Dark Force Rising (Star Wars)

CHAPTER

21

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

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

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

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

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

She nearly didn't make it. The Skipray was still ten meters short of the ledge when its drive trail hit the cliff face below it with enough heat to ignite the rock, and an instant later the ship was sheathed in brilliantly colored fire. Mara held her course, trying to ignore the warbling of the hull warning sirens as she strained to see through the flames between her and her target. There was no time to waste with second thoughts-if she hesitated even a few seconds, the drive could easily burn away too much of the ledge for her to safely put down. Five meters away now, and the temperature inside the cabin was beginning to rise. Then three, then one There was a horrible screech of metal on rock as the Skipray's ventral fin scraped against the edge of the ledge. Mara cut the drive and braced herself, and with a stomach-churning drop, the ship dropped a meter to land tailfirst on the ledge. For a second it almost seemed it would remain balanced there. Then, with ponderous grace, it toppled slowly forward and slammed down hard onto its landing skids.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The warbling of an R2 droid.

"Hey!" she called softly. "You-droid. Are are you Skywalker's astromech unit? If you are you know who I am. We met on Myrkr-remember?" The droid remembered, all ,right. But from the indignant tone of the reply, it wasn't a memory the R2 was especially fond of. "Yes, well, skip all that," she told it tartly. "Your master is in trouble. I came to warn him." Another electronic warble, this one fairly dripping with sarcasm.

"It's true," Mara insisted. Her dazzled vision was starting to recover now, and she could make out the dark shape of the X-wing hovering on its repulsorlifts about five meters away, its two starboard laser cannons pointed directly at her face. "I need to talk to him right away," Mara went on.

"Before that Jedi Master up there figures out I'm still alive and tries to rectify the situation."

She'd expected more sarcasm, or even out-and-out approval for such a goal. But the droid didn't say anything. Perhaps it had witnessed the brief battle between the Skipray and C'baoth's flying boulders. "Yes, that was him trying to kill me," she confirmed. "Nice and quiet, so that your master wouldn't notice anything and ask awkward questions." The droid beeped what sounded like a question of its own. "I came here because I need Skywalker's help," Mara said, taking a guess as to the content. "Karrde's been captured by the Imperials, and I can't get him out by myself. Karrde, in case you've forgotten, was the one who helped your friends set up an ambush against those stormtroopers that got both of you off Myrkr. You owe him."

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

The droid thought it over. Then, slowly, the X-wing rotated to point its lasers away from her and sidled over to the damaged Skipray. Mara holstered her blaster and got ready, wondering how she was going to squeeze into the cockpit with the ysalamir framework strapped to her shoulders. She needn't have worried. Instead of maneuvering to give her access to the cockpit, the droid instead presented her with one of the landing skids.

"You must be joking," Mara protested, eyeing the skid hovering at waist height in front of her and thinking about the long drop to the lake below. But it was clear that the droid was serious; and after a moment, she reluctantly climbed aboard. "Okay," she said when she was as secure as she could arrange. "Let's go. And watch out for flying rocks." The X-wing eased away and began moving upward. Mara braced herself, waiting for C'baoth to pick up the attack where he'd left off. But they reached the top without incident; and as the droid settled the X-wing safely to the ground, Mara saw the shadowy figure of a cloaked man standing silently beside the fence surrounding the house.

"You must be C'baoth," Mara said to him as she slid off the landing skid and got a grip on her blaster. "You always greet your visitors this way?" For a moment the figure didn't speak. Mara took a step toward him, feeling an eerie sense of dévà vu as she tried to peer into the hood at the face not quite visible there. The Emperor had looked much the same way that night when he'd first chosen her from her home ... "I have no visitors except lackeys from Grand Admiral Thrawn," the figure said at last. "All others are, by definition, intruders."

"What makes you think I'm not with the Empire?" Mara countered. "In case it escaped your notice, I was following the Imperial beacon on that island down there when you knocked me out of the sky." In the dim starlight she had the impression that C'baoth was smiling inside the hood. "And what precisely does that prove?" he asked. "Merely that others can play with the Grand Admiral's little toys."

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

"The Grand Admiral is your enemy," C'baoth snapped suddenly. "Don't insult me with childish denials, Mara Jade. I saw it all in your mind as you approached. Did you really believe you could take my Jedi away from me?" Mara swallowed, shivering from the cold night wind and the colder feeling within her. Thrawn had said that C'baoth was insane, and she could indeed hear the unstable edge of madness in his voice. But there was far more to the man than just that. There was a hard steel behind the voice, ruthless and calculating, with a sense of both supreme power and supreme confidence underlying it all.

It was like hearing the Emperor speak again.

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

"And then you'll return him?" C'baoth said sardonically. Mara clenched her teeth. "I'll have his help, C'baoth. Whether you like it or not."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Skywalker-" Mara began.

He stopped her with an upraised hand, his eyes still on C'baoth. "Did she attack you?" he asked. "Or threaten you in any way?" Mara looked at C'baoth ... and felt the breath freeze in her lungs. The earlier confidence had vanished from the Jedi Master's face. In its place was something cold and deadly. Directed not at her, but at Skywalker. And suddenly Mara understood. Skywalker wouldn't need convincing of C'baoth's treachery after all. Somehow, he already knew.

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

"No, Master C'baoth," Skywalker said, his voice almost gentle.

"Surely you must understand that the means are no less important than the ends. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack." C'baoth snorted. "A platitude for the simpleminded. Or for those with insufficient wisdom to make their own decisions. I am beyond such things, Jedi Skywalker. As you will be someday. If you choose to remain. Skywalker shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "I can't." He turned away and walked toward Mara "Then you turn your back on the galaxy," C'baoth said, his voice now earnest and sincere. "Only with our guidance and strength can they ever hope to achieve real maturity. You know that as well as I do." Skywalker stopped. "But you just said they hate us," he pointed out.

"How can we teach people who don't want our guidance?"

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

"Maybe he can do it without you," Mara put in loudly, trying to break up the verbal spell C'baoth was weaving. She'd seen the same sort of thing work for the Emperor, and Skywalker's eyelids were heavy enough as it was. Too heavy, in fact. Like hers had been on the approach to Jomark ... Stepping away from the X-wing, she walked over to Skywalker. C'baoth made a small movement, as if he were going to stop her; she hefted her blaster, and he seemed to abandon the idea.

Even without looking at him, she could tell when the Force-empty zone around her ysalamir touched Skywalker. He inhaled sharply, shoulders straightening from a slump he probably hadn't even noticed they had, and nodded as if he finally understood a hitherto unexplained piece of a puzzle.

"Is this how you would heal the galaxy, Master C'baoth?" he asked. "By coercion and deceit?"

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

And in that split second, the Jedi Master struck. It was only a small rock, as rocks went, but it came in out of nowhere to strike her gun hand with paralyzing force. The blaster went spinning off into the darkness as her hand flared with pain and then went numb. "Watch out!" she snapped to Skywalker, dropping down into a crouch and scrabbling around for her weapon as a second stone whistled past her ear. There was a snap-hiss from beside her, and suddenly the terrain was bathed in the green-white glow of Skywalker's lightsaber. "Get behind the ship," he ordered her. "I'll hold him off." The memory of Myrkr flashed through Mara's mind; but even as she opened her mouth to remind him of how useless he was without the Force, he took a long step forward to put himself outside the ysalamir's influence. The lightsaber flashed sideways, and she heard the double crunch as its silent blade intercepted two more incoming rocks.

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

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

Mara's fumbling hand brushed something metallic: her blaster. Scooping it up, she swung it toward C'baoth And with a brilliant flash of laser fire, the whole scene seemed to blow up in front of her.

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

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

"Where are you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Not like this."

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

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

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

"He doesn't have to be an enemy, Mara," Skywalker said with that irritating earnestness of his. "He's ill. Maybe he can be cured." Mara felt her lip twist. "You didn't hear the way he was talking before you showed up," she said. "He's insane, all right; but that's not all he is anymore. He's a lot stronger, and a whole lot more dangerous." She hesitated. "He sounded just like the Emperor and Vader used to." A muscle in Skywalker's cheek twitched. "Vader was deep in the dark side, too," he told her. "He was able to break that hold and come back. Maybe C'baoth can do the same.

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

"I know." He looked down at C'baoth once more, then back up at her.

"You said Karrde was in trouble."

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

She braced herself for the inevitable argument and bargaining; but to her surprise, he simply nodded and stood up. "Okay," he said. "Let's go." With one last mournful electronic wail Artoo signed off and with the usual flicker of pseudomotion, the X-wing was gone. "Well, he's not happy about it," Luke said, shutting down the Skipray's transmitter. "But I think I've persuaded him to go straight home."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, he wasn't," Mara said, her voice dark with memories of her own.

"Vader nearly died for that blunder." Deliberately, she looked over at Luke's hands. "That was when he lost his right hand, in fact." Luke flexed the fingers of his artificial right hand, feeling a ghostly echo of the searing pain that had lanced through it as Vader's lightsaber had sliced through skin and muscle and bone. A fragment of an old Tatooine aphortsm flickered through his mind: something about the passing of evil from one generation to the next "What's the plan?" he asked. Mara took a deep breath, and Luke could sense the emotional effort as she put the past aside. "Karrde's being held aboard the Grand Admiral's flagship, the Chimaera," she told him. "According to their flight schedule, they're going to be taking on supplies in the Wistril system four days from now. If we push it, we should be able to get there a few hours ahead of them. We'll ditch the Skipray, take charge of one of the supply shuttles, and just go on up with the rest of the flight pattern."

Luke thought it over. It sounded tricky, but not ridiculously so.

"What happens after we're aboard?"

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

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

"You got any better ideas?"

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

CHAPTER

22

Mara eased the repulsorlifts off; and with a faint metallic clank the cargo shuttle touched down on the main deck of the Chimaera's aft hangar bay.

"Shuttle 37 down," Luke announced into the comm. "Awaiting further orders."

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

"Got it."

Luke reached over to shut off the comm, but Mara stopped him.

"Control, this is my first cargo run," she said, her voice carrying just the right touch of idle curiosity. "About how long until we'll be able to leave?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Right." Luke ignited his lightsaber, and began carefully cutting a hole in the floor. He was most of the way through when there was a brilliant spark from the hole and the lights in the storage room abruptly went out.

"It's okay," Luke told Mara as she muttered something vicious under her breath. "The lightsaber gives off enough light to see by."

"I'm more worried that the cable might have arced to the hangar deck," she countered. "They couldn't help but notice that." Luke paused, stretching out with Jedi senses. "Nobody nearby seems to have seen anything," he told Mara.

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

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

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

Luke nodded and finished the cut. Mara was ready, and even as he shut down the lightsaber she had the winch pulling the thick slab of metal up into the shuttle. She brought it perhaps a meter up and then shut down the motor.

"That's far enough," she said. Blaster ready in her hand, she sat gingerly on the still-warm edge of the hole and dropped lightly down to the deck below. There was a second's pause as she looked around-"All clear," she hissed. Luke sat down on the edge and looked over at the winch control. Reaching out with the Force, he triggered the switch and followed her down. The deck below was farther than it had looked, but his Jedi-enhanced muscles handled the impact without trouble. Recovering his balance, he looked up just as the metal plug settled neatly back down into the hole. "Looks pretty good," Mara murmured. "I don't think anyone will notice."

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

"There," Mara said, gesturing with her blaster to their left. "We're not going to get there dressed like this, though. Come on. She led the way to the end of the passage, then down a crossway to another, wider corridor. Luke kept his senses alert, but only occasionally did he detect anyone. "Awfully quiet down here."

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

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

"I didn't think Jedi needed to use their eyes," Mara countered sourly. "Watch it-here we are. That's a section of crew quarters over there." Luke had already sensed the sudden jump in population level. "I don't think we can sneak through that many people," he warned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Skywalker-"

"Besides which, I doubt that even with surprise you can take out all three without any noise," he added. "Can you?" She glared laser bolts, but gestured him to the door. Setting his mind firmly in line with the Force, he moved toward it. The heavy metal panel slid open at his approach, and he stepped in.

There were indeed three men lounging around the monitor table in the center of the room: two in the Imperial brown of ordinary crewers, the other in the black uniform and flaring helmet of a Fleet trooper. All three looked up as the door opened, and Luke caught their idle interest in the newcomer. Reaching out through the Force, he gently touched their minds, shunting the curiosity away. The two crewers seemed to size him up and then ignore him; the trooper continued to watch, but only as a change from watching his companions. Trying to look as casual and unconcerned as he could, Luke went over to the rack of flight suits against the wall and selected three of them. The conversation around the monitor table continued as he draped them over his arm and walked back out of the room. The door slid shut behind him "Well?" Mara hissed. Luke nodded, exhaling quietly. "Go ahead and get into it," he told her. "I want to try and hold off their curiosity for another couple of minutes. Until they've forgotten I was ever in there." Mara nodded and started pulling the flight suit on over her jumpsuit.

