myneyrshi bunch, too. Got all that?"

"Yes, sir," Threepio said hesitantly. "What about Master Luke and the others?"

"Leave that to me," Lando told him. "Get busy."

"Yes, sir," Threepio said again. Another click, and he was gone.

There was a moment of silence. Chewbacca, broke it with the obvious question. "I don't think we've got a choice anymore," Lando told him grimly. "The way Luke and Mara talk about him, C'baoth's at least as dangerous as the Emperor was. Maybe even more so. We've got to try to take out the whole storehouse and hope we get him along with it."

Chewbacca growled an objection. "We can't," Lando shook his head. "At least not until it's set and running. We warn anyone up there now and C'baoth will know all about it. Might have time to get it stopped."

There was another muffled blast from the door. "Come on, let's get this done," Lando said, picking up the last of his explosives. With luck, they would have time to rig Chewbacca's arrhythmic resonance gimmick before the stormtroopers got in. With a little more luck, the two of them might make it out of the cavern alive.

And with still more, they might be able to find a way to alert Han and the others before the whole storehouse blew up beneath them.

For a long moment the throne room was silent. Mara stared at Skywalker, wondering if he understood what he was saying. To offer to voluntarily stay here with C'baoth . . .

His gaze flicked sideways again to meet hers, and even through the buzzing in his mind she could feel his private dread. He knew what he was saying, all right. And he meant it. If C'baoth accepted his offer, he would go willingly with the insane Jedi. Sacrificing himself to save his friends.

Including the woman who'd once promised to kill him.

She turned away, suddenly unable to watch. Her eyes found Karrde, half hidden behind the wreckage of the catwalk as he knelt between his two vornskrs. Stroking them, talking quietly to them—probably calming them down after that Force-driven tantrum of C'baoth's. She peered at the animals, but they didn't seem to be hurt.

Her head movement must have caught Karrde's eye. He looked up at her, his face expressionless. Still patting the vornskrs, he tilted his head fractionally toward Solo and Organa Solo. Frowning, Mara followed his gaze—

And froze. Beside the section of catwalk wreckage still half covering his wife, Solo was moving. Slowly, a couple of centimeters at a time, he was creeping across the floor.

Toward the blaster Organa Solo had dropped.

"You ask too much, Skywalker," C'baoth warned softly. "Mara Jade will be mine. Must be mine. It is the destiny demanded of her by the Force. Not even you may trifle with that."

"Right," Mara put in, looking back at C'baoth and putting all the sarcasm into her voice as she could manage. Whatever the risks to herself, she had to draw as much of C'baoth's attention away from the other end of the throne room as she could. "I still have to kneel at his feet, remember?"

"You insult me, Mara Jade," C'baoth said, turning an evil smile on her. "Do you really believe me so easy to mislead?" Still watching her, he crooked a finger—

And as Solo's hand stretched out toward it, the blaster twitched another half meter out of his reach.

From the guard platform came a subtle change in hum. "Skywalker—look out!" Mara snapped.

Skywalker spun around, lightsaber igniting again and swinging up into defense. The clone, his wind or his courage back, was already halfway through his leap, his lightsaber slicing downward. The two blades met with a crash and an impact that drove Skywalker backward to the edge of the stairway. He took one step more, fought for balance, then dropped off to the floor below.

Mara threw a quick look at Solo as the clone charged over the edge in pursuit. If the clone really was an extension of C'baoth's mind . . .

But no. Even as Solo tried again for the blaster it again slid away from him. Whatever effort C'baoth was expending on the lightsaber duel, he clearly still had enough concentration left to toy with his prisoners.

"You see, Mara Jade?" C'baoth asked quietly. His fury had passed, the brief flicker of fun as he toyed with his prisoners had passed, and now it was time to return to the important business of building his Empire. "It is inevitable. I will rule . . . and along with Skywalker and his sister, you will serve at my side. And we shall be great together."

Abruptly, he took a long step back from the guardrail on the other side of the stairway. Just in time; an instant later Skywalker was back, backflipping up from the lower throne room floor. He landed with his back to Mara, floundering a moment as he fought to recover his balance. There was another flash of light, blue-white this time, as the clone leaped up over the guardrail in pursuit, swinging his lightsaber in vicious horizontal arcs to guard against attack. Skywalker moved backward out of his way; glancing past him, Mara saw C'baoth take a hasty backward step of his own. The clone hit the floor and charged, lightsaber still slashing toward Skywalker in wide horizontal arcs. Skywalker continued to give way, apparently unaware that he was backing toward the solid rock wall.

Against which he would be trapped.

They passed by . . . and Mara looked over to find C'baoth once again gazing at her. "As I said, Mara Jade," he said. "Inevitable. And with you and Skywalker beside me, the lesser peoples of the galaxy will flock to us like leaves in the wind. Their hearts and their souls will be ours."

