by Timothy Zahn
She took a deep breath, “I’m ready,” she said.
They were off Coruscant and nearly ready for the jump to lightspeed before Leia finally asked the question she’d worried about since coming aboard. “Are we really going to stop to check on Fey’lya’s funds?”
“With time as critical as you suggest?” Karrde countered. “Don’t be silly. But Fey’lya doesn’t know that.”
Leia watched him for a moment as he handled the Wild Karrde’s helm. “The money’s not really important to you, is it?”
“Don’t believe that, either,” he advised her coolly. “I have certain obligations to meet. If Fey’lya hadn’t been willing to cooperate, your New Republic would have had to do so.”
“I see,” Leia murmured.
He must have heard something in her voice. “I mean that,” he insisted, throwing a brief and entirely unconvincing scowl at her. “I’m here because it suits my purposes. Not for the sake of your war.”
“I said I understood,” Leia agreed, smiling privately to herself. The words were different; but the look on Karrde’s face was almost identical. Look, I ain’t in this for your revolution, and I’m not in it for you, Princess. I expect to be well paid. I’m in it for the money. Han had said that to her after that stormy escape from the first Death Star. At the time, she’d believed it.
Her smile faded. He and Luke had saved her life then. She wondered if she’d be in time now to save theirs.
CHAPTER
24
The entrance to Mount Tantiss was a glint of metal nestled cozily beneath an overhang of rock and vegetation. Between them and it, just visible from their hilltop vantage point, was a clearing with a small city lying in it. “What do you think?” Luke asked.
“I think we find another way in,” Han told him, bracing his elbows a little harder into the dead leaves and trying to hold the macrobinoculars steady. He’d been right; there was a stormtrooper guard station just off the metal doors. “You never want the front door, anyway.”
Luke tapped his shoulder twice: the signal that he’d picked up someone coming. Han froze, listening. Sure enough, there was a faint sound of clumping feet in the underbrush. A minute later, four Imperial troops in full field gear came out of the trees a few meters further down the hill. They walked straight past Han and Luke without so much as looking up, disappearing back into the trees a few steps later. “Starting to get pretty thick,” Han muttered.
“I think it’s just the proximity to the mountain,” Luke said. “I still don’t get any indication that they know we’re out here.”
Han grunted and shifted his view to the village poking out of the clearing down below them. Most of the buildings were squat, alien-looking things, with one really good-sized one facing into an open square. His angle wasn’t all that good, but it looked like there were a bunch of Psadans hanging around near the front of the big one. A town meeting, maybe? “I don’t see any sign of a garrison down there,” he said, sweeping the macrobinoculars slowly across the village. “Must be working directly out of the mountain.”
“That should make it easier to get around it,”
“Yeah,” Han said, frowning as he swung the macrobinoculars back to the town square. That crowd of Psadans he’d noticed a minute ago had shifted into a sort of semicircle now, facing a couple more of the walking rock piles standing with their backs to the big building. And it was definitely getting bigger.
“Trouble?” Luke murmured.
“I don’t know,” Han said slowly, wedging his elbows a little tighter and kicking the magnification up a notch. “There’s a big meeting going on down there. Two Psadans … but they don’t seem to be talking. Just holding something.”
“Let me try,” Luke offered. “There are Jedi techniques for enhancing vision. Maybe they’ll work on a macrobinocular image.”
“Go ahead,” Han said, handing over the macrobinoculars and squinting at the sky. There were a few wispy clouds visible up there, but nothing that looked like it was going to become a general overcast anytime soon. Figure two hours till sundown; another half hour of light after that—
“Hmm,” Luke said.
“What is it?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” Luke said, lowering the macrobinoculars. “But it looks to me like what they’re holding is a data pad.”
Han looked out toward the city. “I didn’t know they used data pads.”
“Neither did I,” Luke said, his voice suddenly going all strange.
Han frowned at him. The kid was just staring at the mountain, a funny look on his face. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s the mountain,” he said, staring hard at it. “It’s dark. All of it.”
