Heir to the Empire

C H A P T E R

1

Directly ahead, the star was a marble-sized yellow-orange ball, its intensity moderated by its distance and by the viewports’ automatic sunscreens. Surrounding it and the ship itself were the stars, a spattering of blazing white pinpricks in the deep blackness of space. Directly beneath the ship, in the western part of the Great Northern Forest of the planet Myrkr, dawn was approaching.

The last dawn that some in that forest would ever see.

Standing at one of the side bridge viewports of the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera, Captain Pellaeon watched as the fuzzy terminator line crept toward the target zone on the planet below. Ten minutes ago, the ground forces surrounding the target had reported themselves ready; the Chimaera itself had been holding blockade position for nearly an hour. All that was missing now was the order to attack.

Slowly, feeling almost furtive about it, Pellaeon turned his head a couple of centimeters to the side. Behind him and to his right, Grand Admiral Thrawn was seated at his command station, his blue-skinned face expressionless, his glowing red eyes focused on the bank of status readouts wrapped around his chair. He hadn’t spoken or moved from that position since the last of the ground forces had reported in, and Pellaeon could tell the bridge crew was beginning to get restless.

For his own part, Pellaeon had long since stopped trying to second-guess Thrawn’s actions. The fact that the late Emperor had seen fit to make Thrawn one of his twelve Grand Admirals was evidence of his own confidence in the man—all the more so given Thrawn’s not-entirely-human heritage and the Emperor’s well-known prejudices in such matters. Moreover, in the year since Thrawn had taken command of the Chimaera and had begun the task of rebuilding the Imperial Fleet, Pellaeon had seen the Grand Admiral’s military genius demonstrated time and again. Whatever his reason for holding off the attack, Pellaeon knew it was a good one.

As slowly as he’d turned away, he turned back to the viewport. But his movements had apparently not gone unnoticed. “A question, Captain?” Thrawn’s smoothly modulated voice cut through the low hum of bridge conversation.

“No, sir,” Pellaeon assured him, turning again to face his superior.

For a moment those glowing eyes studied him, and Pellaeon unconsciously braced himself for a reprimand, or worse. But Thrawn, as Pellaeon still had a tendency to forget, did not have the legendary and lethal temper that had been the hallmark of the Lord Darth Vader. “You’re perhaps wondering why we haven’t yet attacked?” the Grand Admiral suggested in that same courteous tone.

“Yes, sir, I was,” Pellaeon admitted. “All our forces appear to be in position.”

“Our military forces are, yes,” Thrawn agreed. “But not the observers I sent into Hyllyard City.”

Pellaeon blinked. “Hyllyard City?”

“Yes. I find it unlikely that a man of Talon Karrde’s cunning would set up a base in the middle of a forest without also setting up security contacts with others outside the immediate area. Hyllyard City is too far from Karrde’s base for anyone there to directly witness our attack; hence, any sudden flurries of activity in the city will imply the existence of a more subtle line of communication. From that we’ll be able to identify Karrde’s contacts and put them under long-term surveillance. Eventually, they’ll lead us to him.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, feeling a frown crease his forehead. “Then you’re not expecting to take any of Karrde’s own people alive.”

The Grand Admiral’s smile turned brittle. “On the contrary. I fully expect our forces to find an empty and abandoned base.”

Pellaeon threw a glance out the viewport at the partly lit planet below. “In that case, sir … why are we attacking it?”

“Three reasons, Captain. First, even men like Talon Karrde occasionally make mistakes. It could well be that in the rush to evacuate his base he left some crucial bit of information behind. Second, as I’ve already mentioned, an attack on the base may lead us to his contacts in Hyllyard City. And third, it provides our ground forces with some badly needed field experience.”

The glowing eyes bored into Pellaeon’s face. “Never forget, Captain, that our goal is no longer merely the pitiful rear-guard harassment of the past five years. With Mount Tantiss and our late Emperor’s collection of Spaarti cylinders in our hands, the initiative is once again ours. Very soon now we’ll begin the process of taking planets back from the Rebellion; and for that we’ll need an army every bit as well trained as the officers and crew of the Fleet.”

“Understood, Admiral,” Pellaeon said.