"Handy trick, I must say."

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

The trick had worked. This time, anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"All right," Mara said, turning back to the turbolift control board.

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

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

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

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

And yet was walking into it anyway. Dimly, he wondered if that made him less reckless than he'd been the last time, or more so. He reached the door and paused beside it, pretending to study a data pad that had been in one of the flight suit's pockets until the corridor was deserted. Then, taking one last deep breath of clear air, he opened the door and stepped inside.

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

He let the door slide shut behind him, and as it did so he heard the faint sound of an internal relay closing. He'd cut things a little too close; Mara must already have activated the compression cycle. Breathing through his mouth, he waited...and a moment later, with a muffled clang of heavy hydraulics, the walls began moving slowly toward each other. Luke swallowed, gripping his lightsaber tightly as he tried to keep on top of the tangle of garbage and discarded equipment that was now starting to buck and twist around his feet. Getting into the detention level this way had been his idea, and he'd had to talk long and hard before Mara had been convinced. But now that he was actually here, and the walls were closing in on him, it suddenly didn't seem like nearly such a good idea anymore. If Mara couldn't adequately control the walls' movement-or if she was interrupted at her task Or if she gave in for just a few seconds to her hatred for him ... The walls came ever closer, grinding together everything in their path. Luke struggled to keep his footing, all too aware that if Mara was planning a betrayal he wouldn't know until it was too late to save himself. The compressor walls were too thick for him to cut a gap with his lightsaber, and already the shifting mass beneath his feet had taken him too far away from the door to escape that way. Listening to the creak of tortured metal and plastic, Luke watched as the gap between the walls closed to two meters...then one and a half...then one...

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

The footing was unstable, and the garbage compactor walls impressively tall, and even with Jedi enhancement behind the jump he made it only about halfway to the top. But even as he reached the top of his arc he drew his knees up and swung his feet out; and with a wrenching jolt to his legs and lower back, he wedged himself solidly between the walls. Taking a moment to catch his breath and get his bearings, he started up. It wasn't as bad as he'd feared it would be. He'd done a fair amount of climbing as a boy on Tatooine and had tackled rock chimneys at least half a dozen times, though never with any real enthusiasm. The smooth walls here in the compactor offered less traction than stone would have, but the evenness of the spacing and the absence of sharp rocks to dig into his back more than made up for it. Within a couple of minutes he had reached the top of the compactor's walls and the maintenance chute that would lead-he hoped-to the detention level. If Mara's reading of the schedule had been right, he had about five minutes before the guard shift changed up there. Setting his teeth together, he forced his way through the magnetic screen at the bottom of the chute and, in clean air again, started up.

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

Hanging on to the grating by one hand, he got his lightsaber free and ignited it. Making sure not to let the tip of the blade show through into the corridor beyond, he sliced off a section of the grating and eased it into the shaft with him. He used a hook from his flight suit to hang the section to what was left of the grating, and climbed through the opening. The corridor was deserted. Luke glanced at the nearest cell number to orient himself and set off toward the one Mara had named. The conversation in the control room seemed to be winding down, and soon now the new shift of guards would be moving out to take up their positions in the block corridors. Senses alert, Luke slipped down the cross corridor to the indicated cell and, mentally crossing his fingers, punched the lock release.

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

"Me, either," Luke told him, throwing a quick glance around the room.

"You fit to travel?"

"Fit and ready," Karrde said, already up and moving toward the door.

"Fortunately, they're still in the softening-up phase. Lack of food and sleep-you're familiar with the routine."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"With luck, we'll be back at the hangar bay before that happens," Luke assured him. "Come on, now. Slow and easy; let's go." They made it back to the garbage compactor without serious mishap.

"The dark side of the Empire the tourists never see," Karrde commented dryly as Luke led him across the tangle of garbage. "How do we get out?"

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

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

"She told me on the trip here how you were captured," Luke said, trying to read Karrde's sense. If he was angry at Mara, he was hiding it well.

"She said she wasn't in on that trap."

"Oh, I'm sure she wasn't," Karrde said. "If for no other reason than that my interrogators worked so hard to drop hints to the contrary." He looked thoughtfully at Luke. "What did she promise for your help in this?" Luke shook his head. "Nothing. She just reminded me that I owed you one for not turning me over to the Imperials back on Myrkr." A wry smile twitched Karrde's lip. "Indeed. No mention, either, of why the Grand Admiral wanted me in the first place?" Luke frowned at him. The other was watching him closely ... and now that he was paying attention, Luke could tell that Karrde was holding some secret back from him. "I assumed it was in revenge for helping me escape. Is there more to it than that?"

Karrde's gaze drifted away from him. "Let's just say that if we make it away from here the New Republic stands to gain a great deal." His last word was cut off by a muffled clang; and with a ponderous jolt the compactor walls began slowly moving apart again. Luke helped Karrde maintain his balance as they waited for the door to be clear, stretching his senses outward into the corridor beyond. There were a fair number of crewers passing by, but he could sense no suspicion or special alertness in any of them. "Is Mara doing all this?" Karrde asked.

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

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

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

"She was."

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

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

"He knows you didn't betray him," Luke told her quietly.

"I didn't ask," she growled. But Luke could sense some of her tension vanish. "Here," she added, thrusting the flight suit at Karrde. "A little camouflage."

"Thank you," Karrde said. "Where are we going?"

"We came in on a supply shuttle," Mara said. "We cut an exit hole in the lower hull, but we should have enough time to weld it airtight before they send us back to the surface."

The turbolift car arrived as Karrde was adjusting the fasteners on his borrowed flight suit. Two men with a gleaming power core relay on a float table were there before them, taking up most of the room. "Where to?" one of the techs asked with the absent politeness of a man with more important things on his mind.

"Pilot ready room 33-129-T," Mara told him, using the same tone. The tech entered the destination on the panel and the door slid shut; and Luke took his first really relaxed breath since Mara had put the Skipray down on Wistril five hours ago. Another ten or fifteen minutes and they'd be safely back in their shuttle.

Against all odds, they'd done it.

The midpoint report from the hangar bay came in, and Pellaeon paused in his monitoring of the bridge deflector control overhaul to take a quick look at it. Excellent; the unloading was running nearly eight minutes ahead of schedule. At this rate the Chimaera would be able to make its rendezvous with the Stormhawk in plenty of time for them to set up their ambush of the Rebel convoy assembling off Corfai. He marked the report as noted and sent it back into the files; and he had turned his attention back to the deflector overhaul when he heard a quiet footstep behind him.

"Good evening, Captain," Thrawn nodded, coming up beside Pellaeon's chair and giving the bridge a leisurely scan.

"Admiral," Pellaeon nodded back, swiveling to face him. "I thought you'd retired for the night, sir.

"I've been in my command room," Thrawn said, looking past Pellaeon at the displays. "I thought I'd make one last survey of ship's status before I went to my quarters. Is that the bridge deflector overhaul?"

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, wondering which species' artwork had been favored with the Grand Admiral's scrutiny tonight. "No problems so far. The cargo unloading down in Aft Bay Two is running ahead of schedule, too."

"Good," the Grand Admiral said. "Anything further from the patrol at Endor?"

"Just an addendum to that one report, sir," Pellaeon told him.

"Apparently, they've confirmed that the ship they caught coming into the system was in fact just a smuggler planning to sift again through the remains of the Imperial base there. They're continuing to back-check the crew."

"Remind them to make a thorough job of it before they let the ship go," Thrawn said grimly. "Organa Solo won't have simply abandoned the Millennium Falcon in orbit there. Sooner or later she'll return for it...and when she does, I intend to have her."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon nodded. The commander of the Endor patrol group, he was certain, didn't need any reminding of that. "Speaking of the Millennium Falcon, have you decided yet whether or not to do any further scan work on it?"

Thrawn shook his head. "I doubt that would gain us anything. The scanning team would be better employed assisting with maintenance on the Chimaera's own systems. Have the Millennium Falcon transferred up to vehicle deep storage until we can find some use for it."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, swiveling back and logging the order. "Oh, and there was one other strange report that came in a few minutes ago. A routine patrol on the supply base perimeter came across a Skipray blastboat that had made a crash landing out there."

"A crash landing?" Thrawn frowned.

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, calling up the report. "Its underside was in pretty bad shape, and the whole hull was scorched." The picture came up on Pellaeon's display, and Thrawn leaned over his shoulder for a closer look. "Any bodies?"

"No, sir," Pellaeon said. "The only thing aboard-and this is the strange part-was an ysalamir."

He felt Thrawn stiffen. "Show me."

Pellaeon keyed for the next picture, a close-up of the ysalamir on its biosupport frame. "The frame isn't one of our designs," he pointed out.

"No telling where it came from."

"Oh, there's telling, all right," Thrawn assured him. He straightened up and took a deep breath. "Sound intruder alert, Captain. We have visitors aboard."

Pellaeon stared up at him in astonishment, fumbling fingers locating and twisting the alert key. "Visitors?" he asked as the alarms began their throaty wailing.

"Yes," Thrawn said, his glowing red eyes glittering with a sudden fire. "Order an immediate check of Karrde's cell. If he's still there, he's to be moved immediately and put under direct stormtrooper guard. I want another guard ring put around the supply shuttles and an immediate ID check begun of their crews. And then"-he paused-"have the Chimaera's main computer shut down."

Pellaeon's fingers froze on his keyboard. "Shut down-?"

"Carry out your orders, Captain," Thrawn cut him off.

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said between suddenly stiff lips. In all his years of Imperial service he had never seen a warship's main computer deliberately shut down except in space dock. To do so was to blind and cripple the craft. With intruders aboard, perhaps fatally.

"It will hamper our efforts a bit, I agree," Thrawn said, as if reading Pellaeon's fears. "But it will hamper our enemies' far more. You see, the only way for them to have known the Chimaera's course and destination was for Mara Jade to have tapped into the computer when we brought her and Karrde aboard."

"That's impossible," Pellaeon insisted, wincing as his computer-driven displays began to wink out. "Any access codes she might have known were changed years ago.

"Unless there are codes permanently hard-wired into the system," Thrawn said. "Set there by the Emperor for his use and that of his agents. Jade no doubt is counting on that access in her rescue attempt; therefore, we deprive her of it."

A stormtrooper stepped up to them. "Yes, Commander?" Thrawn said.

"Comlink message from detention," the electronically filtered voice announced. "The prisoner Talon Karrde is no longer in his cell."

"Very well," the Grand Admiral said darkly. "Alert all units to begin a search of the area between detention and the aft hangar bays. Karrde is to be recaptured alive-not necessarily undamaged, but alive. As to his would-be rescuers, I want them also alive if possible. If not-" He paused. "If not, I'll understand."

CHAPTER

23

The wail of the alarm sounded over the overhead speaker; and a few seconds later the turbolift car came to an abrupt halt. "Blast," one of the two gunners who had replaced the service techs in the car muttered, digging a small ID card from the slot behind his belt buckle. "Don't they ever get tired of running drills up there on the bridge?"

"Talk like that might get you a face-to-face with a stormtrooper squad," the second warned, throwing a sideways glance at Luke and the others. Stepping past the first gunner, he slid his ID card into a slot on the control board and tapped in a confirmation code. "It was a lot worse before the Grand Admiral took over. Anyway, what do you want èm to do, announce snap drills in advance?"

"The whole thing's burnin' useless, if you ask me," the first growled, clearing his ID the same way. "Who they expect's gonna come aboard, anyway? Some burnin' pirate gang or something?"

Luke glanced questioningly at Karrde, wondering what they should do. But Mara was already moving toward the two gunners, the ID from her borrowed flight suit in hand. She stepped between them, reached the ID toward the slot And whipped the edge of her hand hard into the side of the first gunner's neck.

The man's head snapped sideways and he toppled to the floor without a sound. The second gunner had just enough time to gurgle something unintelligible before Mara sent him to join his friend.

"Come on, let's get out of here," she snapped, feeling along the line where the door fitted into the car's cylindrical wall. "Locked solid. Come on, Skywalker, get busy here."

Luke ignited his lightsaber. "How much time have we got?" he asked as he carved a narrow exit through part of the door.

"Not much," Mara said grimly. "Turbolift cars have sensors that keep track of the number of people inside. It'll give us maybe another minute to do our ID checks before reporting us to the system computer. I need to get to a terminal before the flag transfers from there to the main computer and brings the storm troopers down on top of us."

