by Timothy Zahn
"No," she said, walking toward him as she tried to watch all directions at once. "I'm more in a buying mood, myself. What kind of ship is this flying hatbox, anyway?"
"It's a Harkners-Balix Nine-Oh-Three," the other sniffed with a second-rate attempt at wounded pride. "Flying hatbox, indeed."
Not much of an actor, but he was clearly getting a kick out of all this cloak-and-blade stuff. Setting her teeth firmly together, Mara sent a silent curse down on Torve's head for setting up such a ridiculous identification procedure in the first place. "Looks like a Nine-Seventeen to me," she said dutifully. "Or even a Nine-Twenty-Two."
"No, it's a Nine-Oh-Three," he insisted. "Trust m my uncle used to make landing gear pads for them. Come inside and I'll show you how to tell the difference."
"Oh, that'll be great," Mara muttered under her breath as she followed him up the ramp.
"Glad you finally got here," the man commented over his shoulder as they reached the top of the ramp. "I was starting to think you'd been caught.
"That could still happen if you don't shut up," Mara growled back. "Keep your voice down, will you?"
"It's okay," he assured her. "I've got all your MSE droids clattering around on cleaning duty just inside the outer hull. That should block out any audio probes."
Theoretically, she supposed, he was right. As a practical matter : well, if the locals had the place under surveillance they were in trouble, anyway. "You have any trouble getting the ship out of impoundment?" she asked him.
"Not really," he said. "The spaceport administrator said the whole thing was highly irregular, but he didn't give me any major grief about it." He grinned. "Though I suppose the size of the bribe I slipped him might have had something to do with that. My name's Wedge Antilles, by the way. I'm a friend of Captain Solo's."
"Nice to meet you," Mara said. "Solo couldn't make it himself?"
Antilles shook his head. "He had to leave Coruscant on some kind of special mission, so he asked me to get the ship sprung for you. I was scheduled for escort duty a couple systems over anyway, so it wasn't a problem."
Mara ran a quick eye over him. From his build and general manner:"B-wing pilot?" she hazarded.
"X-wing," he corrected her. "I've got to get back before my convoy finishes loading. Want me to give you an escort out of here?"
"Thanks, but no," she said, resisting the urge to say something sarcastic. The first rule of smuggling was to stay as inconspicuous as possible, and flying out of a third-rate spaceport with a shiny New Republic X-wing starfighter in tow didn't exactly qualify as a low-profile stance. "Tell Solo thanks."
"Right. Oh, one other thing," Antilles added as she started past him. "Han also wanted me to ask you if your people might be interested in selling information on our friend with the eyes."
Mara sent him a sharp look. "Our friend with the eyes?"
Antilles shrugged. "That's what he said. He said you'd understand."
Mara felt her lip twist. "I understand just fine. Tell him I'll pass on the message."
"Okay." He hesitated. "It sounded like it was pretty important-"
"I said I'll pass on the message."
He shrugged again. "Okay-just doing my job. Have a good trip." With a friendly nod, he headed back down the ramp. Still half expecting a trap, Mara got the hatchway sealed for flight and went up to the bridge.
It took a quarter hour to run the ship through its preflight sequence, almost exactly the amount of time it took the spaceport controllers to confirm her for takeoff. Easing in the repulsorlifts, she lifted clear of the landing pit and made for space.
She was nearly high enough to kick in the sublight drive when the back of her neck began to tingle.
"Uh-oh," she muttered aloud, giving the displays a quick scan. Nothing was visible; but this close to a planetary mass, that meant less than nothing. Anything could be lurking just over the horizon, from a single flight of TIE fighters all the way up to an Imperial Star Destroyer.
But maybe they weren't quite ready yet:
She threw full power to the drive, feeling herself pressed back into the seat cushion for a few seconds as the acceleration compensators fought to catch up. An indignant howl came from the controller on the comm speaker; ignoring him, she keyed the computer, hoping that Torve had followed Karrde's standard procedure when he'd first put down on Abregado.
He had. The calculation for the jump out of here had already been computed and loaded, just waiting to be initiated. She got the computer started making the minor adjustments that would correct for a couple of months of general galactic drift, and looked back out the forward viewport.
There, emerging over the horizon directly ahead, was the massive bulk of a Victory-class Star Destroyer.
Bearing toward her.