“Good.” Thrawn lowered his gaze to his displays. “It’s time. Signal General Covell that he may begin.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, leaving the viewport and returning to his station. He gave the readouts a quick check and tapped his comm switch, peripherally aware as he did so that Thrawn had likewise activated his own comm. Some private message to his spies in Hyllyard City? “This is the Chimaera,” Pellaeon said. “Launch the attack.”

“Acknowledged, Chimaera,” General Covell said into his helmet comlink, careful to keep the quiet scorn in his gut from getting through to his voice. It was typical—typical and disgustingly predictable. You scrambled around like mad hellions, got your troops and vehicles on the ground and set up … and then you stood around waiting for those strutting Fleet people in their spotless uniforms and nice clean ships to finish sipping their tea and finally get around to letting you loose.

Well, get yourselves comfortable, he thought sardonically in the direction of the Star Destroyer overhead. Because whether Grand Admiral Thrawn was interested in real results or just a good rousing show, he was going to get his money’s worth. Reaching to the board in front of him, he keyed for local command frequency. “General Covell to all units: we’ve got the light. Let’s go.”

The acknowledgments came in; and with a shiver from the steel deck beneath him, the huge AT-AT walker was off, lumbering its deceptively awkward-looking way through the forest toward the encampment a kilometer away. Ahead of the AT-AT, occasionally visible through the armored transparisteel viewport, a pair of AT-ST scout walkers ran in twin-point formation, tracking along the AT-AT’s path and watching for enemy positions or booby traps. Not that such futile gestures would do Karrde any good. Covell had directed literally hundreds of assault campaigns in his years of Imperial service, and he knew full well the awesome capabilities of the fighting machines under his command.

Beneath the viewport, the holographic tactical display was lit up like a decorative disk, the winking red, white, and green lights showing the positions of Covell’s circle of AT-ATs, AT-STs, and hoverscout attack vehicles, all closing on Karrde’s encampment in good order.

Good, but not perfect. The north-flank AT-AT and its support vehicles were lagging noticeably behind the rest of the armored noose. “Unit Two, bring it up,” he said into his comlink.

“Trying, sir,” the voice came back, tinny and distant through the strange dampening effects of Myrkr’s metal-rich flora. “We’re encountering some thick vine clusters that are slowing down our scout walkers.”

“Is it bothering your AT-AT any?”

“No, sir, but I wanted to keep the flank together—”

“Pattern coherence is a fine goal during academy maneuvers, Major,” Covell cut him off. “But not at the expense of an overall battle plan. If the AT-STs can’t keep up, leave them behind.”

“Yes, sir.”

Covell broke the connection with a snort. The Grand Admiral was right about one thing, at least: his troops were going to need a lot more battle seasoning before they would be up to real Imperial standards. Still, the raw material was there. Even as he watched, the north flank reformed itself, with the hoverscouts spreading forward to take up the AT-STs’ former point positions while the lagging AT-STs themselves fell back into rear-guard deployment.

The energy sensor beeped a proximity warning: they were coming up on the encampment. “Status?” he asked his crew.

“All weapons charged and ready,” the gunner reported, his eyes on the targeting displays.

“No indications of resistance, active or passive,” the driver added.

“Stay alert,” Covell ordered, keying for command frequency again. “All units: move in.”

And with a final crash of mangled vegetation, the AT-AT broke through into the clearing.

It was an impressive sight. From all four sides of the open area, in nearly perfect parade-ground unison, the other three AT-ATs appeared from the forest cover in the predawn gloom, the AT-STs and hoverscouts clustered around their feet quickly fanning out on all sides to encircle the darkened buildings.

Covell gave the sensors a quick but thorough check. Two energy sources were still functioning, one in the central building, the other in one of the outer barracks-style structures. There was no evidence of operating sensors, or of weapons or energy fields. The life-form analyzer ran through its complicated algorithms and concluded that the outer buildings were devoid of life.

The large main building, on the other hand …

“I’m getting approximately twenty life-form readings from the main building, General,” the number four AT-AT commander reported. “All in the central section.”

“They don’t register as human, though,” Covell’s driver murmured.

“Maybe they’re being shielded,” Covell grunted, looking out the viewport. Still no movement from the encampment. “Let’s find out. Assault squads: go.”