Luke finished the cut and closed down the lightsaber as Mara and Karrde lifted the section down and out of the way. Beyond was the tunnel wall, not quite in line with the hole. "Good," Mara said, easing through the gap.

"We were starting to rotate when the system froze down. There's room here to get into the tunnel."

The others followed. The turbolift tunnel was roughly rectangular in cross-section, with gleaming guide rails along the walls, ceiling, and floor. Luke could feel the tingle of electric fields as he passed close beside the rails, and he made a mental note not to touch them. "Where are we going?" he whispered down the tunnel toward Mara.

"Right here," she whispered back, stopping at a red rimmed plate set in the wall between the guide rails. "Access tunnel-should lead back to a service droid storage room and computer terminal."

The lightsaber made quick work of the access panel's safety interlock. Mara darted through the opening, blaster in hand, and disappeared down the dark tunnel beyond. Luke and Karrde followed past a double row of deactivated maintenance droids, each with a bewildering array of tools fanned out from their limbs as if for inspection. Beyond the droids the tunnel widened into a small room where, as predicted, a terminal sat nestled amid the tubes and cables. Mara was already hunched over it; but as Luke stepped into the room he caught the sudden shock in her sense. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"They've shut down the main computer," she said, a stunned expression on her face. "Not just bypassed or put it on standby. Shut it down."

"The Grand Admiral must have figured out you can get into it," Karrde said, coming up behind Luke. "We'd better get moving. Do you have any idea where we are?"

"I think we're somewhere above the aft hangar bays," Mara said.

"Those service techs got off just forward of the central crew section, and we hadn't gone very far down yet."

"Above the hangar bays," Karrde repeated thoughtfully. "Near the vehicle deep storage area, in other words?"

Mara frowned at him. "Are you suggesting we grab a ship from up there?"

"Why not?" Karrde countered. "They'll probably be expecting us to go directly to one of the hangar bays. They might not be watching for us to come in via vehicle lift from deep storage."

"And if they are, it'll leave us trapped like clipped mynocks when the stormtroopers come to get us," Mara retorted. "Trying to shoot our way out of deep storage-"

"Hold it," Luke cut her off, Jedi combat senses tingling a warning.

"Someone's coming."

Mara muttered a curse and dropped down behind the computer terminal, blaster trained on the door. Karrde, still weaponless, faded back into the partial cover of the service tunnel and the maintenance droids lined up there. Luke flattened himself against the wall beside the door, lightsaber held ready but not ignited. He let the Force flow through him as he poised for action, listening to the dark, purposeful senses of the troopers coming up to the door and recognizing to his regret that no subtle mind touches would accomplish anything here. Gripping his lightsaber tightly, he waited ... Abruptly, with only a flicker of warning, the door slid open and two stormtroopers were in the room, blaster rifles at the ready. Luke raised his lightsaber, thumb on the activation switch And from the tunnel where Karrde had disappeared a floodlight suddenly winked on, accompanied by the sound of metal grinding against metal. The stormtroopers took a long step into the room, angling to opposite sides of the door, their blaster rifles swinging reflexively toward the light and sound as two black-clad naval troopers crowded into the room behind them. The stormtroopers spotted Mara crouching beside the terminal, and the blaster rifles changed direction to track back toward her.

Mara was faster. Her blaster spat four times, two shots per stormtrooper, and both Imperials dropped to the floor, one with blaster still firing uselessly in death reflex. The naval troopers behind them dived for cover, firing wildly toward their attacker.

A single sweep of the lightsaber caught them both. Luke closed down the weapon and ducked his head out the doorway for a quick look around. "All clear," he told Mara, coming back in.

"For now, anyway," she countered, holstering her blaster and picking up two of the blaster rifles. "Come on.""

Karrde was waiting for them at the access panel they'd come in by.

"Doesn't sound like the turbolifts have been reactivated yet," he said. "It should be safe to move through the tunnels a while longer. Any trouble with the search party?"

"No," Mara said, handing him one of the blaster rifles. "Effective diversion, by the way."

"Thank you," Karrde said. "Maintenance droids are such useful things to have around. Deep storage?"

"Deep storage," Mara agreed heavily. "You just better be right about this."

"My apologies in advance if I'm not. Let's go." Slowly, by comlink and intercom, the reports began to come in. They weren't encouraging.

"No sign of them anywhere in the detention level area," a stormtrooper commander reported to Pellaeon with the distracted air of someone trying to hold one conversation while listening to another. "One of the waste chute gratings in detention has been found cut open-that must be how they got Karrde out."

"Never mind how they got him out," Pellaeon growled. "The recriminations can wait until later. The important thing right now is to find them."

"The security teams are searching the area of that turbolift alert," the other said, his tone implying that anything a stormtrooper commander said must by, definition be important. "So far there's been no contact." Thrawn turned from the two communications officers who had been relaying messages for him to and from the hangar bays. "How was the waste chute grating cut open?" he asked.

"I have no information on that," the commander said.

"Get it," Thrawn said, his tone icy. "Also inform your search parties that two maintenance techs have reported seeing a man in a TIE fighter flight suit in the vicinity of that waste collector. Warn your guards in the aft hangar bays, as well."

"Yes, sir," the commander said.

Pellaeon looked at Thrawn. "I don't see how it matters right now how they got Karrde out, sir," he said. "Wouldn't our resources be better spent in finding them?"

"Are you suggesting that we send all our soldiers and stormtroopers converging on the hangar bays?" Thrawn asked mildly. "That we thereby assume our quarry won't seek to cause damage elsewhere before attempting their escape?"

"No, sir," Pellaeon said, feeling his face warming. "I realize we need to protect the entire ship. It just seems to me to be a low-priority line of inquiry.

"Indulge me, Captain," Thrawn said quietly. "It's only a hunch, but "Admiral," the stormtrooper commander interrupted. "Report from search team 207, on deck 98 nexus 326-KK." Pellaeon's fingers automatically started for his keyboard; came up short as he remembered that there was no computer mapping available to pinpoint the location for him. "They've found team 102, all dead," the commander continued. "Two were killed by blaster fire; the other two ..." He hesitated. "There seems to be some confusion about the other two."

"No confusion, Commander," Thrawn put in, his voice suddenly deadly.

"Instruct them to look for near microscopic cuts across the bodies with partial cauterization."

Pellaeon stared at him. There was a cold fire in the Grand Admiral's eyes that hadn't been there before. "Partial cauterization?" he repeated stupidly.

"And then inform them," Thrawn continued, "that one of the intruders is the Jedi Luke Skywalker."

Pellaeon felt his mouth drop open. "Skywalker?" he gasped. "That's impossible. He's on Jomark with C'baoth."

"Was, Captain," Thrawn corrected icily. "He's here now." He took a deep, controlled breath; and as he let it out, the momentary anger seemed to fade away. "Obviously, our vaunted Jedi Master failed to keep him there, as he claimed he'd be able to. And I'd say that we now have our proof that Skywalker's escape from Myrkr wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision."

"You think Karrde and the Rebellion have been working together all along?" Pellaeon asked.

"We'll find out soon enough," Thrawn told him, turning to look over his shoulder. "Rukh?"

The silent gray figure moved to Thrawn's side. "Yes, my lord?

"Get a squad of noncombat personnel together," Thrawn ordered. "Have them collect all the ysalamiri from Engineering and Systems Control and move them down to the hangar bays. There aren't nearly enough to cover the whole area, so use your hunter's instincts on their placement. The more we can hamper Skywalker's Jedi tricks, the less trouble we'll have taking him." The Noghri nodded and headed for the bridge exit. "We could also use the ysalamiri from the bridge-" Pellaeon began.

"Quiet a moment, Captain," Thrawn cut him off, his glowing eyes gazing unseeing through the side viewport and the edge of the planet turning beneath them. "I need to think. Yes. They'll try to travel in concealment whenever possible, I think. For now, that means the turbolift tunnels." He gestured to the two communications officers still standing beside his chair.

"Order turbolift control to put the system back into normal service except for the 326-KK nexus between deck 98 and the aft hangar bays," he instructed them.

"All cars in that area are to be moved to the nearest cluster point and remain locked there until further notice."

One of the officers nodded and began relaying the order into his comlink. "You trying to herd them toward the hangar bays?" Pellaeon hazarded.

"I'm trying to herd them in from a specific direction, yes," Thrawn nodded. His forehead was creased with thought, his eyes still gazing at nothing in particular. "The question is what they'll do once they realize that. Presumably try to break out of the nexus; but in which direction?"

"I doubt they'll be foolish enough to return to the supply ship," Pellaeon suggested. "My guess is that they'll bypass the aft hangar bays entirely and try for one of the assault shuttles in the forward bays."

"Perhaps," Thrawn agreed slowly. "If Skywalker is directing the escape, I'd say that was likely. But if Karrde is giving the orders ..." He fell silent, again deep in thought.

It was somewhere to start, anyway. "Have extra guards placed around the assault shuttles," Pellaeon ordered the stormtrooper commander. "Better put some men inside the ships, too, in case the intruders make it that far."

"No, they won't make for the shuttles if Karrde's in command," Thrawn murmured. "He's more apt to try something less obvious. Perhaps TIE fighters; or perhaps he'll return to the supply shuttles after all, assuming we won't expect that. Or else-"

Abruptly, his head snapped around to look at Pellaeon. "The Millennium Falcon," he demanded. "Where is it?"

"Ah-" Again, Pellaeon's hand reached uselessly for his command board.

"I ordered it sent to deep storage, sir. I don't know whether or not the order's been carried out."

Thrawn jabbed a finger at the stormtrooper commander. "You-get someone on the hangar bay computer and find that ship. Then get a squad there."

The Grand Admiral looked at Pellaeon ... and for the first time since ordering the intruder alert, he smiled. "We have them, Captain." Karrde pulled away the section of cable duct that Luke had cut and carefully looked through the opening. "No one seems to be around," he murmured over his shoulder, his voice almost inaudible over the background rumble of machinery coming through from the room beyond. "I think we've beaten them here."

"If they're coming at all," Luke said.

"They're coming," Mara growled. "Bet on it. If there was one thing Thrawn had over all the other Grand Admirals, it was a knack for predicting his enemies' strategy."

"There are a half dozen ships out there," Karrde continued. "Unmarked Intelligence ships, from the look of them. Any would probably do."

"Any idea where we are?" Luke asked, trying to see past him through the cable duct. There was a fair amount of empty space out there surrounding the ships, plus a gaping light-rimmed opening in the deck that was presumably the shaft of a heavy vehicle lift. Unlike the one he remembered from the Death Star's hangar bay, though, this shaft had a corresponding hole in the ceiling above it to allow ships to be moved farther up toward the Star Destroyer's core.

"We're near the bottom of the deep storage section, I think," Karrde told him. "A deck or two above the aft hangar bays. The chief difficulty will be if the lift itself is a deck down, blocking us from access to the bay and entry port."

"Well, let's get in there and find out," Mara said, fingering her blaster rifle restlessly. "Waiting here won't gain us anything."

"Agreed." Karrde cocked his head to the side. "I think I hear the lift coming now. They're slow, though, and there's enough cover by the ships. Skywalker?"

Luke ignited his lightsaber again and quickly cut them a hole large enough to get through. Karrde went first, followed by Luke, with Mara bringing up the rear. "The hangar bay computer link is over there," Mara said, pointing to a freestanding console to their right as they crouched beside a battered-looking light freighter. "As soon as the lift passes I'll see if I can get us into it."

"All right, but don't take too long at it," Karrde warned. "A faked transfer order won't gain us enough surprise to be worth any further delay." The top of a ship was becoming visible now as it was lifted from the hangar bays below. A ship that seemed remarkably familiar ... Luke felt his mouth drop open in surprise. "That's-no. No, it can't be."

"It is," Mara said. "I'd forgotten-the Grand Admiral mentioned they were taking it aboard when I talked to him at Endor." Luke stared, a cold lump forming in his throat as the Millennium Falcon rose steadily up through the opening. Leia and Chewbacca had been aboard that ship ... "Did he say anything about prisoners?"

"Not to me," Mara said. "I got the impression he'd found the ship deserted."

Which meant that wherever Leia and Chewbacca had gone, they were now stranded there. But there was no time to worry about that now. "We're taking it back," he told the others, stuffing his lightsaber into his flight suit tunic. "Cover me."

"Skywalker-" Mara hissed; but Luke was already jogging toward the shaft. The lift plate itself came into view, revealing two men riding alongside the Falcon: a naval trooper and a tech with what looked like a combined data pad/control unit. They caught sight of Luke "Hey!" Luke called, waving as he hurried toward them. "Hold on!" The tech did something with his data pad and the lift stopped, and Luke could sense the sudden suspicion in the trooper's mind. "Got new orders on that one," he said as he trotted up to them. "The Grand Admiral wants it moved back down. Something about using it as bait."