He looked across the room and beckoned. Still crouching behind the catwalk wreckage, Karrde jerked in surprise as his blaster rose from his holster and shot through the air toward C'baoth. Halfway there it was joined by Organa Solo's dropped lightsaber and the blaster Solo was still doggedly trying to chase down. "As will their insignificant weapons," C'baoth added. Holding a negligent hand out to receive them, he turned his eyes back to the duel about to play itself to its conclusion.

It was the chance Mara had been waiting for. Possibly the last chance she would ever have. Reaching through the chaos surrounding her mind, she stretched out to the Force, focusing her eyes and mind on the weapons flying across the room toward C'baoth's hand. She felt his inattentive control snap—

And Organa Solo's lightsaber arced away from the blasters to land firmly in her hand.

C'baoth spun back to face her, the blasters falling with a clatter onto the stairway. "No!" he screamed, his face twisted horribly with fear, confusion, and dread. Mara felt his sudden frantic tug fumbling at the lightsaber; but it, too, was twisted with confusion and dread, and this time he didn't have surprise on his side. Given time, he would recover from the shock, but Mara had no intention of giving him that time. Igniting the lightsaber, she charged!

The clone must have heard her coming, of course; the distinctive sound of her lightsaber made that inevitable. But with Skywalker backed up against the wall, the temptation to finish off one opponent first was too great to resist. He swung one last time, his lightsaber slashing into the wall as Skywalker ducked low beneath the blade—

And with a brilliant flash of shattered electronics, the wall exploded outward, over Skywalker's head and directly into the clone's face.

Skywalker hadn't been backing into a wall after all. He'd been backing into one of the throne room's viewscreens.

The clone shrieked—the first sound Mara could remember hearing him make—as he staggered backward. He spun toward the sound of her lightsaber, his face twisted with anger and fear, his eyes still dazzled. He raised his lightsaber to attack—

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.

She ducked beneath the slashing blade, gazing into his face. Skywalker's face. The face that had haunted her nightmares for nearly six years. The face the Emperor had ordered her to destroy.

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.

And for the first time since she'd found Skywalker and his crippled X-wing floating in deep space, she let herself give in to the voice swirling through her mind. With all her strength, she swung her lightsaber and cut him down.

The clone crumpled, his lightsaber clattering to the floor beside him.

Mara gazed down at him . . . and as she took a ragged breath, the voice in the back of her mind fell silent.

It was done. She had fulfilled the Emperor's last command.

And she was finally free.

Chapter 28

"That appears to be all of them, Captain," Thrawn said, gazing out the bridge viewport at the Rebel warships spread out along the edges of the Interdictor Cruisers' gravity cones. "Instruct the Constrainer and Sentinel to secure from entrapment duty and return to their positions in the demarcation line. All warships: prepare to engage the enemy."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, shaking his head in silent wonder as he keyed in the orders. Once again, against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Grand Admiral had proved himself right. The Rebel assault fleet was here.

And probably wondering at this very moment what had gone wrong with their clever little scheme. "It occurs to me, Admiral, that we might not want to destroy all of them," he suggested. "Someone should be allowed to return to Coruscant to tell them how badly they were outsmarted."

"I agree, Captain," Thrawn said. "Though I doubt that will be their interpretation. More likely they'll conclude instead that they were betrayed."

"Probably," Pellaeon agreed, throwing a quick look around the bridge. He'd thought he'd heard a faint sound just then, something like an overstressed bearing or someone rumbling in the back of his throat. He listened closely, but the sound wasn't repeated. "Though that would work equally well to our advantage."

"Indeed," Thrawn said. "Shall we designate Admiral Ackbar's Star Cruiser for messenger duty?"

Pellaeon smiled tightly. Ackbar. Who'd just barely survived Councilor Borsk Fey'lya's previous accusations of incompetence and treason over the operation at the Sluis Van shipyards. This time, he wouldn't be so lucky. "A nice touch, Admiral," he said.

"Thank you, Captain."

Pellaeon glanced up at Rukh, standing silent guard behind Thrawn's chair, and wondered if the Noghri appreciated the irony of it all. Given the species' lack of sophistication, probably not.

Ahead, space was filling with flashes of laser fire as the opposing starfighter squadrons began to engage. Settling himself comfortably in his chair, Pellaeon glanced over his displays and prepared his mind for battle. For battle, and for victory.

"Watch it, Rogue Leader, you've picked up a couple of tails," the voice of Rogue Two came in Wedge's ear. "Rogue Six?"

"Right with you, Rogue Two," the other confirmed. "Double-chop on three. One, two—"

Bracing himself, Wedge threw his X-wing into a wild scissors roll. The two TIE fighters, trying to match his maneuver while at the same time not overshooting him, probably never even saw the other two X-wings drop into position behind them. Two messy explosions later, Wedge was clear. "Thanks," he said.

"No problem. What now?"