Dark? Han frowned at the mountain. It looked fine to him. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s dark,” Luke repeated slowly. “Like Myrkr was.”
Han looked at the mountain. Looked back at Luke. “You mean, like in a bunch of ysalamiri cutting off the Force?”
Luke nodded. “That’s what it feels like. I won’t know for sure until we’re closer.”
Han looked back at the mountain, feeling his stomach curling up inside him. “Great,” he muttered. “Just great. Now what?”
Luke shrugged, “We go on. What else is there?”
“Getting back to the Falcon and getting out of here, that’s what,” Han retorted. “Unless you’re really hot to walk into an Imperial trap.”
“I don’t think it’s a trap,” Luke said, shaking his head thoughtfully. “Or at least, not a trap for us. Remember how that contact I told you about with C’baoth was suddenly cut off?”
Han rubbed his cheek. He could see what Luke was getting at, all right: the ysalamiri were here for C’baoth, not him. “I’m still not sure I buy that,” he said. “I thought C’baoth and Thrawn were on the same side. Mara said that herself.”
“Maybe they had a falling out,” Luke suggested. “Or maybe Thrawn was using him from the start and now doesn’t need him anymore. If the Imperials don’t know we’re here, the ysalamiri must have been meant for him.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter much who they were meant for,” Han pointed out. “They’ll block you just as well as they will C’baoth. It’ll be like Myrkr all over again.”
“Mara and I did okay on Myrkr,” Luke reminded him. “We can handle it here. Anyway, we’ve come too far to back out now.”
Han grimaced. But the kid was right. Once the Empire gave up on this deserted-planet routine, chances were the next New Republic team wouldn’t even make it into the atmosphere. “You going to tell Mara before we get there?”
“Of course.” Luke looked up at the sky. “But I’ll tell her on the way. We’d better get moving while we still have daylight.”
“Right,” Han said, giving the area one last look before he got to his feet. Force or no Force, it was up to them. “Let’s go.”
The others were waiting just around the other side of the hill. “How’s it look?” Lando asked as Han and Luke rejoined them.
“They still don’t know we’re here,” Han told him, looking around for Mara. She was sitting on the ground near Threepio and Artoo, concentrating on a set of five stones she’d gotten to hover in the air in front of her. Luke had been teaching her this kind of stuff for days, and Han had finally given up trying to talk the kid out of it. It looked like the lessons were going to be a waste of time now, anyway. “You ready to take us to this back door of yours?”
“I’m ready to start looking for it,” she said, still keeping the stones in the air. “As I told you before, I only saw the air system equipment from inside the mountain. I never saw the intakes themselves.”
“We’ll find them,” Luke assured her, passing Han and walking over to the droids. “How are you doing, Threepio?”
“Quite well, thank you, Master Luke,” the droid answered primly. “This route is so much better than many of the earlier ones.” Beside him, Artoo trilled something. “Artoo finds it so, as well,” Threepio added.
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“Don’t get attached to it,” Mara warned, finally letting the stones drop as she stood up. “There probably won’t be any Myneyrshi trails up the mountain for us to follow. The Empire discouraged native activity anywhere nearby.”
“But don’t worry,” Luke soothed the droids. “The Noghri will help us find a path.”
“Freighter Garret’s Gold, you’re cleared for final approach,” the brisk voice of Bilbringi Control came over the Etherway’s bridge speaker. “Docking Platform Twenty-five. Straight-vector as indicated to the buoy; it’ll feed you the course to follow to the platform.”
“Acknowledged, Control,” Aves said, keying in the course that had come up on the nav display. “What about the security fields?”
“Stay on the course you’re given and you won’t run into them,” the controller said. “Deviate more than about fifteen meters any direction and you’ll get a good bump on the nose. From the looks of it, I don’t think your nose can afford any more bumps.”
Aves threw a glare at the speaker. One of these days he was going to get real tired of Imperial sarcasm. “Thank you,” he said, and keyed off.
“Imperials are such fun to work with, aren’t they?” Gillespee commented from the copilot station.