The tech frowned down at his data pad. He was young, Luke saw, probably not out of his teens. "There's nothing about new orders here," he objected.

"I haven't heard anything about it, either," the trooper growled, drawing his blaster and pointing it vaguely in Luke's direction as he threw a quick look around the storage room.

"It just came through a minute ago," Luke said, nodding back toward the computer console. "Stuffs not transferring very fast today, for some reason."

"Makes a good story, anyway," the trooper retorted. His blaster was now very definitely pointed at Luke. "Let's see some ID, huh?" Luke shrugged; and, reaching out through the Force, he yanked the blaster out of the trooper's hand.

The man didn't even pause to gape at the unexpected loss of his weapon. He threw himself forward, hands stretching toward Luke's neck The blaster, heading straight toward Luke, suddenly reversed direction. The trooper caught the butt end full in the stomach, coughed once in strangled agony, and fell unmoving to the deck.

"I'll take that," Luke told the tech, waving Karrde and Mara to join him. The tech, his face a rather motley gray, handed the data pad to him without a word.

"Good job," Karrde said as he came up beside Luke. "Relax, we're not going to hurt you," he added to the tech, squatting down and relieving the gasping trooper of his comlink. "Not if you behave, anyway. Take your friend to that electrical closet over there and lock yourselves in." The tech glanced at him, looked again at Luke, and gave a quick nod. Hoisting the trooper under the armpits, he dragged him off. "Make sure they get settled all right, and then join me in the ship," Karrde told Luke. "I'm going to get the preflight started. Are there any security codes I need to know about?"

"I don't think so." Luke glanced around the room, spotted Mara already busy with the computer console. "The Falcon's hard enough to keep functional as it is."

"All right. Remind Mara not to waste too much time fiddling with that computer."

He ducked under the ship and disappeared up the ramp. Luke waited until the tech had locked himself and the trooper into the electrical closet as ordered, and then followed.

"It has a remarkably fast start-up sequence," Karrde remarked as Luke joined him in the cockpit. "Two minutes, maybe three, and we'll be ready to fly. You still have that controller?"

"Right here," Luke said, handing it to him. "I'll go get Mara." He glanced out the cockpit window Just as a wide door across the room slid open, to reveal a full squad of stormtroopers.

"Uh-oh," Karrde murmured as the eight white-armored Imperials marched purposefully toward the Falcon. "Do they know we're here?" Luke stretched out his senses, trying to gauge the stormtroopers'

mental state. "I don't think so," he murmured back. "They seem to be thinking more like guards than soldiers."

"Probably too noisy in here for them to hear the engines in start-up mode," Karrde said, ducking down in his seat out of their direct view. "Mara was right about the Grand Admiral; but we seem to be a step ahead of him." A sudden thought struck hike, and he threw a look through the side of the canopy. Mara was crouching beside the computer console, temporarily hidden from the stormtroopers view.

But she wouldn't remain concealed for long ... and knowing Mara, she wouldn't just sit and wait for the Imperials to notice her. If there were only some way he could warn her not to fire on them yet ...

Perhaps there was. Mara, he sent silently, trying to picture her in his mind. Wait until I give the word before you attack.

There was no reply?; but he saw her throw a quick look at the Falcon in response and ease farther back into her limited cover. "I'm going back to the hatchway," he told Karrde. "I'll try to catch them in a cross fire with Mara. Stay out of sight up here."

"Right."

Keeping down, Luke hurried back down the short cockpit corridor. Barely in time; even as he came to the hatchway he could feel the vibration of battle-armored boots on the entry ramp. Four of them were coming in, he could sense, with the other four fanning out beneath the ship to watch the approaches. Another second and they would see him-a second after that and someone would notice Mara-Mara; now.

There was a flash of blaster fire from Mara's position, coming quickly enough on the tail of his command that Luke got the distinct impression Mara had planned to attack at that time whether she'd had his permission or not. Ignighting his lightsaber, Luke leaped around the corner onto the ramp, catching the stormtroopers just as they were starting to turn toward the threat behind them. His first sweep took off the barrel of the lead stormtrooper's blaster rifle; reaching out with the Force, he gave the man a hard shove, pushing him into his companions and sending the whole bunch of them tumbling helplessly down to the lift plate. Jumping off the ramp to the side, he deflected a shot from another stormtrooper and sliced the lightsaber blade across him; caught a half dozen more shots before Mara's blaster fire took the next one out. A quick look showed that she'd already dealt with the other two.

A surge in the Force spun him around, to find that the group he'd sent rolling to the bottom of the ramp had untangled themselves. With a shout he charged them, lightsaber swinging in large circles as he waited for Mara to take advantage of his distraction to fire on them. But she didn't; and with the blaster bolts beginning to flash in at him there weren't many alternatives left. The lightsaber slashed four times and it was over.

Breathing hard, he closed down the lightsaber ... and with a shock discovered why Mara hadn't been firing there at the end. The lift carrying the Falcon was dropping steadily down toward the deck below, well past the point where the stormtroopers would be out of Mara's line of fire. "Mara!" he called, looking up.

"Yeah, what?" she shouted back, coming into view at the rim of the lift, already five meters above him. "What's Karrde doing?"

"I guess we're leaving," Luke said. "Jump-I'll catch you. An expression of annoyance flickered across Mara's face; but the Falcon was receding fast and she obeyed without hesitation. Reaching out with the Force, Luke caught her in an invisible grip, slowing her descent and landing her on the Falcon's ramp. She hit the ramp running, and was inside in three steps.

She was seated beside Karrde in the cockpit by the time Luke got the hatchway sealed and made it up there himself. "Better strap in," she called over her shoulder.

Luke sat down behind her, suppressing the urge to order her out of the copilot's seat. He knew the Falcon far better than either she or Karrde did, but both of them probably had had more experience flying this general class of ship.

And from the looks of things, there was some tricky flying coming up. Through the cockpit canopy Luke could see that they were coming down, not into a hangar bay as he'd hoped, but into a wide vehicle corridor equipped with what looked like some kind of repulsorlift pads set across the deck. "What happened with the computer?" he asked Mara.

"I couldn't get in," Mara said. "Though it wouldn't have mattered if I had. That stormtrooper squad had plenty of time to call for help. Unless you thought to jam their comlinks," she added, looking at Karrde.

"Come now, Mara," Karrde chided. "Of course I jammed their comlinks. Unfortunately, since they probably had orders to report once they were in position, we still won't have more than a few minutes. If that much."

"Is that our way out?" Luke frowned, looking along the corridor. "I thought we'd be taking the lift straight down to the hangar bays."

"This lift doesn't seem to go all the way down," Karrde said. "Offset from the hangar bay shaft, apparently. That lighted hole in the corridor deck ahead is probably it."

"What then?" Luke asked.

"We'll see if this control can operate that lift," Karrde said, holding up the data pad he'd taken from the tech. "I doubt it, though. If only for security they'll probably have-"

"Look!" Mara snapped, pointing down the corridor. Far ahead down the corridor was another lift plate, moving down toward the lighted opening Karrde had pointed out a moment earlier. If that was indeed the exit to the hangar bays-and if the lift plate stopped there, blocking their way Karrde had apparently had the same thought. Abruptly, Luke was slammed hard into his seat as the Falcon leaped forward, clearing the edge of their lift plate and shooting down the corridor like a scalded tauntaun. For a moment it yawed wildly back and forth, swinging perilously near the corridor walls as the ship's repulsorlifts strobed with those built into the deck. Clenching his teeth, Luke watched as the lift plate ahead steadily closed the gap, the same bitter taste of near-helplessness in his mouth that he remembered from the Rancor pit beneath Jabba the Hutt's throne room. The Force was with him here, as it had been there, but at the moment he couldn't think of a way to harness that power. The Falcon shot toward the descending plate-he braced himself for the seemingly inevitable collision And abruptly, with a short screech of metal against metal, they were through the gap. The Falcon rolled over once as it dropped through to the huge room below, cleared the vertical lift plate guides And there, straight ahead as Karrde righted them again, was the wide hangar entry port. And beyond it, the black of deep space. A half dozen blaster bolts sizzled at them as they shot across the hangar bay above the various ships parked there. But the shooting was reflexive, without any proper setup or aiming, and for the most part the shots went wild. A near miss flashed past the cockpit canopy; and then they were out, jolting through the atmosphere barrier and diving down out of the entry port toward the planet below.

And as they did so, Luke caught a glimpse across the entry port of TIE fighters from the forward hangar bays scrambling to intercept.

"Come on, Mara," he said, slipping off his restraints. "You know how to handle a quad laser battery?"

"No, I need her here," Karrde said. He had the Falcon skimming the underside of the Star Destroyer now, heading for the ship's portside edge.

"You go ahead. And take the dorsal grin bay-I think I can arrange for them to concentrate their attack from that direction."

Luke had no idea how he was going to accomplish that, but there was no time to discuss it. Already the Falcon was starting to jolt with laser hits, and from experience he knew there was only so much the ship's deflector shields could handle. Leaving the cockpit, he hurried to the gun well ladder, leaping halfway up, then climbing the rest of the way. He strapped in, fired up the quads...and as he looked around he discovered what Karrde had had in mind. The Falcon had curved up past the portside edge of the Chimaera, swung aft along the upper surface, and was now driving hard for deep space on a vector directly above the exhaust from the Star Destroyer's massive sublight drive nozzles. Skimming rather too close to it, in Luke's opinion; but it was for sure that no TIE fighters would be coming at them from underneath for a while.

The intercom pinged in his ear. "Skywalker?" Karrde's voice came.

"They're almost here. You ready?"

"I'm ready," Luke assured him. Fingers resting lightly on the firing controls, he focused his mind and let the Force flow into him. The battle was furious but short, in some ways reminding Luke of the Falcon's escape from the Death Star so long ago. Back then, Leia had recognised that they'd gotten away too easily; and as the TIE fighters swarmed and fired and exploded around him, Luke wondered uneasily whether or not the Imperials might have something equally devious in mind this time, too. And then the sky flared with starlines and went mottled, and they were free.

Luke took a deep breath as he cut power to the quads. "Good flying," he said into the intercom.

"Thank you," Karrde's dry voice came back. "We seem to be more or less clear, though we took some damage around the starboard power converter pack. Mara's gone to check it out."

"We can manage without it," Luke said. "Han's got the whole ship so cross-wired that it'll fly with half the systems out. Where are we headed?"

"Coruscant," Karrde said. "To drop you off and also to follow through on the promise I made to you earlier."

Luke had to search his memory. "You mean that bit about the New Republic standing to gain from your rescue?"

"That's the one," Karrde assured him. "As I recall Solo's sales pitch to me back on Myrkr, your people are in need of transport ships. Correct?"

"Badly in need of them," Luke agreed. "You have some stashed away?"

"Not exactly stashed away, but it won't be too hard to put my hands on them. What do you think the New Republic would say to approximately two hundred pre-Clone Wars vintage Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers?" Luke felt his mouth fall open. Growing up on Tatooine had been a sheltered experience, but it hadn't been that sheltered. "You don't mean the Dark Force?"

"Come on down and we'll discuss it," Karrde said. "Oh, and I wouldn't mention it to Mara just yet."

"I'll be right there." Turning off the intercom, Luke hung the headset back on its hook and climbed onto the ladder - and for once, he didn't even notice the discontinuity as the gravity field changed direction partway down the ladder.

The Millennium Falcon shot away from the Chimaera, out maneuvering and outgunning its pursuing TIE fighters and driving hard for deep space. Pellaeon sat at his station, hands curled into fists, watching the drama in helpless silence. Helpless, because with the main computer still only partially operational, the Chimaera's sophisticated weapons and tractor beam systems were useless against a ship that small, that fast, and that distant. Silent, because the disaster was far beyond scope of any of his repertoire of curses.

The ship flickered and was gone ... and Pellaeon prepared himself for the worst.

The worst didn't come. "Recall the TIE fighters to their stations, Captain," Thrawn said, his voice showing no sign of strain or anger. "Secure from intruder alert, and have Systems Control continue bringing the main computer back on line. Oh, and the supply unloading can be resumed."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, throwing a surreptitious frown at his superior. Had Thrawn somehow missed the significance of what had just happened out there?

The glowing red eyes glinted as Thrawn looked at him. "We've lost a round, Captain," he said. "No more."

"It seems to me, Admiral, that we've lost far more than that," Pellaeon growled. "There's no chance that Karrde won't give the Katana fleet to the Rebellion now."