"I don't know," he admitted, taking a quick look at the battle raging around them. So far, Admiral Ackbar was still holding his Star Cruisers together in combat formation. But the way the periphery support ships were being hammered by the Imperials, the whole thing could dissolve into the mass confusion of a brawl at any minute. In which event, the starfighter squadrons would be basically on their own, hitting wherever and whatever they could.

Which they were for all practical purposes doing now anyway. The trick would be to find something really effective to hit. . . .

Rogue Two must have followed the same reasoning. "You know, Rogue Leader, it occurs to me that those Imperials wouldn't have so many ships available to pound us with if they had to protect their shipyard at the same time."

Wedge craned his neck to look at the blaze of lights off in the near distance. Silhouetted against them, he could make out the dark, brooding outlines of at least four Golan II battle stations. "Agreed," he said. "But I think it would take more than an attack by even the legendary Rogue Squadron to make them that nervous—"

"Commander Antilles, this is Fleet Central Communications," a brisk voice cut in. "I have a signal coded urgent coming in for you under a New Republic diplomatic encrypt. Do you want to bother with it?"

Wedge blinked. A diplomatic encrypt? Way out here? "I suppose so. Sure, put it through."

"Yes, sir." There was a click—

"Hello, Antilles," a vaguely familiar voice said dryly in his ear. "Nice to see you again."

"The feeling's mutual, I'm sure," Wedge said, frowning. "Who is this?"

"Oh, come now," the other chided. "Have you forgotten already those wonderful times we spent together outside the Mumbri Storve cantina?"

The Mumbri Storve—? "Aves?"

"Hey, very good," Aves said. "Your memory's getting better."

"You people are starting to be hard to forget," Wedge told him. "Where are you?"

"Right smack in the middle of that big blaze of Imperial lights off on your flank," Aves said, his voice turning a little grim. "I wish you'd told me you were hitting this place instead of Tangrene like we thought."

"I wish you'd told me what that little job of yours was all about," Wedge countered. "Did a good job of fooling each other, didn't we?"

"Sure did. Fooled everybody except the Grand Admiral."

"Tell me about it. So is this just a social call, or what?"

"It could be," Aves said. "Or it couldn't. See, in about ninety seconds some of us are going to make a grab for the CGT array we came here to get. After that, it's a quick goodbye and we punch our way out."

Punching their way out from an Imperial shipyard. And he made it sound so easy, too. "Good luck."

"Thanks. The reason I mention it is that it doesn't matter much to us which direction we pick to punch through. Thought it might make a difference to you."

Wedge felt a tight smile tugging at his lip. "It might, at that," he said. "Like, say, if you were to come out near those Golan Twos out there. Maybe hitting them a little from behind on the way?"

"Looks like a good route to me," Aves agreed. " 'Course, it'll get nasty outside the perimeter—all those ships and things taking potshots and all. I don't suppose you could find a way to give us a friendly escort from that point on?"

Wedge looked over at the lights, thinking it over. It could work, all right. If Aves' people were able to knock out even one of those Golan II's, it would open up the shipyard to a New Republic incursion. Unless the Imperials were willing to sacrifice it, they would have to shift some of their battle force over there to close the puncture and chase down any ships that had gotten in.

And from the smugglers' point of view, having an influx of New Republic warships to sneak through on their way out would give them better cover than they would get anywhere else along the perimeter. All in all, a pretty fair exchange. "You've got a deal," he told Aves. "Give me a couple of minutes and I'll get that escort arranged."

"A friendly escort, don't forget," Aves warned. "If you know what I mean."

"I know exactly what you mean," Wedge assured him. The traditional Mon Calamari loathing for smugglers and smuggling was the stuff of wardroom legend, and Wedge didn't want to get caught in the middle of that any more than Aves did. Probably why the smuggler had come to him instead of offering his assistance to Ackbar and the fleet commanders directly. "Don't worry, I've got it covered."

"Okay. Whoops—there goes the first charge. See you."

The comm clicked off. "We're going in?" Rogue Eleven asked.

"We're going in," Wedge confirmed, bringing his X-wing around in a tight starboard turn. "Rogue Two, give Command a quick update and tell them we need some support. Don't mention Aves by name—just tell them we're coordinating with an independent resistance group inside the shipyards."

"Got it, Rogue Leader."

"What if Ackbar doesn't want to risk it?" Rogue Seven put in.

Wedge looked out at the lights of the shipyard. So once again, as it had so many times before, it was all going to come down to a matter of trust. Trust in a farm lad, fresh off a backward desert world, to lead him in an attack on the first Death Star. Trust in a former high-stakes gambler, who might or might not have had any real combat experience, to lead him in an attack on the second Death Star. And now, trust in a smuggler who might just as easily betray him for the right price. "It doesn't matter," he said. "With or without support, we're going in."

Mara's lightsaber flashed, slicing viciously through the clone Luuke. The clone fell, its lightsaber clattering to the floor, and lay still.