The hoverscouts popped their aft hatchways, and from each came a squad of eight soldiers, laser rifles held tautly across battle-armored chests as they dropped to the ground. Half of each squad took up backstop position, their rifles trained on the encampment from the partial cover of their hoverscout, while the other half sprinted across the open ground to the outer line of buildings and sheds. There, they assumed covering positions, allowing their comrades in the rear to similarly advance. It was a centuries-old military tactic, executed with the kind of squeamish determination that Covell would have expected of green troops. Still, the raw material was definitely there.

The soldiers continued their leap-frog approach to the main building, with small groups breaking off the main encirclement to check out each of the outer structures as they passed. The point men reached the central building—a brilliant flash lit up the forest as they blasted down the door—a slightly confused scramble as the rest of the troops piled through.

And then, silence.

For a handful of minutes the silence continued, punctuated only by occasional short commands from the troop commanders. Covell listened, watching the sensors … and finally the report came through. “General Covell, this is Lieutenant Barse. We’ve secured the target zone, sir. There’s no one here.”

Covell nodded. “Very good, Lieutenant. How does it look?”

“Like they pulled out in a hurry, sir,” the other said. “They left a fair amount of stuff behind, but it all looks pretty much like junk.”

“That’ll be for the scanning crew to decide,” Covell told him. “Any indication of booby traps or other unpleasant surprises?”

“None at all, sir. Oh—and those life-forms we picked up are nothing but these long furry animals living on the tree growing up through the center of the roof.”

Covell nodded again. Ysalamiri, he believed they were called. Thrawn had been making a big deal about the stupid creatures for a couple of months now, though what use they could possibly be to the war effort he couldn’t guess. Eventually, he supposed, the Fleet people would get around to letting him in on the big secret. “Set up a defensive honeycomb,” he ordered the lieutenant. “Signal the scanning crew when you’re ready. And get comfortable. The Grand Admiral wants this place taken apart, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

“Very good, General,” the voice said, almost too faint to hear despite the heavy amplification and computer scrubbing. “Proceed with the dismantling.”

Seated at the Wild Karrde’s helm, Mara Jade half turned to face the man standing behind her. “I suppose that’s it, then,” she said.

For a moment Talon Karrde didn’t seem to hear her. He just stood there, gazing through the viewport at the distant planet, a tiny bluish-white crescent shape visible around the jagged edge of the sun-skimmer asteroid the Wild Karrde was snuggled up against. Mara was just about to repeat the comment when he stirred. “Yes,” he said, that calm voice showing no hint of the emotion he was obviously feeling. “I suppose it is.”

Mara exchanged glances with Aves, at the copilot station, then looked back up at Karrde. “Shouldn’t we be going, then?” she prompted.

Karrde took a deep breath … and as she watched him, Mara caught in his expression a glimmer of what the Myrkr base had meant to him. More than just a base, it had been his home.

With an effort, she suppressed the thought. So Karrde had lost his home. Big deal. She’d lost far more than that in her lifetime and had survived just fine. He’d get over it. “I asked if we should get going.”

“I heard you,” Karrde said, the flicker of emotion vanishing again into that slightly sardonic facade of his. “I think perhaps we ought to wait a little longer. See if we left anything behind that might point in the direction of our Rishi base.”

Mara looked at Aves again. “We were pretty thorough,” Aves said. “I don’t think there was any mention of Rishi anywhere except the main computer, and that left with the first group out.”

“I agree,” Karrde said. “Are you willing to stake your life on that assessment?”

Aves’s lip twitched. “Not really.”

“Nor am I. So we wait.”

“What if they spot us?” Mara persisted. “Skulking behind asteroids is the oldest trick on the list.”

“They won’t spot us.” Karrde was quietly positive. “Actually, I doubt the possibility will even occur to them. The average man running from the likes of Grand Admiral Thrawn is unlikely to stop running until he’s a good deal farther away than this.”

Are you willing to stake your life on that assessment? Mara thought sourly. But she kept the retort to herself. He was probably right; and anyway, if the Chimaera or any of its TIE fighters started toward Wild Karrde, they would have no trouble punching the engines up to power and going to lightspeed well ahead of the attack.

The logic and tactics seemed clean. But still, Mara could feel something nagging at the back of her mind. Something that didn’t feel good about all this.

Gritting her teeth, she adjusted the ship’s sensors to their highest sensitivity and checked once more that the engine prestart sequence was keyed in and ready. And then settled in to wait.