"Ah; but he won't simply give it to them," Thrawn corrected, almost lazily. "Karrde's pattern has never been to give anything away for free. He'll attempt to bargain, or else will set conditions the Rebellion will find unsatisfactory. The negotiations will take time, particularly given the suspicious political atmosphere we've taken such pains to create on Coruscant. And a little time is all we need."

Pellaeon shook his head. "You're assuming that ship thief Ferrier will be able to find the Corellian group's ship supplier before Karrde and the Rebellion work out their differences."

"There's no assumption involved," Thrawn said softly. "Ferrier is even now on Solo's trail and has extrapolated his destination for us ... and thanks to Intelligence's excellent work on Karrde's background, I know exactly who the man is we'll be meeting at the end of that trail." He gazed out the viewport at the returning TIE fighters. "Instruct Navigation to prepare a course for the Pantolomin system, Captain," he said, his voice thoughtful. "Departure to be as soon as the supply shuttles have been unloaded."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, nodding the order on to the navigator and doing a quick calculation in his head. Time for the Millennium Falcon to reach Coruscant; time for the Chimaera to reach Pantolomin ...

"Yes," Thrawn said into his thoughts. "Now it's a race.

CHAPTER

24

The sun had set over the brown hills of Honoghr, leaving a lingering hint of red and violet in the clouds above the horizon. Leia watched the fading color from just inside the dukha door, feeling the all-too-familiar sense of nervous dread that always came when she was about to go into danger and battle. A few more minutes and she, Chewbacca, and Threepio would be setting out for Nystao, to free Khabarakh and escape. Or to die trying. She sighed and walked back into the dukha, wondering dimly where she'd gone wrong on this whole thing. It had seemed so reasonable to come to Honoghr-so right, somehow, to make such a bold gesture of good faith to the Noghri. Even before leaving Kashyyyk she'd been convinced that the offer hadn't been entirely her own idea, but instead the subtle guidance of the Force.

And perhaps it had been. But not necessarily from the side of the Force she'd assumed.

A cool breeze whispered in through the doorway, and Leia shivered. The Force is strong in my family. Luke had said those words to her on the eve of the Battle of Endor. She hadn't believed it at first, not until long afterward when his patient training had begun to bring out a hint of those abilities in her. But her father had had that same training and those same abilities ... and yet had ultimately fallen to the dark side. One of the twins kicked. She paused, reaching out to gently touch the two tiny beings within her; and as she did so, fragments of memory flooded in on her. Her mother's face, taut and sad, lifting her from the darkness of the trunk where she'd lain hidden from prying eyes. Unfamiliar faces leaning over her, while her mother spoke to them in a tone that had frightened her and set her crying. Crying again when her mother died, holding tightly to the man she'd learned to call Father.

Pain and misery and fear ... and all of it because' of her true father, the man who had renounced the name Anakin Skywalker to call himself Darth Vader.

There was a faint shuffling sound from the doorway. "What is it, Threepio?" Leia asked, turning to face the droid.

"Your Highness, Chewbacca has informed me that you will be leaving here soon," Threepio said, his prim voice a little anxious. "May I assume that I will be accompanying you?"

"Yes, of course," Leia told him. "Whatever happens in Nystao, I don't think you'll want to be here for the aftermath."

"I quite agree." The droid hesitated, and Leia could see in his stance that his anxiety hadn't been totally relieved. "There is, however, something that I really think you should know," he continued. "One of the decon droids has been acting very strangely."

"Really?" Leia said. "What exactly does this strangeness consist of?"

"He seems far too interested in everything," Threepio said. "He has asked a great number of questions, not only about you and Chewbacca, but also about me. I've also seen him moving about the village after he was supposed to be shut down for the night."

"Probably just an improper memory wipe the last time around," Leia said, not really in the mood for a fullblown discussion of droid personality quirks. "I could name one or two other droids who have more curiosity than their original programming intended."

"Your Highness!" Threepio protested, sounding wounded. "Artoo is a different case altogether."

"I wasn't referring only to Artoo." Leia held up a hand to forestall further discussion. "But I understand your concerns. I tell you what: you keep an eye on this droid for me. All right?"

"Of course, Your Highness," Threepio said. He gave a little bow and shuffled his way back out into the gathering dusk.

Leia sighed and looked around her. Her restless wandering around the dukha had brought her to the genealogy wall chart, and for a long minute she gazed at it. There was a deep sense of history present in the carved wood; a sense of history, and a quiet but deep family pride. She let her eyes trace the connections between the names, wondering what the Noghri themselves thought and felt as they studied it. Did they see their triumphs and failures both, or merely their triumphs? Both, she decided. The Noghri struck her as a people who didn't deliberately blind themselves to reality.

"Do you see in the wood the end of our family, Lady Vader?" Leia jumped. "I sometimes wish you people weren't so good at that," she growled as she regained her balance.

"Forgive me," the maitrakh said, perhaps a bit dryly. "I did not mean to startle you." She gestured at the chart. "Do you see our end there, Lady Vader?"

Leia shook her head. "I have no vision of any future, maitrakh. Not yours; not even mine. I was just thinking about children. Trying to imagine what it's like to try to raise them. Wondering how much of their character a family can mold, and how much is innate in the children them selves." She hesitated. "Wondering if the evil in a family's history can be erased, or whether it always passes itself on to each new generation." The maitrakh tilted her head slightly, the huge eyes studying Leia's face. "You speak as one newly facing the challenge of child-service.

"Yes," Leia admitted, her hand caressing her belly. "I don't know if Khabarakh told you, but I'm carrying my first two children."

"And you fear for them."

Leia felt a muscle in her cheek twitch. "With good reason. The Empire wants to take them from me."

The maitrakh hissed softly. "Why?"

"I'm not sure. But the purpose can only be an evil one." The maitrakh dropped her gaze. "I'm sorry, Lady Vader. I would help you if I could."

Leia reached over to touch the Noghri's shoulder. "I know." The maitrakh looked up at the genealogy chart. "I sent all four of my sons into danger, Lady Vader. To the Emperor's battles. It never becomes easier to watch them go forth to war and death."

Leia thought of all her allies and companions who had died in the long war. "I've sent friends to their deaths," she said quietly. "That was hard enough. I can't imagine sending my children."

"Three of them died," the maitrakh continued, almost as if talking to herself. "Far from home, with none but their companions to mourn them. The fourth became a cripple, and returned home to live his shortened life in the silent despair of dishonor before death released him." Leia grimaced. And now, as the cost for helping her, Khabarakh was facing both dishonor and death The line of thought paused. "Wait a minute. You said all four of your sons went to war? And that all four have since died?" The maitrakh nodded. "That is correct."

"But then what about Khabarakh? Isn't he also your son?"

"He is my thirdson," the maitrakh said, a strange expression on her face. "A son of the son of my firstson."

Lela looked at her, a sudden horrible realization flashing through her. If Khabarakh was not her son but instead her great-grandson; and if the maitrakh had personally witnessed the space battle that had brought destruction on Honoghr ... "Maitrakh, how long has your world been like this?" she breathed. "How many years?"

The Noghri stared at her, clearly sensing the sudden change in mood.

"Lady Vader, what have I said-?"

"How many years?"

The maitrakh twitched away from her. "Forty-eight Noghri years," she said. "In years of the Emperor, forty-four."

Leia put her hand against the smooth wood of the genealogy chart, her knees suddenly feeling weak with shock. Forty-four years. Not the five or eight or even ten that she'd assumed. Forty-four. "It didn't happen during the Rebellion," she heard herself say. "It happened during the Clone Wars." And suddenly the shock gave way to a wall of blazing white anger.

"Forty-four years, she snarled. "They've held you like this for forty-four years?"

She spun to face the door. "Chewie!" she called, for the moment not caring who might hear her. "Chewie, get in here!" A hand gripped her shoulder, and she turned back around to find the maitrakh gazing at her, an unreadable expression on her alien face. "Lady Vader, you will tell me what is the matter."

"Forty-four years, maitrakh, is what's the matter," Leia told her. The fiery heat of her anger was fading, leaving behind an icy resolve.

"They've held you in slavery for almost half a century. Lying through their teeth to you, cheating you, murdering your sons." She jabbed a finger down toward the ground beneath their feet. "That is not forty-four years' worth of decontamination work. And if they aren't just cleaning the dirt There was a heavy footstep at the door and Chewbacca charged in, bowcaster at the ready. He saw Leia, roared a question as his weapon swung to cover the maitrakh.

"I'm not in danger, Chewie," Leia told him. "Just very angry. I need you to get me some more samples from the contaminated area. Not soil this time: some of the kholm-grass."

She could see the surprise in the Wookie's face. But he merely growled an acknowledgment and left. "Why do you wish to examine the kholm grass?" the maitrakh asked.

"You said yourself it smelled different than before the rains came," Leia reminded her. "I think there may be a connection here we've missed."

"What connection could there be?"

Leia shook her head. "I don't want to say anything more right now, maitrakh. Not until I'm sure."

"Do you still wish to go to Nystao?"

"More than ever," Leia said grimly. "But not to hit and run. If Chewie's samples show what I think they will, I'm going to go straight to the dynasts."

"What if they refuse to listen?"

Leia took a deep breath. "They can't refuse," she said. "You've already lost three generations of your sons. You can't afford to lose any more.

For a minute the Noghri gazed at her in silence. "You speak truth," she said. She hissed softly between her needle teeth, and with her usual fluid grace moved toward the door. "I will return within the hour," she said over her shoulder. "Will you be ready to leave then?"

"Yes," Leia nodded. "Where are you going?" The maitrakh paused at the door, her dark eyes locking onto Leia's.

"You speak truth, Lady Vader: they must listen. I will be back." The maitrakh returned twenty minutes later, five minutes ahead of Chewbacca. The Wookiee had collected a double handful of the kholm-grass from widely scattered sites and retrieved the analysis unit from its hiding place in the decon droid shed. Leia got the unit started on a pair of the ugly brown plants and they set off for Nystao.

But not alone. To Leia's surprise, a young Noghri female was already seated at the driver's seat of the open topped landspeeder the maitrakh had obtained for them; and as they drove through the village at a brisk walking pace a dozen more Noghri joined them, striding along on both sides of the landspeeder like an honor guard. The maitrakh herself walked next to the vehicle, her face unreadable in the dim reflected light from the instrument panel. Sitting in the back seat next to the analysis unit, Chewbacca fingered his bowcaster and rumbled distrustingly deep in his throat. Behind him, wedged into the luggage compartment at the rear of the vehicle, Threepio was uncharacteristically quiet.

They passed through the village into the surrounding cropland, running without lights, the small group of Noghri around them virtually invisible in the cloudshrouded starlight. The party reached another village, barely distinguishable from the cropland now that its own lights were darkened for the night, and passed through without incident. More cropland; another village; more cropland. Occasionally Leia caught glimpses of the lights of Nystao far' ahead, and she wondered uneasily whether confronting the dynasts directly was really the wisest course of action at this point. They ruled with the assistance or at least the tacit consent of the Empire, and to accuse them of collaboration with a lie would not sit well with such a proud and honor-driven people.

And then, in the northeast sky, the larger of Honoghr's three moons broke through a thick cloud bank ... and with a shock Leia saw that she and her original escort were no longer alone. All around them was an immense sea of shadowy figures, flowing like a silent tide along the landspeeder's path. Behind her, Chewbacca growled surprise of his own. With his hunter's senses he had already been aware that the size of their party was increasing with each village they passed, through. But even he hadn't grasped the full extent of the recruitment, and wasn't at all certain he liked it. But Leia found some of the tightness in her chest easing as she settled back against the landspeeder's cushions. Whatever happened in Nystao now, the sheer size of the assemblage would make it impossible for the dynasts to simply arrest her and cover up the fact that she'd ever been there. The maitrakh had guaranteed her a chance to speak. The rest would be up to her.

They reached the edge of Nystao just before sunrise ... to find another crowd of Noghri waiting for them.

"Word has arrived ahead of us," the maitrakh told Leia as the land speeder and its escort moved toward them. "They have come to see the daughter of the Lord Vader and to hear her message."

Leia looked at the crowd. "And what is the message you've told them to expect?"

"That the debt of honor to the Empire has been paid in full," the maitrakh said. "That you have come to offer a new life for the Noghri people." Her dark eyes bored into Leia's face in unspoken question. Leia looked in turn over her shoulder at Chewbacca, and raised her eyebrows. The Wookiee rumbled an affirmative and tilted the analysis unit up to show her the display.