And suddenly, the buzzing pressure in Luke's mind was gone.

He rose to his feet in front of the still sparking viewscreen he'd lured the clone to, taking what felt like the first clean breath he'd had in hours. The ordeal was finally over. "Thank you," he said quietly to Mara.

She took a step back from the dead clone. "No problem. Brain all clear now?"

So she'd been able to sense the buzzing in his mind. He'd wondered about that. "Yes," he nodded, taking another wonderfully clean breath. "How about yours?"

She threw him a look that was half amused, half ironic. But for the first time since they'd met he could see that the pain and hatred were gone from her eyes. "I did what he wanted me to," she said. "It's over."

Luke looked back across the throne room. Karrde had tied the vornskrs' leashes to the collapsed catwalk and was picking his way carefully across the wreckage. Han, on his feet now, was helping a still groggy Leia out from under the section that had fallen on her. "Leia?" Luke called. "You all right?"

"I'm fine," Leia called back. "Just a little banged up. Let's get out of here, all right?"

Luke turned back to C'baoth. The old Jedi was staring down at the dead clone, his hands working at his sides, his eyes furious and lost and insane. "Yes," he agreed. "Come on, Mara."

"Go ahead," Mara said. "I'll be with you in a minute."

Luke eyed her. "What are you going to do?"

"What do you think?" she retorted. "I'm going to finish the job. Like I should have done on Jomark."

Slowly, C'baoth raised his eyes to her. "You will die for this, Mara Jade," he said, his quiet voice more chilling than any outburst of rage could have been. "Slowly, and in great pain." Taking a deep breath, curling his hands into fists in front of his chest, he closed his eyes.

"We'll see about that," Mara muttered. Raising her lightsaber, she started toward him.

It began as a distant rumble, more felt than really heard. Luke looked around the room, senses tingling with a premonition of danger. But he could see nothing out of place. The sound grew louder, deeper—

And with a thunderous explosion, the sections of throne room ceiling directly above him and Mara suddenly collapsed in a downpour of gravel-sized rocks.

"Look out!" Luke shouted, throwing his arms up to protect his head and trying to leap out of the way. But the center of the rockfall moved with him. He tried again, this time nearly losing his balance as his foot caught in a pile of stones already ankle deep. Too numerous and too small for him to get a grip on through the Force, they kept coming, pummeling against him with bruising impact. Through the dust swirling around him, he saw Mara floundering under a deluge of her own, trying to guard her head with one arm as she slashed vainly at the falling stones with her lightsaber. From across the throne room, Luke could hear Han shouting something, and guessed that they, too, were under the same attack.

And standing untouched by the destructive rock storms he'd unleashed, C'baoth lifted his hands high. "I am the Jedi Master C'baoth!" he shouted, his voice ringing through the throne room and the roar of the rockfalls. "The Empire—the universe—is mine."

Luke dropped his lightsaber back into defense position, senses again tingling with danger. But once again, the knowledge did him little good. C'baoth's lightning burst flashed against the lightsaber blade, the impact knocking Luke off balance and dropping him painfully onto his knees in the pile of stones around him. Even as he struggled to get up, one of the falling rocks slammed hard into the side of his head. He staggered, toppling sideways onto one hand. Again the lightning flashed, throwing coronal fire all through the stone pile and sending wave after wave of agony through him. The lightsaber was plucked from his fingers; dimly he saw it fly over the railing toward the far end of the throne room.

"Stop it," Mara screamed. Through the haze of pain, Luke saw that she was standing up to her knees in stones, her lightsaber slashing uselessly through the mound as if trying to sweep them away. "If you're going to kill us, just do it."

"Patience, my future apprentice," C'baoth said. . . and squinting through the stones and dust, Luke saw the other's dreamy smile. "You cannot die yet. Not until I have taken you down to the Grand Admiral's cloning chamber."

Beneath her rockfall, Mara jerked, her sense flashing with sudden horror. "What?"

"For I have foreseen that Mara Jade will kneel before me," C'baoth reminded her. "One Mara Jade . . . or another."

"That's it," Lando said, tapping the activation switch on the last charge. "Give it a kick and let's get out of here."

From around the central column Chewbacca growled acknowledgment. Picking up his blaster, Lando stood up, giving each of the doors around the outer walkway a quick look. So far, so good. If they could keep the stormtroopers out for just two more minutes, long enough for Chewbacca and him to get off this work platform and out to the walkway . . .

Chewbacca rumbled a warning. Listening closely, Lando could hear the faint rising-pitch hum of an extremely unhappy negative flow coupler. "Great, Chewie," he said. "Let's go." He stepped out onto the end of the bridge—

And straight ahead of him, the door opposite the bridge blew up.