The scanning crew was fast, efficient, and thorough; and it took them just over thirty minutes to come up completely dry.

“Well, so much for that.” Pellaeon grimaced as he watched the negative reports scroll up his display. A good practice session for the ground forces, perhaps, but otherwise the whole exercise seemed to have been pretty useless. “Unless your observers have picked up any reactions in Hyllyard City,” he added, turning to face Thrawn.

The Grand Admiral’s glowing red eyes were on his displays. “There was a small twitch, as a matter of fact,” he said. “Cut off almost before it began, but I think the implications are clear.”

Well, that was something, anyway. “Yes, sir. Shall I have Surveillance begin equipping a long-term ground team?”

“Patience, Captain,” Thrawn said. “It may not be necessary, after all. Key for a midrange scan, and tell me what you see.”

Pellaeon swiveled back to his command board and tapped for the appropriate readout. There was Myrkr itself, of course, and the standard TIE fighter defense cloud ranged around the Chimaera. The only other object anywhere within midrange distance— “You mean that little asteroid out there?”

“That’s the one,” Thrawn nodded. “Nothing remarkable about it, is there? No, don’t do a sensor focus,” he added, almost before the thought of doing one had even occurred to Pellaeon. “We wouldn’t want to prematurely flush our quarry, would we?”

“Our quarry?” Pellaeon repeated, frowning at the sensor data again. The routine sensor scans that had been done of the asteroid three hours earlier had come up negative, and nothing could have sneaked up on it since then without being detected. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t see any indication that anything’s out there.”

“I don’t either,” Thrawn agreed. “But it’s the only sizable cover available for nearly ten million kilometers around Myrkr. There’s really no other place for Karrde to watch our operation from.”

Pellaeon pursed his lips. “Your permission, Admiral, but I doubt Karrde is foolish enough to just sit around waiting for us to arrive.”

The glowing red eyes narrowed, just a bit. “You forget, Captain,” he said softly, “that I’ve met the man. More important, I’ve seen the sort of artwork he collects.” He turned back to his displays. “No; he’s out there. I’m sure of it. Talon Karrde is not merely a smuggler, you see. Perhaps not even primarily a smuggler. His real love is not goods or money but information. More than anything else in the galaxy, he craves knowledge … and the knowledge of what we have or have not found here is too valuable a gem for him to pass up.”

Pellaeon studied the Grand Admiral’s profile. It was, in his opinion, a pretty tenuous leap of logic. But on the other hand, he’d seen too many similar leaps borne out not to take this one seriously. “Shall I order a TIE fighter squadron to investigate, sir?”

“As I said, Captain, patience,” Thrawn said. “Even in sensor stealth mode with all engines shut down, he’ll have made sure he can power up and escape before any attack force could reach him.” He smiled at Pellaeon. “Or rather, any attack force from the Chimaera.”

A stray memory clicked: Thrawn, reaching for his comm just as Pellaeon was giving the ground forces the order to attack. “You sent a message to the rest of the fleet,” he said. “Timing it against my attack order to mask the transmission.”

Thrawn’s blue-black eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Very good, Captain. Very good, indeed.”

Pellaeon felt a touch of warmth on his cheeks. The Grand Admiral’s compliments were few and far between. “Thank you, sir.”

Thrawn nodded. “More precisely, my message was to a single ship, the Constrainer. It will arrive in approximately ten minutes. At which point”—his eyes glittered—“we’ll see just how accurate my reading of Karrde has been.”

Over the Wild Karrde’s bridge speakers, the reports from the scanning crew were beginning to taper off. “Doesn’t sound like they’ve found anything,” Aves commented.

“Like you said, we were thorough,” Mara reminded him, hardly hearing her own words. The nameless thing nagging at the back of her mind seemed to be getting stronger. “Can we get out of here now?” she asked, turning to look at Karrde.

He frowned down at her. “Try to relax, Mara. They can’t possibly know we’re here. There’s been no sensor-focus probe of the asteroid, and without one there’s no way for them to detect this ship.”

“Unless a Star Destroyer’s sensors are better than you think,” Mara retorted.

“We know all about their sensors,” Aves soothed. “Ease up, Mara, Karrde knows what he’s doing. The Wild Karrde has probably the tightest sensor stealth mode this side of—”

He broke off as the bridge door opened behind them; and Mara turned just as Karrde’s two pet vornskrs bounded into the room.