Sometime during their midnight journey the unit had finally finished its work...and as she read the analysis, Leia felt a fresh stirring of her earlier anger toward the Empire at what they'd done to these people. "Yes," she told the maitrakh. "I can indeed prove that the debt has been paid." Nearer now to the waiting crowd, she could see in the dusky light that most of the Noghri were females. The relative handful of males she could spot were either the very light gray skin tone of children and young adolescents or the much darker gray of the elderly. But directly in line with the landspeeder's path were a group of about ten males with the steely-gray color of young adults. "I see the dynasts have heard the word, too," she said.

"That is our official escort," the maitrakh said. "they will accompany us to the Grand Dukha, where the dynasts await you." The official escort-or guards, or soldiers; Lela wasn't quite sure how to think of them-remained silent as they walked in arrowhead formation in front of the landspeeder. The rest of the crowd was alive with whispered conversation, most of it between the city dwellers and the villagers. What they were saying Leia didn't know; but wherever her eyes turned the Noghri fell silent and gazed back in obvious fascination.

The city was smaller than Leia had expected, particularly given the limited land area the Noghri had available to them. After only a few minutes, they arrived at the Grand Dukha.

From its name Leia had expected it to be simply a larger version of the dukha back in the village. It was certainly larger; but despite the similarity in design, there was a far different sense to this version. Its walls and roof were made of a silver-blue metal instead of wood, with no carvings of any sort on their surfaces. The supporting pillars were black-metal or worked stone, Leia couldn't tell which. A wide set of black-and-red-marbled steps led up to a gray flagstone entrance terrace outside the double doors. The whole thing seemed cold and remote, very different from the mental picture of the Noghri ethos that she'd built up over the past few days. Fleetingly, she wondered if the Grand Dukha had been built not by the Noghri, but by the Empire.

At the top of the steps stood a row of thirteen middle aged Noghri males, each wearing an elaborately tooled garment that looked like a cross between a vest and a shawl. Behind them, his arms and legs chained to a pair of upright posts in the middle of the terrace, was Khabarakh. Leia gazed past the row of dynasts at him, a ripple of sympathetic ache running through her. The maitrakh had described the mechanics of a Noghri public humiliation to her; but it was only as she looked at him that she began to grasp the full depth of the shame involved in the ritual. Khabarakh's face was haggard and pale, and he sagged with fatigue against the chains holding his wrists and upper arms. But his head was upright, his dark eyes alert and watching.

The crowd parted to both sides as the landspeeder reached the dukha area, forming a passage for the vehicle to move through. The official escort went up the stairs, forming a line between the crowd and the row of dynasts.

"Remember, we're not here to fight," Leia murmured to Chewbacca; and summoning every bit of regal demeanor she could muster, she stepped out of the landspeeder and walked up the stairs.

The last rustle of conversation in the crowd behind her vanished as she reached the top. "I greet you, dynasts of the Noghri people," she said in a loud voice. "I am Leia Organa Solo, daughter of your Lord Darth Vader. He who came to you in your distress, and brought you aid." She held out the back of her hand toward the Noghri in the center of the line.

He gazed at her for a moment without moving. Then, with obvious reluctance, he stepped forward and gingerly sniffed at her hand. He repeated the test twice before straightening up again. "The Lord Vader is dead," he said. "Our new lord the Grand Admiral has ordered us to bring you to him, Leia Organa Solo. You will come with us to await the preparation of transport." From the bottom of the steps Chewbacca growled warningly. Leia quieted him with a gesture and shook her head. "I have not come here to surrender to your Grand Admiral," she told the dynast.

"You will do so nonetheless," he said. He signaled, and two of the guards left their line and moved toward Leia.

She stood her ground, again signaling Chewbacca to do the same. "Do you serve the Empire, then, or the people of Honoghr?"

"All Noghri of honor serve both," the dynast said.

"Indeed?" Leia said. "Does serving Honoghr now mean sending generation after generation of young men to die in the Empire's wars?"

"You are an alien," the dynast said contemptuously. "You know nothing about the honor of the Noghri." He nodded to the guards now standing at Leia's sides. "Take her into the dukha."

"Are you then so afraid of the words of a lone alien woman?" Leia asked as the Noghri took her arms in a firm grip. "Or is it that you fear your own power will be diminished by my coming?

"You will speak no words of discord and poison!" the dynast snarled. Chewbacca rumbled again, and Leia could sense him preparing to leap up the stairs to her aid. "My words are not of discord," she said, raising her voice loud enough for the whole crowd to hear. "My words are of treachery." There was a sudden stirring from the crowd. "You will be silent," the dynast insisted. "Or I will have you silenced."

"I would hear her speak," the maitrakh called from below.

"You will be silent as well!" the dynast barked as the crowd murmured approval of the maitrakh's demand. "You have no place or speech here, maitrakh of the clan Kihm'bar. I have not called a convocate of the Noghri people."

"Yet the convocate is here," the maitrakh countered. "The Lady Vader has come. We would hear her words."

"Then you will hear them in prison." The dynast gestured, and two more of the official guard left their line, heading purposefully toward the steps.

It was, Leia judged, the right moment. Glancing down at her belt, she reached out through the Force with all the power and control she could manage And her lightsaber leaped from her belt, breaking free from its quick-release and jumping up in front of her. Her eyes and mind found the switch, and with a snap-hiss the brilliant green-white blade flashed into existence, carving out a vertical line between her and the line of dynasts. There was a sound like a hissing gasp from the crowd. The two Noghri who had been moving toward the maitrakh froze in midstride...and as the gasp vanished into utter silence, Leia knew that she'd finally gotten their complete attention. "I am not merely the daughter of the Lord Vader," she said, putting an edge of controlled anger into her voice. "I am the Mal'ary'ush: heir to his authority and his power. I have come through many dangers to reveal the treachery that has been done to the Noghri people." She withdrew as much of her concentration as she could risk from the floating lightsaber to look slowly down the line of dynasts. "Will you hear me? Or will you instead choose death?"

For a long minute the silence remained unbroken. Leia listened to the thudding of her heart and the deep hum of the lightsaber, wondering how long she could hold the weapon steady in midair before losing control of it. And then, from halfway down the line to her left, one of the dynasts took a step forward. "I would hear the words of the Mal'ary'ush," he said. The first dynast spat. "Do not add your own discord, Ir'khaim," he warned. "You see here only a chance to save the honor of the clan Kihm'bar.

"Perhaps I see a chance to save the honor of the Noghri people, Vor'corkh," Ir'khaim retorted. "I would hear the Mal'ary'ush speak. Do I stand alone?"

Silently, another dynast stepped forward to join him. Then another did so; and another, and another, until nine of the thirteen stood with Ir'khaim. Vor'corkh hissed between his teeth, but stepped back to his place in line. "The dynasts of Honoghr have chosen," he growled. "You may speak." The two guards released her arms. Leia counted out two more seconds before reaching a hand up to take the lightsaber and close it down. "I will tell the story twice," she said, turning to the crowd as she returned the weapon to her belt. "Once as the Empire has told you; once as it truly is. You may then decide for yourselves whether or not the Noghri debt has been paid.

"You all know the history of how your world was devastated by the battle in space. How many of the Noghri were killed by the volcanoes and earthquakes and killer seas that followed, until a remnant arrived here to this place. How the Lord Darth Vader came to you, and offered you aid. How after the falling of the strange-smelling rains all plants except the kholm-grass withered and died. How the Empire told you the ground had been poisoned with chemicals from the destroyed ship, and offered machines to clean the soil for you. And you know all too well the price they demanded for those machines."

"Yet the ground is indeed poisoned," one of the dynasts told her. "I and many others have tried through the years to grow food in places where the machines have not been. But the seed was wasted, for nothing would grow."

"Yes," Leia nodded. "But it was not the soil that was poisoned. Or rather, not the soil directly."

She signaled to Chewbacca. Reaching back into the landspeeder, he picked up the analyzer unit and one of the kholm-grass plants and brought them up the steps to her. "I will now tell you the story that is true," Leia said as the Wookiee went back down the steps. "After the Lord Vader left in his ship, other ships came. They flew far and wide over your world. To any who asked they probably said they were surveying the land, perhaps searching for other survivors or other habitable places. But that was all a lie. Their true purpose was to seed your world with a new type of plant." She held up the kholm-grass. "This plant."

"Your truth is dreams," the dynast Vor'corkh spat. "Kholm-grass has grown on Honoghr since the beginning of knowledge."

"I didn't say this was kholm-grass," Leia countered. "It looks like the kholm-grass you remember, and even smells very much like it. But not exactly. It is, in fact, a subtle creation of the Empire...sent by the Emperor to poison your world."

The silence of the crowd broke into a buzz of stunned conversation. Leia gave them time, letting her gaze drift around the area as she waited. There must be close to a thousand Noghri pressed around the Grand Dukha, she estimated, and more were still coming into the area. The word about her must still be spreading, she decided, and glanced around to see where they were coming from.

And as she looked off to her left a slight glint of metal caught her eye. Well back from the Grand Dukha, half hidden in the long early-morning shadows beside another building, was the boxy shape of a decon droid. Leia stared at it, a shiver of sudden horror running through her. A decon droid with unusual curiosity-Threepio had mentioned that, but she'd been too preoccupied at the time to pay any attention to his concerns. But for a decon droid to be in Nystao, fifty kilometers or more from its designated work area, was far more than just over developed curiosity. It had to be She squatted down, mentally berating herself for her carelessness. Of course the Grand Admiral wouldn't have just flitted away on the spur of the moment. Not without leaving someone or something to keep an eye on things.

"Chewie-over there to your right," she hissed. "Looks like a decon droid, but I think it's an espionage droid."

The Wookiee growled something vicious and started pushing his way through the crowd. But even as the Noghri made way for him, Leia knew he would never make it. Espionage droids weren't brilliant, but they were smart enough to know not to hang around after their cover had been blown. Long before Chewbacca could get over there it would be off and running. If it had a transmitter-and if there were any Imperial ships within range "People of Honoghr!" she shouted over the conversation. "I will prove to you right now the truth of what I say. One of the Empiror's decon droids is there." She pointed to it. "Bring it to me.

The crowd turned to look, and Leia could sense their uncertainty. But before anyone could move, the droid abruptly vanished around the corner of the building it had been skulking beside. A second later Leia caught a glimpse of it between two other buildings, scuttling away for all it was worth. It was, tactically, the worst decision the droid could have made. Running away was as good as admitting guilt, particularly in front of a people who had grown up with the things and knew exactly what the normal behavioral range of a decon droid was. The crowd roared, and from the rear perhaps fifty of the older adolescents took off after it.

And as they did so, one of the guards on the terrace beside Leia cupped his hand around his mouth and sent a piercing half-scream into the air. Leia jerked away, ears ringing with the sound. The guard screamed again, and this time there was an answer from somewhere in the near distance. The guard switched to a warble that sounded like a complicated medley of birdcalls; a short reply, and both fell silent. "He calls others to the hunt," the maitrakh told Leia.

Leia nodded, squeezing her hands into fists as she watched the pursuers disappear around a corner after the droid. If the droid had a transmitter it would right now be frantically dumping its data ... And then, suddenly, the pursuers were back in sight, accompanied by a half dozen adult Noghri males. Held aloft like the prize from a hunt, still wiggling uselessly in their grip, was the droid.

Leia took a deep breath. "Bring it here to me," she said as the party approached. They did so, six of the adolescents lugging it up the stairs and laying it on its back on the terrace. Leia ignited her lightsaber, her eyes searching the droid as she did so for signs of a concealed antenna port. She couldn't see one, but that by itself didn't prove anything. Steeling herself for the worst, she sliced a vertical cut through the droid's outer shell. Two more crosswise cuts, and its internal workings were laid out for all to see. Chewbacca was already kneeling beside the droid as Leia shut down her lightsaber, his huge fingers probing delicately among the maze of tubes and cables and fibers. Near the top of the cavity was a small gray box. He threw a significant look at Leia and pulled it free from its connections. Leia swallowed as he laid it on the ground beside him. She recognized it, all right, from long and sometimes bitter experience: the motivator recorder unit from an Imperial probe droid. But the antenna connector jack was empty. Luck, or the Force, was still with them.

Chewbacca was poking around the lower part of the cavity now. Leia watched as he pulled several cylinders out of the tangle, examined their markings, and returned them to their places. The crowd was starting to murmur again when, with a satisfied murmur of his own, he pulled out a large cylinder and slender needle from near the intake hopper.

Gingerly, Leia took the cylinder from him. It shouldn't be dangerous to her, but there was no point in taking chances. "I call on the dynasts to bear witness that this cylinder was indeed taken from the inside of this machine," she called to the crowd.

"Is this your proof?" Ir'khaim asked, eyeing the cylinder doubtfully.