"Watch it!" Lando barked, dropping flat on his stomach on the bridge and pouring blaster fire into the cloud of dust and debris expanding out from where the door had been. Already, the sizzling blue ripples of stun fire were starting to erupt from the doorway in their general direction. Behind him, the roar of Chewbacca's bowcaster was answering. So much for those last two minutes.

And with his face pressed as close to the metal-mesh floor as he could get it, Lando found himself looking at the bridge. At the bridge, and the thin but sturdy guardrails running along both sides of it . . .

It was crazy. But that didn't mean it wouldn't work.

"Chewie, get over here," he called, rolling halfway over and throwing a quick look up at the bridge controls set into the top of the work platform guardrail. Extension control . . . there. Retraction control—emergency stop control—

The bridge shook as Chewbacca landed with a thud on the bridge beside him. "Keep them busy," Lando told him. Gauging the distance, he lunged upward, jabbing the retraction control and the emergency stop in quick succession. The bridge lurched out from the work platform and stopped, just far enough for its locking bars to disengage.

Chewbacca rumbled a question as the bridge bobbed gently with the strain of their weight. "You'll see," Lando told him. From both sides came flashes of light as two more doors disintegrated. "Just hang on to the guardrail supports and keep firing. Here we go." Getting a firm grip himself, he aimed carefully and opened fire.

But not at the stormtroopers now charging out onto the circular walkway. His shots were directed instead at the far end of the bridge, throwing out clouds of sparks as they vaporized sections of the mesh flooring and dug chunks out of the structural support bars beneath. The bridge lurched, bobbing even harder now, as Lando continued to hammer away at its structural integrity. Beside him, Chewbacca rumbled a savage Wookiee phrase that Lando had never heard him use before—

And with a horrible shriek of strained metal, the bridge suddenly gave way. Connected to the walkway only by the-still-intact guardrails, it pivoted ponderously downward. Lando gripped the guardrail tightly as their horizontal position changed rapidly toward a vertical one—

And with a crash that nearly jarred him loose, the bridge slammed up against the guardrail of the cloning balcony three levels down.

"This is our stop," Lando said. "Come on." Jamming his blaster awkwardly into its holster, he swung himself around the steeply angled bridge guardrail to drop onto the cloning balcony floor. Chewbacca, with his natural arboreal skills, was there a good three seconds ahead of him.

They were halfway to the balcony's exit door, dodging between the rows of Spaarti cylinders, when the column behind them blew up.

The charges went first, blowing sections of cable and pipework in a series of dazzling fireballs all around the column's perimeter. An evil-looking cloud of smoke and dust and flash-vaporized nutrient liquids swirled into the air, obscuring the view; from all sides, multicolored fluids began spraying out. The work platform they'd been standing on a minute earlier broke free of its supports and slid roughly down the column, tearing and damaging more equipment as it fell. From inside the cloud came a sputtering of shorted power lines and secondary explosions, each one adding to the rain of debris.

And with a horrible creaking of strained and shattered supports, the external layers of the column began to peel away and fall almost leisurely outward.

Over the din, Chewbacca roared a warning. "Me, neither," Lando shouted back. "Let's get out of here."

Ten seconds later, bursting past the single token guard who'd been left on this level's exit door, they were out. They were two corridors away when they felt the distant vibration as the column crashed to the cloning cavern floor.

"Okay," Lando panted, pausing and glancing both ways as they reached a cross corridor. Artoo must have done a good job with those troop reassignments; the whole area seemed deserted. "Exit's that direction," he told Chewbacca, pulling out his comlink. "We'll call the others and get out of here." He keyed for Han—

And jerked back as the comlink erupted with a loud crackling noise. "Han?" he called.

"Lando?" Hans voice came back, almost inaudible over the noise.

"Right," Lando confirmed. "What's happening up there?"

"This crazy Jedi's dropping the roof in on us," Han shouted. "Leia and me have a little cover, but he's got Luke and Mara out in the open. Where are you?"

"Down near the cloning cavern," Lando gritted. If that arrhythmic resonance thing of Chewbacca's worked, one of the mountain's reactors would already be starting to flicker with instabilities. If they didn't get out of the mountain before it blew . . . "You want us to come up and help?"

"Don't bother," Karrde's voice cut in grimly. "There's already a large pile of stone in front of the turbolift. Looks like we're here for the duration."

Chewbacca snarled, his voice filled with frustration. "Forget it, Chewie, there's nothing you could do anyway," Han told him. "We've still got Luke and Mara—maybe they can stop him."

"What if they can't?" Lando demanded, stomach twisting inside him. "Look, you haven't got much time—we think we've got an arrhythmic resonance going in the power core."

"Good," Han said. "Means C'baoth won't get out either."

"Han—"

"Go on, get out of here," Han cut him off. "Chewie, it's been great; but if we don't make it, someone beside Winter's going to have to take care of Jacen and Jaina. You got that?"

"The Wild Karrde's waiting where you came in," Karrde added. "They'll be expecting you."

"Right," Lando said, gritting his teeth. "Good luck."