Dragging, very literally, their handler behind them.

“What are you doing here, Chin?” Karrde asked.

“Sorry, Capt’,” Chin puffed, digging his heels into the deck and leaning back against the taut leashes. The effort was only partially successful; the predators were still pulling him slowly forward. “I couldn’t stop them. I thought maybe they wanted to see you, hee?”

“What’s the matter with you two, anyway?” Karrde chided the animals, squatting down in front of them. “Don’t you know we’re busy?”

The vornskrs didn’t look at him. Didn’t even seem to notice his presence, for that matter. They continued staring straight ahead as if he wasn’t even there.

Staring directly at Mara.

“Hey,” Karrde said, reaching over to slap one of the animals lightly across the muzzle. “I’m talking to you, Sturm. What’s gotten into you, anyway?” He glanced along their unblinking line of sight—

Paused for a second and longer look. “Are you doing something, Mara?”

Mara shook her head, a cold shiver tingling up her back. She’d seen that look before, on many of the wild vornskrs she’d run into during that long three-day trek through the Myrkr forest with Luke Skywalker.

Except that those vornskr stares hadn’t been directed at her. They’d been reserved instead for Skywalker. Usually just before they attacked him.

“That’s Mara, Sturm,” Karrde told the animal, speaking to it as he might a child. “Mara. Come on, now—you saw her all the time back home.”

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Sturm stopped his forward pull and turned his attention to his master. “Mara,” Karrde repeated, looking the vornskr firmly in the eye. “A friend. You hear that, Drang?” he added, reaching over to grip the other vornskr’s muzzle. “She’s a friend. Understand?”

Drang seemed to consider that. Then, as reluctantly as Sturm had, he lowered his head and stopped pulling. “That’s better,” Karrde said, scratching both vornskrs briefly behind their ears and standing up again. “Better take them back down, Chin. Maybe walk them around the main hold—give them some exercise.”

“If I can find a clear track through all the stuff in there, hee?” Chin grunted, twitching back on the leashes. “Come on, littles—we go now.”

With only a slight hesitation the two vornskrs allowed him to take them off the bridge. Karrde watched as the door shut behind them. “I wonder what that was all about,” he said, giving Mara a thoughtful look.

“I don’t know,” she told him, hearing the tightness in her voice. With the temporary distraction now gone, the strange dread she’d been feeling was back again in full force. She swiveled back to her board, half expecting to see a squadron of TIE fighters bearing down on them.

But there was nothing. Only the Chimaera, still sitting harmlessly out there in orbit around Myrkr. No threat any of the Wild Karrde’s instruments could detect. But the tingling was getting stronger and stronger …

And suddenly she could sit still no longer. Reaching out to the control board, she keyed for engine prestart.

“Mara!” Aves yelped, jumping in his seat as if he’d been stung. “What in—?”

“They’re coming,” Mara snarled back, hearing the strain of a half dozen tangled emotions in her voice. The die was irrevocably cast—her activation of the Wild Karrde’s engines would have set sensors screaming all over the Chimaera. Now there was nowhere to go but out.

She looked up at Karrde, suddenly afraid of what his expression might be saying. But he was just standing there looking down at her, a slightly quizzical frown on his face. “They don’t appear to be coming,” he pointed out mildly.

She shook her head, feeling the pleading in her eyes. “You have to believe me,” she said, uncomfortably aware that she didn’t really believe it herself. “They’re getting ready to attack.”

“I believe you,” he said soothingly. Or perhaps he, too, recognized that there weren’t any other choices left. “Aves: lightspeed calculation. Take the easiest course setting that’s not anywhere toward Rishi; we’ll stop and reset later.”

“Karrde—”

“Mara is second in command,” Karrde cut him off. “As such, she has the right and the duty to make important decisions.”

“Yeah, but—” Aves stopped, the last word coming out pinched as he strangled it off. “Yeah,” he said between clenched teeth. Throwing a glower at Mara, he turned to the nav computer and got to work.

“You might as well get us moving, Mara,” Karrde continued, stepping over to the vacant communications chair and sitting down. “Keep the asteroid between us and the Chimaera as long as you can.”

“Yes, sir,” Mara said. Her tangle of emotions was starting to dissolve now, leaving a mixture of anger and profound embarrassment in its wake. She’d done it again. Listened to her inner feelings—tried to do things she knew full well she couldn’t do—and in the process had once again wound up clutching the sharp end of the bayonet.