For a long heartbeat Mara just sat there, her mind skimming through the possibilities, all the time knowing full well how futile the exercise was. The Star Destroyer's commander had planned his interception with exquisite skill: given their respective vectors and the Etherway's proximity to the planet, there was absolutely no way she would be able to elude the larger ship's weapons and tractor beams long enough to make her escape to lightspeed. Briefly, she toyed with the hope that the Imperials might not be after her at all, that they were actually gunning for that Antilles character still on the surface. But that hope, too, evaporated quickly. A single X-wing pilot could hardly be important enough to tie up a Victory-class Star Destroyer for. And if he was, they would certainly not have been so incompetent as to spring the trap prematurely.
"Freighter Etherway," a cold voice boomed over her comm speaker. "This is the Star Destroyer Adamant. You are ordered to shut down your engines and prepare to be brought aboard."
So that was that. They had indeed been looking for her. In a very few minutes now she would be their prisoner.
Unless :
Reaching over, she keyed her mike. "Star Destroyer Adamant, this is the Etherway," she said briskly. "I congratulate you on your vigilance; I was afraid I was going to have to search the next five systems to find an Imperial ship."
"You will shut down all deflector systems-" The voice faltered halfway through the standard speech as the fact belatedly penetrated that this was not the normal response of the normal Imperial prisoner.
"I'll want to speak to your captain the minute I'm aboard," Mara said into the conversational gap. "I'll need him to set up a meeting with Grand Admiral Thrawn and provide me transport to wherever he and the Chimaera are at the moment. And get a tractor beam ready-I don't want to have to land this monster in your hangar bay myself."
The surprises were coming too fast for the poor man. "Ah-freighter Etherway-" he tried again.
"On second thought, put the captain on now," Mara cut him off. She had the initiative now, and was determined to keep it as long as possible. "There's no one around who can tap into this communication."
There was a moment of silence. Mara continued on her intercept course, a trickle of doubt beginning to worm its way through her resolve. It's the only way, she told herself sternly.
"This is the captain," a new voice came on the speaker. "Who are you?"
"Someone with important information for Grand Admiral Thrawn," Mara told him, shifting from brisk to just slightly haughty. "For the moment, that's all you need to know."
But the captain wasn't as easily bullied as his junior officers. "Really," he said dryly. "According to our sources, you're a member of Talon Karrde's smuggling gang."
"And you don't believe such a person could tell the Grand Admiral anything useful?" she countered, letting her tone frost over a bit.
"Oh, I'm sure you can," the captain said. "I simply don't see any reason why I should bother him with what will be, after all, a routine interrogation."
Mara squeezed her left hand into a fist. At all costs she had to avoid the kind of complete mind-sifting the captain was obviously hinting at. "I wouldn't advise that," she told him, throwing every bit of the half-remembere
d dignity and power of the old Imperial court into her voice. "The Grand Admiral would be extremely displeased with you. Extremely displeased."
There was a short pause. Clearly, the captain was starting to recognize that he had more here than he'd bargained for. Just as clearly, he wasn't ready yet to back down. "I have my orders," he said flatly. "I'll need more than vague hints before I can make you an exception to them."
Mara braced herself. This was it. After all these years of hiding from the Empire, as well as from everyone else, this was finally it. "Then send a message to the Grand Admiral," she said. "Tell him the recognition code is Hapspir, Barrini, Corbolan, Triaxis."
There was a moment of silence, and Mara realized she'd finally gotten through to the other. "And your name?" the captain asked, his voice suddenly respectful.
Beneath her, the Etherway jolted slightly as the Adanant's tractor beam locked on. She was committed now. The only way out was to see it all through. "Tell him," she said, "that he knew me as the Emperor's Hand."
They brought her and the Etherway aboard, settled her with uncertain deference into one of the senior officers' quarters : and then headed away from Abregado like a mynock with its tail on fire.
She was left alone in the cabin for the rest of the day and into the night, seeing no one, speaking with no one. Meals were delivered by an SE4 servant droid; at all other times the door was kept locked. Whether the enforced privacy was on the captain's orders or whether it came from above was impossible to tell, but at least it gave her time to do such limited planning as she could.
There was similarly no way of knowing where they were going, but from the labored sound of the engines, she could guess they were pushing uncomfortably far past a Victory Star Destroyer's normal flank speed of Point Four Five. Possibly even as high as Point Five, which would mean they were covering a hundred twenty-seven light-years per hour. For a while she kept her mind occupied by trying to guess which system they might be making for; but as the hours ticked by and the number of possibilities grew too unwieldy to keep track of, she abandoned the game.