He keyed off and jammed the comlink back in his belt. Han was right, there wasn't anything they could do against

C'baoth from down here. But with the Wild Karrde's turbolasers and Artoo's set of floor plans . . . "Come on, Chewie," he said, turning toward their exit and breaking into a run. "It's not over yet."

"Perhaps it is for the best," C'baoth murmured, gazing at Luke sadly as he stepped toward him. Blinking the dust away from his eyes, Luke looked up at the old Jedi, trying to force back the agony still throbbing through him.

The agony, and the looming sense of defeat. Kneeling on the floor, encased in stones to above his waist with more still falling on him, facing an insane Jedi Master who wanted to kill him . . .

No. A Jedi must act when he is calm. At peace with the Force. "Master C'baoth, listen to me," he said. "You're not well. I know that. But I can help you."

A dozen expressions flicked across C'baoth's face, as if he were trying various emotions on for size. "Can you, now," he said, settling on wry amusement. "And why should you do that for me?"

"Because you need it," Luke said. "And because we need you. You have a vast store of experience and power that you could use for the good of the New Republic."

C'baoth snorted. "The Jedi Master Joruus C'baoth does not serve lesser peoples, Jedi Skywalker."

"Why not? All the great Jedi Masters of the Old Republic did."

"And that was their failing," C'baoth said, jabbing a finger at Luke. "That was why the lesser peoples rose up and killed them."

"But they didn't—"

"Enough!" C'baoth thundered. "It doesn't matter what you think the lesser peoples need from me. I am the one who will decide that. They will accept my rule, or they will die." His eyes flashed. "You had that choice, Jedi Skywalker. And more—you could have ruled beside me. Instead, you chose death."

A drop of sweat or blood trickled down the side of Luke's face. "What about Mara?"

C'baoth shook his head. "Mara Jade is no longer any concern of yours," he said. "I will deal with her later."

"No," Mara snapped. "You will deal with me now."

Luke looked over at her. The stones were still raining down above her head; but to his astonishment, the knee-high pile of rock that had been trapping her in place was gone. And now he saw why: those lightsaber slashes she'd been making earlier hadn't been the useless sweeping motions that he'd assumed. Instead, she'd been slicing huge gashes in the floor, releasing the stones to drain through to the monitor area below.

Raising her lightsaber, she charged.

C'baoth swung around to face her, his face contorted with rage. "No!" he screamed; and again the blue-white lightning crackled from his fingertips. Mara caught the burst on her lightsaber, her mad rush faltering as coronal fire burned all around her. C'baoth fired again and again, backing toward the throne and the solid wall behind it. Doggedly, Mara kept coming.

Abruptly, the rockfall over her head ceased. From the edge of the pile that had half buried Luke, stones began flying toward C'baoth. Curving around behind him, they shot straight into Mara's face. She staggered backward, squeezing her eyes shut against the hailstorm and throwing up her right elbow to try to block them away.

Setting his teeth, Luke tried to heave away the stones weighing him down. He couldn't leave Mara to fight alone. But it was no use; his muscles were still too weakened from C'baoth's last attack. He tried again anyway, ignoring the fresh pain the effort sent through him. He looked at Mara—

And saw her face suddenly change. He frowned; and then he heard it too. Leia's voice, speaking in his mind—

Keep your eyes closed, Mara, and listen to my voice. I can see; I'll guide you.

"No!" C'baoth screamed again. "No! She is mine!"

Luke looked over at the other end of the throne room, wondering how C'baoth would lash out at Leia in retaliation. But there was nothing. Even the stones had stopped falling on the section of catwalk they were all huddled beneath. Perhaps the long battle had finally begun to drain C'baoth's strength, and he could no longer risk splitting his attention. Beyond the catwalk, lying half buried in the pile of stone that now blocked the turbolift door, Luke spotted the metallic glint of his lightsaber. If he could call it to him, and regain enough strength to join Mara's battle . . .

And then, another motion caught his eye. Tied to the catwalk to one side, untouched by the rockfall that had attacked their owner, Karrde's pet vornskrs were tugging at their leashes.

Straining toward Mara. And toward C'baoth.

A wild vornskr had nearly killed Mara during their trek through the Myrkr forest. It seemed only fitting, somehow, for these two to help save her. The lightsaber stirred under Luke's call, igniting as his mind found the control. It rolled off the rock pile, the brilliant green blade throwing sparks from the stones as it bounced across them. Luke strained, and the weapon lifted into the air and flew toward him.

And as it reached the ruined catwalk, he let the blade dip to slice neatly through the vornskrs' leashes.

C'baoth saw them coming, of course. His back nearly to the throne room wall now, he shifted his aim, sending a burst of lightning toward the charging predators as they came up over the stairway. One of them howled and fell to the floor, skidding across the scattered stones; the other staggered but kept coming.