And it was probably the last she’d hear of being Karrde’s second in command, too. Command unity in front of Aves was one thing, but once they were out of here and he could get her alone there was going to be hell to pay. She’d be lucky if he didn’t bounce her out of his organization altogether. Jabbing viciously at her board, she swung the Wild Karrde around, turning its nose away from the asteroid and starting to drive toward deep space—

And with a flicker of pseudomotion, something big shot in from lightspeed, dropping neatly into normal space not twenty kilometers away.

An Imperial Interdictor Cruiser.

Aves yelped a startled-sounding curse. “We got company,” he barked.

“I see it,” Karrde said. As cool as ever … but Mara could hear the tinge of surprise in his voice, too. “What’s our time to lightspeed?”

“It’ll be another minute,” Aves said tautly. “There’s a lot of junk in the outer system for the computer to work through.”

“We have a race, then,” Karrde said. “Mara?”

“Up to point seven three,” she said, nursing as much power as she could out of the still-sluggish engines. He was right; it was indeed going to be a race. With their four huge gravity-wave generators capable of simulating planet-sized masses, Interdictor Cruisers were the Empire’s weapon of choice for trapping an enemy ship in normal space while TIE fighters pounded it to rubble. But coming in fresh out of lightspeed itself, the Interdictor would need another minute before it could power up those generators. If she could get the Wild Karrde out of range by then …

“More visitors,” Aves announced. “A couple squadrons of TIE fighters coming from the Chimaera.”

“We’re up to point eight six power,” Mara reported. “We’ll be ready for lightspeed as soon as the nav computer gives me a course.”

“Interdictor status?”

“Grav generators are powering up,” Aves said. On Mara’s tactical display a ghostly cone appeared, showing the area where the lightspeed-dampening field would soon exist. She changed course slightly, aiming for the nearest edge, and risked a glance at the nav computer display. Almost ready. The hazy grav cone was rapidly becoming more substantial …

The computer scope pinged. Mara wrapped her hand around the three hyperspace control levers at the front of the control board and gently pulled them toward her. The Wild Karrde shuddered slightly, and for a second it seemed that the Interdictor had won their deadly race. Then, abruptly, the stars outside burst into starlines.

They’d made it.

Aves heaved a sigh of relief as the starlines faded into the mottled sky of hyperspace. “Talk about slicing the mynock close to the hull. How do you suppose they tumbled that we were out there, anyway?”

“No idea,” Karrde said, his voice cool. “Mara?”

“I don’t know, either.” Mara kept her eyes on her displays, not daring to look at either of them. “Thrawn may have just been playing a hunch. He does that sometimes.”

“Lucky for us he’s not the only one who gets hunches,” Aves offered, his voice sounding a little strange. “Nice going, Mara. Sorry I jumped on you.”

“Yes,” Karrde seconded. “A very good job indeed.”

“Thanks,” Mara muttered, keeping her eyes on her control board and blinking back the tears that had suddenly come to her eyes. So it was back. She’d hoped fervently that her locating of Skywalker’s X-wing out in deep space had been an isolated event. A fluke, more his doing than hers.

But no. It was all coming back, as it had so many times before in the past five years. The hunches and sensory flickers, the urges and the compulsions.

Which meant that, very soon now, the dreams would probably be starting again, too.

Angrily, she swiped at her eyes, and with an effort unclenched her jaw. It was a familiar enough pattern … but this time things were going to be different. Always before there’d been nothing she could do about the voices and urges except to suffer through the cycle. To suffer, and to be ready to break out of whatever niche she’d managed to carve for herself when she finally betrayed herself to those around her.

But she wasn’t a serving girl in a Phorliss cantina this time, or a come-up flector for a swoop gang on Caprioril, or even a hyperdrive mechanic stuck in the backwater of the Ison Corridor. She was second in command to the most powerful smuggler in the galaxy, with the kind of resources and mobility she hadn’t had since the death of the Emperor.

The kind of resources that would let her find Luke Skywalker again. And kill him.

Maybe then the voices would stop.