“I like to imagine what his expression is going to be like when we burn out of here with their CGT,” Aves said.
“Let’s hope we’re not around to find out for sure,” Gillespee said. “Pretty complicated flight system they’ve got here.”
“It wasn’t like this before that raid of Mazzic’s,” Aves said, gazing ahead through the viewport. Half a dozen shield generators were visible along his approach vector, floating loose around the area and defining the flight path the buoy would supposedly give him. “Probably supposed to keep anyone else from flying around the shipyards any old way they want to.”
“Yeah,” Gillespee said. “I just hope they’ve got all the glitches out of the system.”
“Me, too,” Aves agreed. “I don’t want them to know how much of a bump this ship can really take.”
He glanced down at his board, confirming his vector and then checking the time. The New Republic fleet ought to be hitting Tangrene in a little over three hours. Just enough time for the Etherway to dock, unload the specially tweaked tractor beam burst capacitors they were courteously donating to the Empire’s war effort, and get into backup position for Mazzic’s attempt to grab the CGT from the main command center eight docking platforms away.
“There goes Ellor,” Gillespee commented, nodding off to starboard.
Aves looked. It was the Kai Mir, all right, with the Klivering running in flanking position beside it. Beyond it, he could see the Starry Ice drifting in toward a docking platform near the perimeter. Near as he could tell, everything seemed to be falling into place.
Though with someone like Thrawn in charge, appearances didn’t mean much. For all he knew, the Grand Admiral might already know all about this raid, and was just waiting for everybody to sneak in under the net before wrapping it around them.
“You ever hear anything else from Karrde?” Gillespee asked, a little too casually.
“He’s not deserting us, Gillespee,” Aves growled. “If he says he has something more important to do, then he has something more important to do. Period.”
“I know,” Gillespee said, his voice noncommittal. “Just thought some of the others might have asked.”
Aves grimaced. Here they went again. He’d have thought that opening up Ferrier’s treachery at Hijarna would have settled this whole thing once and for all. He should have known better. “I’m here,” he reminded Gillespee. “So are the Starry Ice, the Dawn Beat, the Lastri’s Ort, the Amanda Fallow, the—”
“Yeah, right, I get the point,” Gillespee interrupted. “Don’t get huffy at me—my ships are here, too.”
“Sorry,” Aves said. “I’m just getting tired of everybody always being so suspicious of everybody else.”
Gillespee shrugged. “We’re smugglers. We’ve had a lot of practice at it. Personally, I’m surprised the group’s held together this long. What do you think he’s doing?”
“Who, Karrde?” Aves shook his head. “No idea. But it’ll be something important.”
“Sure.” Gillespee pointed ahead. “That the marker buoy?”
“Looks like it,” Aves agreed. “Get ready to copy the course data. Ready or not, here we go.”
The orders came up on Wedge’s comm screen, and he gave them a quick check as he keyed for the squadron’s private frequency. “Rogue Squadron, this is Rogue Leader,” he said. “Orders: we’re going in with the first wave, flanking Admiral Ackbar’s Command Cruiser. Hold position here until we’re cleared for positioning. All ships acknowledge.”
The acknowledgments came in, crisp and firm, and Wedge smiled tightly to himself. There’d been some worry among Ackbar’s staff, he knew, that the long flight here to the rendezvous point might take the edge off those units that had first had to carry out decoy duty near the supposed Tangrene jump-off point. Wedge didn’t know about the others, but it was clear that Rogue Squadron was primed and ready for battle.
“You suppose Thrawn got our message, Rogue Leader?” Janson’s voice came into Wedge’s thoughts.
Their message …? Oh, right—that little conversation outside the Mumbri Storve cantina with Talon Karrde’s friend Aves. The one Hobbie had been firmly convinced would be going straight to Imperial Intelligence. “I don’t know, Rogue Five,” Wedge told him. “Actually, I sort of hope it didn’t.”
“Kind of a waste of time if it didn’t.”