The distraction was all the opening Mara needed. She leaped forward against the rocks still pummeling against her face, covering the last remaining distance between her and C'baoth; and as he brought his hands desperately back toward her, she dropped onto her knees in front of him and stabbed viciously upward with her lightsaber. With a last, mournful scream, C'baoth crumpled—

And as it had with the Emperor aboard the Death Star, the dark side energy within him burst out in a violent explosion of blue fire.

Luke was ready. Throwing every last bit of strength into the effort, he caught Mara in a solid Force grip, pulling her back away from that burst of energy as fast as he could. He felt the wave-front slam into him; felt the slight easing of stress as Leia's strength joined his effort.

And then, suddenly, it was all over.

For a long minute he lay still, gasping for air, fighting against the unconsciousness threatening to roll over him. Dimly, he felt the stones being pushed away from around him. "Are you all right, Luke?" Leia asked.

He forced open his eyes. Dust-covered and bruised, she didn't look much better than he felt. "I'm fine," he told her, pushing against the remaining stones and getting his feet under him. "How about the others?"

"They're not too bad," she said, catching his arm to help steady him. "But Han's going to need medical treatment—he's got some bad burns."

"So does Mara," Karrde said grimly, coming up the steps holding an unconscious Mara in his arms. "We have to get her to the Wild Karrde as quickly as possible."

"So give them a call," Han said. He was kneeling over the dead Luuke clone, gazing down at him. "Tell them to come pick us up."

"Pick us up where?" Karrde frowned.

Han pointed toward the spot where C'baoth had died. "Right there."

Luke turned and looked. The massive detonation of dark side energy had made a shambles of that end of the throne room. The walls and ceiling were blackened and cratered; the metal of the floor where C'baoth had stood was buckled and half melted; the throne itself had been ripped away and was lying smoldering a meter from its base.

And behind it, through a jagged crack in the rear wall, he could see the bright twinkle of a single star.

"Right," Luke said, taking a deep breath. "Leia?"

"I see it," she nodded, handing him his lightsaber and igniting hers. "Let's get busy."

The two Rebel Assault Frigates broke to either side of the beleaguered Golan II, delivering massive broadsides as they veered off. A section of the battle station flared and went dark; and against its darkened bulk another wave of Rebel starfighters could be seen slipping past into the shipyards beyond.

And Pellaeon was no longer smiling.

"Don't panic, Captain," Thrawn said. But he, too, was starting to sound grim. "We're not defeated yet. Not by a long shot."

Pellaeon's board pinged. He looked at it— "Sir, we have a priority message coming in from Wayland," he told Thrawn, his stomach twisting with a sudden horrible premonition. Wayland—the cloning facility—

"Read it, Captain," Thrawn said, his voice deadly quiet.

"Decrypt is coming in now, sir," Pellaeon said, tapping the board impatiently as the message slowly began to come up. It was exactly as he'd feared. "The mountain is under attack, sir," he told Thrawn. "Two different forces of natives, plus some Rebel saboteurs—" He broke off, frowning in disbelief. "And a group of Noghri—"

He never got to read any more of the report. Abruptly, a gray-skinned hand slashed out of nowhere, catching him across the throat.

He gagged, falling limply in his chair, his whole body instantly paralyzed. "For the treachery of the Empire against the Noghri people," Rukh's voice said quietly from beside him as he gasped for breath. "We were betrayed. We have been revenged."

There was a whisper of movement, and he was gone. Still gasping, struggling against the inertia of his stunned muscles, Pellaeon fought to get a hand up to his command board. With one final effort he made it, trying twice before he was able to hit the emergency alert.

And as the wailing of the alarm cut through the noise of a Star Destroyer at battle, he finally managed to turn his head.

Thrawn was sitting upright in his chair, his face strangely calm. In the middle of his chest, a dark red stain was spreading across the spotless white of his Grand Admiral's uniform. Glittering in the center of the stain was the tip of Rukh's assassin's knife.

Thrawn caught his eye; and to Pellaeon's astonishment, the Grand Admiral smiled. "But," he whispered, "it was so artistically done."

The smile faded. The glow in his eyes did likewise . . . and Thrawn, the last Grand Admiral, was gone.

"Captain Pellaeon?" the comm officer called urgently as the medic team arrived—too late—to the Grand Admiral's chair. "The Nemesis and Stormhawk are requesting orders. What shall I tell them?"

Pellaeon looked up at the viewports. At the chaos that had erupted behind the defenses of the supposedly secure shipyards; at the unexpected need to split his forces to its defense; at the Rebel fleet taking full advantage of the diversion. In the blink of an eye, the universe had suddenly turned against them.

Thrawn could still have pulled an Imperial victory out of it. But he, Pellaeon, was not Thrawn.

"Signal to all ships," he rasped. The words ached in his throat, in a way that had nothing to do with the throbbing pain of Rukh's treacherous attack. "Prepare to retreat."