For a long minute Thrawn stood at the bridge viewport, looking out at the distant asteroid and the now superfluous Interdictor Cruiser near it. It was, Pellaeon thought uneasily, almost the identical posture the Grand Admiral had assumed when Luke Skywalker had so recently escaped a similar trap. Holding his breath, Pellaeon stared at Thrawn’s back, wondering if another of the Chimaera’s crewers was about to be executed for this failure.

Thrawn turned around. “Interesting,” he said, his voice conversational. “Did you note the sequence of events, Captain?”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said cautiously. “The target was already powering up before the Constrainer arrived.”

“Yes,” Thrawn nodded. “And it implies one of three things. Either Karrde was about to leave anyway, or else he panicked for some reason—” The red eyes glittered. “Or else he was somehow warned off.”

Pellaeon felt his back stiffen. “I hope you’re not suggesting, sir, that one of our people tipped him.”

“No, of course not.” Thrawn’s lip twitched slightly. “Loyalties of your crewers aside, no one on the Chimaera knew the Constrainer was on its way; and no one on the Constrainer could have sent any messages here without our detecting them.” He stepped over to his command station and sat down, a thoughtful look on his face. “An interesting puzzle, Captain. One I’ll have to give some thought to. In the meantime, we have more pressing matters. The task of acquiring new warships, for one. Have there been any recent responses to our invitation?”

“Nothing particularly interesting, Admiral,” Pellaeon said, pulling up the comm log and giving it a quick scan to refresh his memory. “Eight of the fifteen groups I contacted have expressed interest, though none were willing to commit themselves to anything specific. We’re still waiting on the others.”

Thrawn nodded. “We’ll give them a few weeks. If there’ve been no results after that time, we’ll make the invitation a bit more compulsory.”

“Yes, sir.” Pellaeon hesitated. “There’s also been another communication from Jomark.”

Thrawn turned his glowing eyes on Pellaeon. “I would very much appreciate it, Captain,” he said, biting off each word, “if you would try to make it clear to our exalted Jedi Master C’baoth that if he persists in these communications he’s going to subvert the whole purpose of putting him on Jomark in the first place. If the Rebels get even a hint of any connection between us, he can forget about Skywalker ever showing up there.”

“I have explained it to him, sir,” Pellaeon grimaced. “Numerous times. His reply is always that Skywalker is going to show up. And then he demands to know when you’re going to get around to delivering Skywalker’s sister to him.”

For a long moment Thrawn said nothing. “I suppose there’ll be no shutting him up until he gets what he wants,” he said at last. “Nor of getting any uncomplaining work out of him, either.”

“Yes, he was grumbling about the attack coordination you’ve been having him do,” Pellaeon nodded. “He’s warned me several times that he can’t predict exactly when Skywalker will arrive on Jomark.”

“And implied that a horrible retribution would fall upon us if he’s not there when that happens,” Thrawn growled. “Yes, I know the routine well. And I’m getting rather tired of it.” He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Very well, Captain. The next time C’baoth calls, you may inform him that the Taanab operation will be his last for the immediate future. Skywalker isn’t likely to make it to Jomark for at least two more weeks—the little pot of political confusion we’ve stirred up in the Rebellion high command should occupy him at least that long. As to Organa Solo and her unborn Jedi … you may also inform him that from now on I’ll be taking a personal hand in that matter.”

Pellaeon threw a quick glance over his shoulder, to where the Grand Admiral’s bodyguard, Rukh, stood silently near the aft bridge door. “Does that mean you’ll be taking the Noghri off the job, sir?” he asked quietly.

“Do you have a problem with that, Captain?”

“No, sir. May I respectfully remind the Grand Admiral, though, that the Noghri have never liked leaving a mission uncompleted.”

“The Noghri are servants of the Empire,” Thrawn countered coldly. “More to the point, they’re loyal to me personally. They will do as they’re told.” He paused. “However, I’ll take your concerns under advisement. At any rate, our task here at Myrkr is completed. Order General Covell to bring his force back up.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, signaling the communications officer to relay the message.

“I’ll want the general’s report on file in three hours,” Thrawn continued. “Twelve hours after that I want his recommendations as to the three best infantry troopers and two best mechanized operators in the assault. Those five men will be transferred to the Mount Tantiss operation and given immediate transport to Wayland.”