Twenty-two hours after leaving Abregado, they arrived at the rendezvous. At the last place Mara would have expected. At the very last place in the galaxy she would have wanted to go. The place where her universe had died a sudden and violent death.
Endor.
"The Grand Admiral will see you now," the stormtrooper squad leader said, stepping back from the opening door and motioning her ahead. Mara threw a glance at the silent Noghri bodyguard standing on the other side of the doorway and stepped through.
"Ah," a well-remembered voice called quietly from the command center in the middle of the room. Grand Admiral Thrawn sat in the double display ring, his red eyes glowing at her above the glistening white uniform. "Come in.
Mara stayed where she was. "Why did you bring me to Endor?" she demanded.
The glowing eyes narrowed. "I beg your pardon?"
"You heard me," she said. "Endor. Where the Emperor died. Why did you choose this place for the rendezvous?"
The other seemed to consider that. "Come closer, Mara Jade."
The voice was rich with the overtones of command, and Mara found herself walking toward him before she realized what she was doing. "If it's supposed to be a joke, it's in poor taste," she bit out. "If it's supposed to be a test, then get it over with."
"It is neither," Thrawn said as she came to the edge of the outer display ring and stopped. "The choice was forced upon us by other, unconnected business." One blue-black eyebrow raised slightly. "Or perhaps not entirely unconnected. That still remains to be seen. Tell me, can you really sense the Emperor's presence here?"
Mara took a deep breath, feeling the air shuddering through her lungs with an ache as real as it was intangible. Could Thrawn see how much this place hurt her? she wondered. How thick with memories and sensations the whole Endor system still remained? Or would he even care about any of that if he did?
He saw, all right. She could tell that much from the way he was looking at her. What he thought of it she didn't much care. "I can feel the evidence of his death," she told him. "It's not pleasant. Let's get this over with so I can get out of here."
His lip quirked, perhaps at her assumption that she would in fact be leaving the Chimaera. "Very well. Let's begin with some proof of who you were."
"I gave the Adamant's captain a high-level recognition code," she reminded him.
"Which is why you're here instead of in a detention cell," Thrawn said. "The code isn't proof in itself."
"All right, then," Mara said. "We met once, during the public dedication of the new Assemblage wing of the Imperial Palace on Coruscant. At that ceremony the Emperor introduced me to you as Lianna, one of his favorite dancers. Later, during the more private ceremony that followed, he revealed to you my true identity."
"And what was that private ceremony?"
"Your secret promotion to the rank of Grand Admiral."
Thrawn pursed his lips, his eyes never leaving her face. "You wore a white dress to both ceremonies," he said. "Aside from the sash, the dress had only one decoration. Do you recall what that decoration was?"
Mara had to think back. "It was a small shouldersculp," she said slowly. "Left shoulder. A Xyquine design, as I remember."
"It was indeed." Thrawn reached to his control board, touched a switch; and abruptly, the room was filled with holos of shouldersculps on ornate pillars. "The one you wore is somewhere in this room. Find it."
Mara swallowed, turning slowly as she looked around. She'd had literally hundreds of fancy dresses for her cover role as a member of the Emperor's entourage. To remember one particular shouldersculp out of all that:
She shook her head, trying to clear away the unpleasant buzzing sensation that hovered deep in her mind. She'd had an excellent memory once, one which the Emperor's training had made even better. Focusing her thoughts, fighting upstream against the disquieting aura of this place, she concentrated : "That's it," she said, pointing to a delicate filigree of gold and blue.
Thrawn's expression didn't change, but he seemed to relax a little in his seat. "Welcome back, Emperor's Hand." He touched the switch a second time, and the art gallery vanished. "You've been a long time in returning."
The glowing eyes bored into her face, the question unspoken but obvious. "What was here for me before?" she countered. "Who but a Grand Admiral would have accepted me as legitimate?"
"Was that the only reason?"
Mara hesitated, recognizing the trip wire. Thrawn had been in command of the Empire for over a year now, and yet she hadn't approached him until now. "There were other reasons," she said. "None of which I wish to discuss at this time."
His face hardened. "As, I presume, you don't wish to discuss why you helped Skywalker escape from Talon Karrde?"
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.
Mara jerked, unsure for that first frozen heartbeat whether the voice had been real or just in her mind. The strange buzzing intensified, and for a moment she could almost see the Emperor's wizened face glaring at her. The image grew clearer, the rest of the room beginning to swim before her eyes :
She took a deep breath, forcing calmness. She would not fall apart. Not here; not in front of the Grand Admiral. "It wasn't my idea to let Skywalker escape," she said.