Chapter 29

The sun had set beneath a thin layer of western clouds, and the colors of the evening sky were beginning to fade into the encroaching darkness of Coruscant night. Leaning on the chest-high wrought-stone railing at the edge of the Palace roof, listening to the breezes whispering by her ears, Mara gazed out at the lights and vehicles of the Imperial City below. Buzzing with activity, there was still something strangely peaceful about it.

Or maybe the peace was in her. Either way, it made for a nice change.

Twenty meters behind her, the door out onto the roof opened. She stretched out with the Force; but she knew who it had to be. And she was right. "Mara?" Luke called softly.

"Over here," she called back, grimacing out at the city below. From his sense she could tell he was here for her answer.

So much for inner peace.

"Quite a view, isn't it?" Luke commented, coming up beside her and gazing out over the city. "Must bring back memories for you."

She threw him a patient look. "Translation: How am I feeling about the homecoming this time. You know, Skywalker—just between us—you're pretty pathetic when you try to be devious. If I were you, I'd give it up and just stick with that straight-out farm boy honesty."

"Sorry," he said. "Too much time spent around Han, I guess."

"And Karrde and me, I suppose?"

"You want a straight-out farm boy honest answer to that?"

She threw him a crooked smile. "I'm sorry I even brought it up."

Luke smiled back, then turned serious again. "So how are you feeling?"

Mara looked back out at the lights. "Strange," she told him. "It's sort of like coming home . . . only it isn't. I've never really stood here and just looked at the city like this. The only times I was ever up here were to watch for a certain airspeeder to arrive or to keep an eye on some particular building or something like that. Business for the Emperor. I don't think he ever saw the Imperial City as people and lights—to him it was just power and opportunities."

"Probably how he saw everything," Luke agreed. "And speaking about opportunities . . . ?"

Mara grimaced. She'd been right: he was here for her answer. "The whole thing's ridiculous," she said. "You know it, and I know it."

"Karrde doesn't think so."

"Karrde's even a worse idealist than you are sometimes," she shot back. "In the first place, he's never going to be able to hold this smuggler coalition of his together."

"Maybe not," Luke said. "But think of the possibilities if he can. There are a lot of contacts and information sources out there in the fringe that the New Republic doesn't have any access to at all."

"So what do you need information sources for?" Mara countered. "Thrawn's dead, his cloning center is a shambles, and the Empire's in retreat again. You've won."

"We won at Endor, too," Luke pointed out. "That didn't stop us from years of so-called mopping-up action. There's still a lot of work yet to be done."

"It still doesn't make any sense to put me in the middle of it," Mara argued. "If you want a liaison between you and the smugglers, why don't you get Karrde to do it?"

"Because Karrde's a smuggler. You were just a smuggler's assistant."

She snorted. "Big difference."

"To some people, it is," Luke said. "This whole negotiation process is running as much on appearance and image as it is on reality. Anyway, Karrde's already said he won't do it. Now that those vornskrs of his have recovered, he wants to get back out to his people."

Mara shook her head. "I'm not a politician," she insisted. "Not a diplomat, either."

"But you're someone both sides are willing to trust," Luke said. "That's what's important here."

Mara made a face. "You don't know these people, Skywalker. Trust me—Chewbacca and the guys you're sending out to transplant the Noghri to their new world are going to have a lot more fun."

He touched her hand. "You can do it, Mara. I know you can."

She sighed. "I have to think about it."

"That's all right," he said. "Just come on downstairs whenever you're ready."

"Sure." She threw a sideways look at him. "Was there something else?"

He smiled. "You're getting good at that."

"Your fault for teaching me too well. Come on, what is it?"

"Just this." Reaching into his tunic, he pulled out a lightsaber.

"What's this?" Mara asked, frowning.

"It's my old lightsaber," Luke told her quietly. "The one I lost at Cloud City, and nearly got killed with at Wayland." He held it out. "I'd like you to have it."

She looked up at him, startled. "Me? Why?"

He shrugged self-consciously. "Lots of reasons. Because you earned it. Because you're on your way to becoming a Jedi and you'll need it. Mostly, though, because I want you to have it."

Slowly, almost reluctantly, she took the weapon. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." He touched her hand again. "I'll be in the conference room with the others. Come on down when you've decided."

He turned and walked away across the Palace roof. Mara turned to gaze out at the lights of the city again, the cool metal of the lightsaber pressed against her hand. Luke's lightsaber. Probably one of his last links to the past . . . and he was giving it away.

Was there a message in that for her? Probably. Like she'd said, subtlety wasn't one of Luke's strong points. But if that was why he'd done it, he'd been wasting his time. Her last link with the past had been broken in the Mount Tantiss throne room.

Her past was over. It was time to get on with the future. And the New Republic was that future. Whether she liked it or not.

Behind her, she heard Luke open the roof door. "Hang on a minute," she called after him. "I'll come with you."