“Understood,” Pellaeon nodded, dutifully logging the orders in Covell’s file. Such recommendations had been part of standard Imperial procedure for several weeks now, ever since the Mount Tantiss operation had begun in earnest. But Thrawn nevertheless still periodically went out of his way to mention it to his officers. Perhaps as a not-so-subtle reminder of how vitally important those recommendations were to the Grand Admiral’s sweeping plan to crush the Rebellion.

Thrawn looked out the viewport again at the planet beneath them. “And while we await the general’s return, you’ll contact Surveillance regarding that long-term team for Hyllyard City.” He smiled. “It’s a very large galaxy, Captain, but even a man like Talon Karrde can run for only so long. Eventually, he’ll have to come to rest.”

It wasn’t really deserving of its name, the High Castle of Jomark. Not in Joruus C’baoth’s estimation, anyway. Short and dirty, its stonework ill-fitting in places and as alien as the long-gone race that had built it, it squatted uneasily between two of the larger crags on what was left of an ancient volcanic cone. Still, with the rest of the rim circling around in the distance, and the brilliant blue waters of Ring Lake four hundred meters almost straight down beneath him, C’baoth could allow that the natives had at least found some good scenery to build their castle on. Their castle, or temple, or whatever. It had been a good place for a Jedi Master to move into, if only because the colonists seemed to hold the place in awe. Then too, the dark island that filled the center of the crater and gave the lake its ring shape provided a suitably hidden landing site for Thrawn’s annoyingly endless stream of shuttles.

But it was neither the scenery, nor the power, nor even the Empire that held C’baoth’s thoughts as he stood on the castle terrace and gazed down into Ring Lake. It was, instead, the strange flicker he’d just felt in the Force.

He’d felt it before, this flicker. Or at least he thought he had. Threads to the past were always so hard to follow, so easily lost in the mists and the hurryings of the present. Even of his own past he had only glimpses of memory, scenes as if from a history record. He rather thought he remembered someone trying to explain the reasons to him once, but the explanation was long gone in the darkness of the past.

It didn’t matter anyway. Memory wasn’t important; concentration wasn’t important; his own past wasn’t important. He could call upon the Force when he wanted to, and that was what was important. As long as he could do that, no one could ever hurt him or take away what he had.

Except that Grand Admiral Thrawn had already taken it away. Hadn’t he?

C’baoth looked around the terrace. Yes. Yes; this wasn’t the home and city and world he’d chosen to mold and command as his own. This wasn’t Wayland, which he’d wrested from the Dark Jedi whom the Emperor had set to guard his Mount Tantiss storehouse. This was Jomark, where he was waiting for … someone.

He stroked his fingers through his long white beard, forcing himself to concentrate. He was waiting for Luke Skywalker—that was it. Luke Skywalker was going to come to him, and Luke Skywalker’s sister and her as-yet-unborn twins, and he would turn all of them into his followers. Grand Admiral Thrawn had promised them to him, in return for his help to the Empire.

He winced at the thought. It was hard, this help that Grand Admiral Thrawn wanted. He had to concentrate hard to do what they wanted; to hold his thoughts and feelings closely in line, and for long periods at a time. On Wayland he hadn’t had to do anything like that, not since he’d fought against the Emperor’s Guardian.

He smiled. It had been a grand battle, that fight against the Guardian. But even as he tried to remember it, the details skittered away like straws in the wind. It had been too long ago.

Long ago … like these flickers in the Force had been.

C’baoth’s fingers slipped away from his beard, to the medallion nestled against the skin of his chest. Squeezing the warm metal against his palm, he fought against the mists of the past, trying to see beyond them. Yes. Yes, he was not mistaken. These same flickers had come three times before in the past few seasons. Had come, had stayed for a time, and then once again had gone dormant. Like someone who had learned how to utilize the Force for a time, but then somehow forgotten.

He didn’t understand it. But it was of no threat to him, and so wasn’t important.

Above him, he could sense now the Imperial Star Destroyer entering high orbit, far above the clouds where none of the others on Jomark would see it. When night fell, the shuttle would come, and they would take him off somewhere—Taanab, he thought—to help coordinate yet another of these multiple Imperial attacks.

He wasn’t looking forward to the effort and pain. But it would all be worth it when he had his Jedi. He would remake them in his own image, and they would be his servants and his followers all the days of their lives.

And then even Grand Admiral Thrawn would have to admit that he, Joruus C’baoth, had found the true meaning of power.