“Not necessarily,” Wedge pointed out. “Remember, he said they had some other scheme on line that they wanted to coordinate with ours. Anything that hits or distracts the Empire can’t help but do us some good.”
“They’ve probably just got some smuggling drop planned,” Rogue Six sniffed. “Hoping to run it through while the Imperials are looking the other way.”
Wedge didn’t reply. Luke Skywalker seemed to think Karrde was quietly on the New Republic’s side, and that was good enough for him. But there wasn’t any way he was going to convince the rest of his squadron of that. Someday, maybe, Karrde would be willing to take a more open stand against the Empire. Until then, at least in Wedge’s opinion, everyone who wasn’t on the Grand Admiral’s side was helping the New Republic, whether they admitted it or not.
Sometimes, even, whether they knew it or not.
His comm display changed, the vanguard cone of Star Cruisers had made it into their launch formation. Time for their escort ships to do the same. “Okay, Rogue Squadron,” he told the others. “We’ve got the light. Let’s get to our places.”
Easing power to his X-wing’s drive, he headed off toward the running lights ahead. Two and a half hours, if the rest of the fleet assembly stayed on schedule, and they’d be dropping out of lightspeed within spitting distance of the Bilbringi shipyards.
A shame, he thought, that they wouldn’t be able to see the looks on the Imperials’ faces.
The latest group of reports from the Tangrene region scrolled across the display. Pellaeon skimmed through them, scowling blackly to himself. No mistake—the Rebels were still there. Still slipping forces into the region; still doing nothing to draw attention to themselves. And in two hours, if Intelligence’s projections were even halfway accurate, they would be launching an attack on an effectively undefended system.
“They’re doing quite well, aren’t they, Captain?” Thrawn commented from beside him. “A very convincing performance all around.”
“Sir,” Pellaeon said, fighting to keep his voice properly deferential. “I respectfully suggest that the Rebel activity is not any kind of performance. The preponderance of evidence points to Tangrene as their probable target. Several key starfighter units and capital ships have clearly been assembled at likely jump-off points—”
“Wrong, Captain,” Thrawn cut him off coolly. “That’s what they want us to belie
ve, but it’s nothing more than a carefully constructed illusion. The ships you refer to pulled out of those sectors between forty and seventy hours ago, leaving behind a few men with the proper uniforms and insignia to confuse our spies. The bulk of the force is even now on its way to Bilbringi.”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said with a silent sigh of defeat. So that was it. Once again, Thrawn had chosen to ignore his arguments—as well as all the evidence—in favor of nebulous hunches and intuitions.
And if he was wrong, it wouldn’t be simply the Tangrene Ubiqtorate base that would be lost. An error of that magnitude would shake the confidence and momentum of the entire Imperial war machine.
“All war is risk, Captain,” Thrawn said quietly. “But this is not as large a risk as you seem to think. If I’m wrong, we lose one Ubiqtorate base—important, certainly, but hardly critical.” He cocked a blue-black eyebrow. “But if I’m right, we stand a good chance of destroying two entire Rebel sector fleets. Consider the impact that will have on the current balance of power.”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said dutifully.
He could feel Thrawn’s eyes on him. “You don’t have to believe,” the Grand Admiral told him. “But be prepared to be proved wrong.”
“I very much hope so, sir,” Pellaeon said.
“Good. Is my flagship ready, Captain?”
Pellaeon felt his back stiffen a bit in old parade-ground reflex. “The Chimaera is fully at your command, Admiral.”
“Then prepare the fleet for hyperspace.” The glowing eyes glittered. “And for battle.”
There were no real paths up Mount Tantiss; but as Luke had predicted, the Noghri had a knack for terrain. They made remarkably good time, even with the droids slowing them down, and as the sun was disappearing below the trees, they reached the air intakes.
It was not, however, exactly the way Luke had envisioned it.
“Looks more like a retractable turbolaser turret than an air system,” he commented to Han as they moved cautiously through the trees toward the heavy metal mesh and the even heavier metal structure the mesh was set into.