"It is," Leia nodded. "I have said that these plants are not the kholm-grass you remember from before the disaster. But I have not yet said what is different about them." Picking up one of the plants, she held it up for them to see. "The Emperor's scientists took your kholm-grass and changed it," she told the crowd. "They created differences that would breed true between generations. The altered smell you have noticed is caused by a chemical which the stem, roots, and leaves secrete. A chemical which has one purpose only: to inhibit the growth of all other plant life. The machines that the Grand Admiral claims are cleaning the ground are in fact doing nothing but destroying this special kholm-grass which the Empire planted."

"Your truth is again dreams," Vor'corldi scoffed. "The droid machines require nearly two tens of days to cleanse a single pirkha of land. My daughters could destroy the kholm-grass there in one." Leia smiled grimly. "Perhaps the machines don't require as much time as it appears. Let's find out." Holding the kholm-grass out in front of her, she eased a drop of pale liquid from the tip of the needle and touched it to the stem.

It was as dramatic a demonstration as she could have hoped for. The drop soaked through the dull brown surface of the plant, and for a handful of seconds nothing seemed to happen. There was a faint sizzling sound; and then, without warning, the plant suddenly began to turn black and wither. There was a hissing gasp from the crowd as the patch of catalytic destruction spread along the stem toward the leaves and roots. Leia held it up a moment longer, then dropped it on the terrace. There it lay, writhing like a dry branch thrown into a fire, until there was nothing left but a short and unrecognizable filament of wrinkled black. Leia touched it tentatively with the toe of her hoot, and it disintegrated into a fine powder. She had expected another outburst of surprise or outrage from the crowd. Their dead silence was in its own way more unnerving than any noise would have been. The Noghri understood the implications of the demonstration, all right.

And as she looked around at their faces, she knew that she'd won. She put the cylinder down on the terrace beside the destroyed plant and turned to face the dynasts. "I have shown you my proof," she said. "You must now decide whether the Noghri debt has been paid." She looked at Vor'corkh; and moved by an impulse she couldn't explain, she unhooked her lightsaber from her belt and put it in his hand. Stepping past him, she went over to Khabarakh. "I'm sorry," she said softly.

"I didn't expect for you to have to go through anything like this because of me."

Khabarath opened his mouth in a needle-toothed Noghri smile. "The Empire has long taught us that it is a honor pride and duty to face pain for his overlord. Should I do less for the Mal'ary'ush of the Lord Vader?" Leia shook her head. "I'm not your overlord, Khabarakh, and I never will be. The Noghri are a free people. I came only to try to restore that freedom to you."

"And to bring us on your side against the Empire," Vor'corkh said caustically from behind her.

Leia turned. "That would be my wish," she agreed. "But I do not ask it."

Vor'corkh studied her a moment. Then, reluctantly, he handed her lightsaber back to her. "The dynasts of Honoghr cannot and will not make so important a decision in a single day," he said. "There is much to consider, and a full convocate of the Noghri people must be called."

"Then call it," Khabarakh urged. "The Mal'ary'ush of the Lord Vader is here."

"And can the Mal'ary'ush protect us from the might of the Empire, should we choose to defy it?" Vor'corkh countered.

"But-"

"No, Khabarakh, he's right," Leia said. "The Empire would rather kill you all than let you defect or even become neutral."

"Have the Noghri forgotten how to fight?" Khabarakh scoffed.

"And has Khabarakh clan Kihm'bar forgotten what happened to Honoghr forty-eight years ago?" Vor'corkh snapped. "If we left the Empire now, we would have no option but to leave our world and hide."

"And doing that would guarantee the instant slaughter of the commando teams that are out serving the Empire," Leia pointed out to Khabarakh. "Would you have them die without even knowing the reason? There is no honor in that."

"You speak wisdom, Lady Vader," Vor'corkh said, and for the first time Leia thought she could detect a trace of grudging respect in his eyes.

"True warriors understand the value of patience. You will leave us now?"

"Yes," Leia nodded. "My presence here is still a danger to you. I would ask one favor: that you would allow Khabarakh to return me to my ship." Vor'corkh looked at Khabarakh. "Khabarakh's family conspired to free him," he said. "They succeeded, and he escaped into space. Three commando teams who were here on leave have followed in pursuit. The entire clan Kihm'bar will be in disgrace until they yield up the names of those responsible."

Leia nodded. It was as good a story as any. "Just he sure to warn the commandos you send to be careful when they make contact with the other teams. If even a hint of this gets back to the Empire, they'll destroy you."

"Do not presume to tell warriors their job," Vor'corkh retorted. He hesitated. "Can you obtain more of this for us?" he asked, gesturing back at the cylinder.

"Yes," Leia said. "We'll need to go to Endor first and pick up my ship. Khabarakh can accompany me back to Coruscant then and I'll get him a supply."

The dynast hesitated. "There is no way to bring it sooner?" A fragment of conversation floated up from Leia's memory: the maitrakh, mentioning that the window for planting this season's crops was almost closed. "There might be," she said. "Khabarakh, how much time would we save if we skipped Endor and went directly to Coruscant?"

"Approximately four days, Lady Vader," he said. Leia nodded. Han would kill her for leaving his beloved Falcon sitting in orbit at Endor like that, but there was no way around it. "All right," she nodded. "That's what we'll do, then. Don't forget to be careful where you use it, though-you can't risk incoming Imperial ships spotting new cropland."

"Do not presume, either, to tell farmers their job," Vor'corkh said; but this time there was a touch of dry humor in his voice. "We will eagerly await its arrival."

"Then we'd better leave at once," Leia said. She looked past him to the maitrakh, and nodded her head in thanks. Finally-finally-everything was starting to go their way. Despite her earlier doubts, the Force was clearly with her.

Turning back to Khabarakh, she ignited her lightsaber and cut him loose from his chains. "Come on, Khabarakh," she said. "Time to go."

CHAPTER

25

The Coral Vanda billed itself as the most impressive casino in the galaxy...and as he looked around the huge and ornate Tralla Room, Han could understand why he'd never heard of anyone challenging that claim. The room had at least a dozen sabacc tables scattered around its three half-levels, plus a whole range of lugjack bars, tregald booths, halo-chess tables, and even a few of the traditional horseshoe-shaped warp-tops favored by hard-core crinbid fanatics. A bar bisecting the room stocked most anything a customer would want to drink, either to celebrate a win or forget a loss, and there was a serving window built into the back wall for people who didn't want to stop playing even to eat.

And when you got tired of looking at your cards or into your glass, there was the view through the full-wall transparent outer hull. Rippling blue-green water, hundreds of brilliantly colored fish and small sea mammals; and around all of it the intricate winding loops and fans of the famous Pantolomin coral reefs.

The Tralla Room was, in short, as fine a casino as Han had ever seen in his life ... and the Coral Vanda had seven other rooms just like it. Sitting at the bar beside him, Lando downed the last of his drink and pushed the glass away from him. "So what now?" he asked.

"He's here, Lando," Han told him, tearing his gaze from the reef outside and looking one more time around the casino. "Somewhere."

"I think he's skipped this trip," Lando disagreed. "Probably ran out of money. Remember what Sena said-the guy spends it like poisoned water."

"Yeah, but if he was out of money he'd be trying to sell them another ship," Han pointed out. He drained his own glass an,d got up from his seat.

"Come on-one more room to go."

"And then we do it all over again," Lando growled. "And again, and again. It's a waste of time."

"You got any other ideas?"

"Matter of fact, I do," Lando said as they swung wide to get around a large Herglic balanced precariously across of two of the seats and headed down the bar toward the exit. "Instead of just wandering around like we have for the past six hours, we should plant ourselves at a sabac table somewhere and start dropping some serious money. Word'll get around that there are a couple of pikers ripe for plucking; and if this guy loses money as fast as Sena says, he'll be plenty interested in trying to make some of it back." Han looked at his friend in mild surprise. He'd had the same idea a couple of hours ago, but hadn't figured on Lando going for it. "You think your professional gambler's pride can take that kind of beating?" Lando looked him straight in the eye. "If it'll get me out of here and back to my mining operation, my pride can take anything." Han grimaced. He sometimes forgot that he'd kind of dragged Lando into all of this. "Yeah," he said. "Sorry. Okay, tell you what. We'll give the Saffkin Room one last look. If he's not there, we'll come back here and-" He broke off. There on the bar, in front of an empty seat, was a tray with a still-smoldering cigarra sitting in it. A cigarra with an unusual but very familiar aroma to it...

"Uh-oh," Lando said quietly at his shoulder.

"I don't believe it," Han said, dropping his hand to his blaster as he threw a quick look around the crowded room.

"Believe it, buddy," Lando said. He touched the cushion of the vacant seat. "It's still warm. He must be-there he is." It was Niles Ferrier, all right, standing beneath the ornate shimmerglass exit archway, another of his ever present cigarras gripped between his teeth. He grinned at them, made a sort of mock salute, and disappeared out the door.

"Well, that's just great," Lando said. "Now what?"

"He wants us to follow him," Han said, throwing a quick glance around them. He didn't see anyone he recognized, but that didn't mean anything. Ferrier's people were probably all around them. "Let's go see what he's up to."

"It could be a trap," Lando warned.

"Or he could be ready to deal," Han countered. "Keep your blaster ready."

"No kidding."

They were halfway to the archway when they heard it: a short, deep-toned thud like a distant crack of thunder. It was followed by another, louder one, and then a third. The conversational din of the casino faltered as others paused to listen; and as they did so, the Coral Vanda seemed to tremble a little.

Han looked at Lando. "You thinking what I'm thinking?" he muttered.

"Turbolaser bursts hitting the water," Lando murmured grimly.

"Ferrier's dealing, all right. Only not with us." Han nodded, feeling a hard knot settle into his stomach. Ferrier had gone ahead and made a deal with the Empire ... and if the Imperials got their hands on the Katana fleet, the balance of power in the ongoing war would suddenly be skewed back in their favor.

And under the command of a Grand Admiral ...

"We've got to find that ship dealer, and fast," he said, hurrying toward the exit. "Maybe we can get him out in an escape pod or something before we're boarded."

"Hopefully, before the rest of the passengers start panicking," Lando added. "Let's go.

They'd made it to the archway when their time ran out. There was a sudden thunderclap, not distant this time but seemingly right on top of them, and for a second the coral reef outside the transparent hull lit up with an angry green light. The Coral Vanda lurched like a wounded animal, and Han grabbed at the edge of the archway for balance Something caught his arm and pulled hard, yanking him out of the archway to his right. He grabbed reflexively for his blaster, but before he could draw it strong furry arms wrapped around his chest and face, pinning his gun hand to his side and blotting out all view of the sudden panic in the corridor. He tried to shout, but the arm was blocking his mouth as well as his eyes. Struggling uselessly, swearing under what breath he could get, he was hauled back was down the corridor. Two more thunderclaps came, the second nearly throwing both him and his attacker off their feet. A change of direction sideways-his elbow banged against the side of a doorway A hard shove and he was free again, gasping for breath. He was in a small drinks storage room, with crates of bottles lining three of the walls almost to the ceiling. Several had already been knocked to the floor by the Coral Vanda's lurching, and out of one of them a dark red liquid was oozing. Lounging beside the door, grinning again, was Ferrier. "Hello, Solo," he said. "Nice of you to drop in."

"It was too kind an invitation to turn down," Han said sourly, looking around. His blaster was hovering in front of a stack of crates two meters away, right in the middle of a thick and strangely solid shadow.

"You remember my wraith, of course," Ferrier said blandly, gesturing at the shadow. "He's the one who sneaked up onto the Lady Luck's ramp to plant our backup homing beacon. The one inside the ship."

So that was how Ferrier had managed to get here so fast. Another thunderclap shook the Coral Vanda, and another crate tottered too far and crashed to the floor. Han jumped back out of the way and took a closer look at the shadow. This time he was able to pick out the eyes and a glint of white fangs. He'd always thought wraiths were just space legend. Apparently not.

"It's not too late to make a deal," he told Ferrier. The other gave him a look of surprise. "This is your deal, Solo," he said. "Why else do you think you're in here instead of out where shooting's about to start? We're just going to keep you here, nice and safe, until things settle down again." He cocked an eyebrow. "Calrissian, now-he's another story."

Han frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I'm tired of him getting in my way," Ferrier said softly. "So when the Coral Vanda finally gives up and surfaces, I'm going to make sure he's right up there in front, trying valiantly to protect poor Captain Hoffner from the evil stormtroopers. With any luck ..." He spread his hands and smiled.

"Hoffner's the guy's name huh?" Han said, fighting his anger down. Getting mad wasn't going to help Lando any. "Suppose he's not on board? The Imperials won't be happy about that."

"Oh, he's aboard," Ferrier assured him. "Getting a little stircrazy. though. He's been sort of locked in our suite since about an hour after we sailed."

"You sure you got the right guy?"

Ferrier shrugged. "If not, the Grand Admiral has only himself to blame. He's the one who supplied me with the name."

Another blast rocked the ship. "Well, nice talking to you, Solo, but I've got a deal to close," Ferrier said, regaining his balance and hitting the door release. "See you around."

"We'll pay you twice what the Empire's offering," Han said, trying one last time.

Ferrier didn't even bother to answer. Smiling one last time, he slipped out the door and closed it behind him.

Han looked at the shadow that was the wraith. "How about you?" he asked. "You want to be rich?"

The wraith showed its teeth, but made no other reply. There was another thunderclap, and they were jerked hard to the side. The Coral Vanda was a well-built ship, but Han knew it couldn't stand up to this kind of pounding for long. Sooner or later, it would have to give up and surface...and then the stormtroopers would come.

He had just that long to find a way out of here. The Chimaera's turbolaser batteries fired again, and on the bridge holo display a short red line dug briefly into the sea near the tapered black cylinder that marked the Coral Vanda's position. For an instant the red line was sheathed in the pale green of seawater suddenly flashed into superheated steam; and then the pale green spread outward in all directions, and the Coral Vanda rocked visibly as the shock wave passed it. "They're stubborn, I'll give them that," Pellaeon commented.

"They have a great many wealthy patrons aboard," Thrawn reminded him.

"Many of whom would rather drown than give up their money under threat of force."

Pellaeon glanced at his readouts. "It won't be long until they're at that choice. Main propulsion's been knocked out, and they're developing microfractures in their hull seams. Computer projects that if they don't surface in ten minutes, they won't be able to."

"They're a ship full of gamblers, Captain," Thrawn said. "They'll gamble on the strength of their ship while they seek an alternative." Pellaeon frowned at the holo display. "What alternative could they possibly have?"

"Observe." Thrawn touched his board, and a small white circle appeared on the holo in front of the Coral Vanda, extending backward like the path of a crazed worm. "There appears to be a path here beneath this section of the reef that would allow them to evade us, at least temporarily. I believe that's where they're heading."

"They'll never make it," Pellaeon decided. "Not the way they're bouncing around down there. Best to be sure, though. A shot right at the entrance to that maze should do it."

"Yes," Thrawn said, his voice meditative. "A pity, though, to have to damage any of these reefs. They're genuine works of art. Unique, perhaps, in that they were created by living yet nonsentient beings. I should have liked to have studied them more closely."

He turned to Pellaeon again, gave a short nod. "You may fire when ready."

There was another clap of thunder as the Imperial ship overhead flash-boiled the water near them ... and as the Coral Vanda lurched to the side Han made his move.

Letting the ship's motion throw him sideways, he half staggered, half fell across the storeroom to slam into one of the stacks of crates, turning at the last instant so that his back was to them. His hands, flung up over his head as if for balance, found the bottom corners of the topmost crate; and as the force of his impact shook the stack, he brought the box tipping over on top of him. He let it roll a quarter rotation toward his head, then shifted his grip and shoved it as hard as he could toward the wraith. The alien caught it square on the upper torso, lost his balance, and crashed backward to the floor.

Han was on him in a second, kicking his blaster out of the wraith's hand and jumping after it. He caught up with the weapon, spun back up. The wraith had gotten clear of the box and was scrambling to get back to his feet on a floor now slippery with spilled Menkooro whiskey. "Hold it!" Han snapped, gesturing with the blaster.

He might as well have been talking to a hole in the air. The wraith continued on to his feet And with the only other option being to shoot him dead, Han lowered his aim and fired into the pool of whiskey. There was a gentle whoosh; and abruptly, the center of the room burst into blue-tinged flame. The alien leaped backward out of the fire, screaming something in his own language which Han was just as glad he couldn't understand. The wraith's momentum slammed him up against a stack of crates, nearly bringing the whole pile down. Han fired twice into the crate above the alien, starting twin waterfalls of alcohol cascading down around his shoulders and head. The alien screamed again, got his balance back And with one final shot, Han set the waterfalls on fire. The wraith's scream turned into a high-pitched wail as it twisted away from the blaze, its head and shoulders sheathed in flame. More in anger than pain, though, Han knew-alcohol fires weren't all that hot. Given time, the wraith would slap out the fire, and then very likely break Han's neck. He wasn't given that time. Midway through the wail the storeroom's automatic fire system finally sputtered into action, the sensors directing streams of fire foam straight into the wraith's face.

Han didn't wait to see the outcome. Ducking past the temporarily blinded alien, he slipped out the door.

The corridor, which had been crowded with panicking people when he'd first been grabbed, was now deserted, the passengers on their way to the escape pods or the imagined safety of their staterooms. Firing a shot into the storeroom lock to seal it, Han hurried forward toward the ship's main hatchway. And hoped he'd get to Lando in time.

From far below him, almost lost among the shouts and screams of frightened passengers, Lando could hear the muffled hum of activated pumps. Sooner than he'd expected, the Coral Vanda was surrendering. He swore under his breath, throwing another quick look over his shoulder. Where in blazes had Han gotten to, anyway? Probably hunting for Ferrier, wanting to see what the slippery ship thief was up to. Trust Han to run off and play a hunch when there was work to be done.

A dozen of the Coral Vanda's crewers were busy taking up defensive positions inside the ship's main hatchway as he arrived. "I need to talk to the captain or another officer right away," he called to them.

"Get back to your room," one of the men snapped without looking at him. "We're about to be boarded."

"I know," Lando said. "And I know what the Imperials want." That one rated him a quick look. "Yeah? What?"

"One of your passengers," Lando told him. "He has something the Empire-"

"What's his name?"

"I don't know. I've got a description, though."

"Wonderful," the crewer grunted, checking the power level on his blaster. "Tell you what you do-you head aft and start going door to door. Let us know if you find him."

Lando gritted his teeth. "I'm serious."

"So am I," the other retorted. "Go on, get out of here."

"But-"

"I said move it." He pointed his blaster at Lando. "If your passenger's got any sense he's probably already ejected in an escape pod, anyway."

Lando backed away down the corridor, the whole thing belatedly falling together in his mind. No, the ship supplier wouldn't be in any escape pod. He probably wouldn't even be in his stateroom. Ferrier was here; and knowing Ferrier, he wouldn't have deliberately shown himself like that unless he'd already won the race.

The deck rocked slightly beneath his feet: the Coral Vanda had reached the surface. Turning, Lando hurried aft again. There was a passenger-access computer terminal a couple of corridors back. If he could get a passenger list from it and find Ferrier's room, he might be able to get to them before the Imperials took control of the ship. Breaking into a quick jog, he turned into a cross corridor They were striding purposefully toward him: four large men with blasters at the ready, with a thin, whitehaired man almost hidden in the center of the group. The lead man spotted Lando, snapped his blaster up, and fired.

The first shot was a clean miss. The second sizzled into the wall as Lando ducked back behind the corner.

"So much for finding Ferrier's room," Lando muttered. Another handful of shots spit past his barricade; and then, surprisingly, the firing stopped. Blaster in hand, hugging the corridor wall, Lando eased back to the corner and threw a quick look around it.

They were gone.

"Great," he muttered, taking a longer look. They were gone, all right, probably into one of the crew-only areas that ran down the central core of the ship. Chasing after someone through an unfamiliar area was usually not a good idea, but there weren't a whole lot of other options available. Grimacing to himself, he started around the corner And yelped as a blaster bolt from his right scorched past his sleeve. He dived forward into the cross corridor, catching a glimpse as he fell of three more men coming toward him down the main corridor. He hit the thick carpet hard enough to see stars, rolled onto his side and yanked his legs out of the line of fire, fully aware that if any of the original group was watching from cover, he was dead. A barrage of blaster shots from the newcomers bit into the wall, with the kind of clustering that meant it was being used as cover fire while they advanced on him. Breathing hard-that crash dive had knocked the wind out of him-Lando got to his feet and started toward an arched doorway halfway down the cross corridor. It wouldn't give him much cover, but it was the best he had.

He had just made it to the doorway when there was a sudden curse from the direction of his attackers, a handful of shots from what sounded like a different model blaster And then, silence.

Lando frowned, wondering what they were pulling now. He could hear footsteps running toward him; flattening himself into the doorway as best he could, he leveled his blaster at the intersection.

The footsteps came to the intersection and paused. "Lando?" Lando lowered his blaster with a silent sigh of relief. "Over here, Han," he called. "Come on-Ferrier's people have our man." Han rounded the corner and sprinted toward him. "That's not all, buddy," he panted. "Ferrier's gunning for you, too." Lando grimaced. He hadn't missed by much, either. "Never mind me," he said. "I think they must have gone down the ship's core. We've got to catch up with them before they reach the main hatchway."

"We can try," Han said grimly, looking around. "Over there-looks like a crewer access door."

It was. And it was locked.

"Ferrier's people got in," Lando grunted, stooping down to examine the half-open release panel. "Yeah. Here-it's been hot-wired Let's see..." He probed carefully into the mechanism with the tip of his little finger; and with a satisfying click, the panel unlocked and slid open. "There we go," he said. He got to his feet again And jumped back from the opening as a stuttering of blaster fire flashed through.

"Yeah, there we go all right," Han said. He was against the wall on the other side of the opening, blaster ready but with no chance of getting a shot in through the rear guard's fire. "How many people has Ferrier got on this ship, anyway?"

"A lot," Lando growled. The door, apparently deciding that no one was going through after all, slid shut again. "I guess we do this the hard way. Let's get back to the main hatchway and try to catch them there." Han grabbed his shoulder. "Too late," he said. "Listen." Lando frowned, straining his ears. Over the quiet hum of ship's noises, he could make out the rapid-fire spitting of stormtrooper laser rifles in the distance. "They're aboard," he murmured.

"Yeah," Han nodded. The deck vibrated briefly beneath their feet, and abruptly the laser fire slackened off. "Subsonic grenade," he identified it.

"That's it. Come on."

"Come on where?" Lando asked as Han set off down the cross corridor.

"Aft to the escape pod racks, the other said. "We're getting out of here."

Lando felt his mouth drop open. But he looked at his friend, and his objections died unsaid. Han's face was set into tight lines, his eyes smoldering with anger and frustration. He knew what this meant, all right. Probably better than Lando did.

The escape pod bobbed on the surface of the sea, surrounded by a hundred other pods and floating bits of reef. Through the tiny porthole Han watched as, in the distance, the last of the Imperial assault shuttles lifted from the Coral Vanda and headed back to space. "That's it, then?" Lando ventured from the seat behind him.

"That's it," Han said, hearing the bitterness in his voice. "They'll probably start picking up the pods soon."

"We did all we could, Han," Lando pointed out quietly. "And it could have been worse. They could have blown the Coral Vanda out of the water-it might have been days before anyone came to get us then." Which would have given the Empire that much more of a head start.

"Oh, yeah, great," Han said sourly. "We're really on top of things."

"What else could we have done?" Lando persisted. "Scuttled the ship to keep them from getting him-never mind that we'd have killed several hundred people in the process? Or maybe just gotten ourselves killed fighting three assault shuttles' worth of stormtroopers? At least this way Coruscant has a chance to get ready before ships from the Dark Force start showing up in battle."

Lando was trying-you had to give him that. But Han wasn't ready to be cheered up yet. "How do you get ready to get hit by two hundred Dreadnaughts?" he growled. "We're stretched to the limit as it is."

"Come on, Han," Lando said, his voice starting to sound a little irritated. "Even if the ships are in mint condition and ready to fly, they're still going to need two thousand crewers apiece to man them. It'll be years before the Imperials can scrape that many recruits together and teach them how to fly the things."

"Except that the Empire already had a call out for new ships," Han reminded him. "Means they already have a bunch of recruits ready to go."

"I doubt they have four hundred thousand of them," Lando countered.

"Come on, try looking on the bright side for once.

"There's not much bright side here to look at." Han shook his head.

"Sure there is," Lando insisted. "Thanks to your quick action, the New Republic still has a fighting chance."

Han frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"You saved my life, remember? Shot those goons of Ferrier's off my back."

"Yeah, I remember. What does that have to do with the New Republic's chances?"

"Han!" Lando said, looking scandalized. "You know perfectly well how fast the New Republic would fall apart without me around." Han tried real hard, but he couldn't quite strangle off a smile on that one. He compromised, letting it come out twisted. "All right, I give up," he sighed. "If I stop grousing, will you shut up?"

"Deal," Lando nodded.

Han turned back to the porthole, the smile fading away. Lando could talk all he wanted; but the loss of the Katana fleet would be a first magnitude disaster, and they both knew it. Somehow, they had to stop the Empire from getting to those ships.

Somehow.