by Timothy Zahn
“Yes, Lord Vader’s aboard,” the operator said, starting to sound flustered. “Admiral Bentro is in command—”
“Inform Lord Vader that the Emperor’s Hand wishes to speak with him,” Mara cut him off.
“The—who?”
“Lord Vader,” Mara snarled. “Now.”
There was no answer. Biting back a curse, Mara turned her ship’s nose toward the Super Star Destroyer and cut in the drive. The Sith Lord was probably hiding in his personal chamber, or else pacing the command walkway in one of those moods where no one dared to approach him.
But Mara had a job to do. One way or another he was going to see her.
She was nearly to the ship’s inner defense zone, and the Executor’s layered arrays of point defenses were swiveling warningly toward her, when the comm finally came to life again. “Emperor’s Hand,” Vader’s familiar voice rumbled. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”
“Likewise,” Mara said, knowing that neither of them meant a word of it. “Lord Vader, we need to talk.”
“As you wish,” Vader said. “Come aboard.”
The Executor’s first officer took over, deactivating the ship’s defenses and directing Mara to the captain’s personal hangar bay. An escort from Vader’s own elite 501st Stormtrooper Legion was waiting, and after a short walk they arrived at a small conference room.
Vader was waiting, standing like a brooding storm cloud near the head of the table. “I understand you demanded to see me,” he said without preamble.
“I apologize for my earlier tone,” Mara said, inclining her head toward him in a gesture of humility.
“There is only one person in the Empire who can demand my presence,” Vader continued, his voice stiff. Apparently, he wasn’t in the mood to accept apologies. “That person is not you. And never will be,” he added ominously.
“Then let me make this as brief as possible,” Mara said. She wasn’t exactly in the best of moods herself. “I’m here on an important mission, and I need some assurance your presence here isn’t going to get in the way.”
“That my presence won’t get in your way?” Vader demanded, his voice dropping half an octave. “Walk softly, Emperor’s Hand.”
“I don’t walk softly where treason is involved,” Mara countered. “I’m on the trail—”
“No!” Vader boomed, his voice slamming across the room and straight through Mara’s skull. He took a long step around the end of the table toward her, his black cloak billowing, his gloved hand dropping to his lightsaber. “She is the key to finding him. She is mine!”
“What?” Mara managed, her own simmering anger vanishing in the realization that she was suddenly in big trouble. “No, I—”
But it was too late. Vader pulled the lightsaber from his belt, and with a snap-hiss the blazing red blade appeared. Holding the weapon in attack position, he strode toward her.
Mara took a step backward, snatching out her own lightsaber but leaving it closed down. The last thing she wanted to do was try to match blades with a Sith Lord. She threw a quick look at the door, shifting her weight in preparation for a dash for freedom.
But Vader either spotted the glance or read her body language. Shifting direction, he angled toward the door, blocking any chance of escape.
Grimacing, Mara shifted her weight in the other direction and threw herself sideways onto the conference table. A quick kick-and-roll off her left shoulder, and she had landed in a crouch on the floor on the far side. “Take it easy,” she called as soothingly as she could. “What’s Governor Choard to you, anyway?”
Raising his lightsaber high, Vader slashed the blade straight through the table.
Mara took a quick step back as the two sections of the bisected table crashed to the floor. With the wall at her back, and Vader between her and the door, there was only one option left. “You want trouble?” she demanded, finally igniting her lightsaber and lifting it to blocking position in front of her. “Fine. Come and get it.”
Vader’s only reply was to shift his own weapon again into attack position as he stepped into the gap between the two sections of table. Stretching out to the Force, Mara reached to the wall behind him and switched off the lights.
It was a trick she would never have tried with a normal opponent. Their two lightsabers didn’t give off a lot of light, but there was more than enough for biological eyes to work with while they adjusted to the gloom.
But Vader’s helmet was equipped with optical sensors for use in dim light, with all the strengths and weaknesses inherent in such equipment. There was a chance that for the first crucial second before the contrast adjusted itself all he would see was her glowing lightsaber blade floating in a field of otherwise total darkness.
She was right. With a bellow, the Sith Lord angled his lightsaber and slashed it viciously in a horizontal arc through the air half a meter beneath the glowing magenta blade.
Only Mara wasn’t there anymore. Using the Force to hold her lightsaber floating in place, she had dropped to the floor the instant the lights went out and rolled out of sight beneath one of the angled sections of the broken table.
Vader stopped in his tracks, and for a long moment the room was silent except for the hum of the lightsabers. Mara listened carefully, but the steadiness of the sound indicated that he was holding the weapon motionless. Was he finally coming to his senses?
And then, to her relief, she heard the familiar sizzle as he closed down the weapon. A moment later, the room’s lights came back on. “What were you saying about Governor Choard?” Vader asked, his voice calm again.
Cautiously, Mara emerged from cover, alert for any last-minute tricks. But Vader had taken a step back from the table, and his lightsaber was again hooked onto his belt. The brief madness was over. “Choard has been recruiting pirate gangs to attack military shipments,” she said, calling her own lightsaber back to her hand and closing it down. “A few days ago he sent the Reprisal to destroy their base and cover his tracks. They also nearly killed me in the process.”
“That would have been unfortunate,” Vader said. Mara could hear no actual sarcasm in his voice, but she had no doubt it was there. “Still, your information matches my own.”
Mara stared at him. “You mean you already knew?”
“The knowledge is recent,” Vader assured her. “But it is of no interest to me,” he added, his voice darkening. “As he denounced his governor, Chief Administrator Disra also claimed that Leia Organa is in Makrin City. That is who I seek tonight.”
“Really,” Mara said, the word obsession flashing through her mind as she finally understood the Dark Lord’s earlier outburst. She might have guessed it would have had something to do with the former Alderaanian princess and the Rebellion. “What’s she doing here?”
“Disra claims she was consulting with local Rebel leaders,” Vader said. “He assures me he can supply names.”
“Handy,” Mara said. “Do we know where this Disra is right now?”
“He has gone to the palace to collect surveillance records that might be of use in our search.”
Or perhaps he was there to destroy other, more incriminating records? “I need to get down there right away,” Mara said.
“Is someone stopping you?”
Mara felt her lip twist. Even when Vader wasn’t being homicidal, he was never pleasant to deal with. “Not at all,” she said. “Enjoy your hunt.” Nodding to him, she headed for the door.
“Emperor’s Hand?”
She turned back, finding his black faceplate turned toward her. “Yes?” she said.
“As you dispense your justice to Governor Choard,” he said softly, “take care not to get in my way.”
The sky had darkened into the hazy starless gray typical of large cities, and Leia had just taken an order for a group of Mungras, when Chivkyrie arrived at the kitchen’s back door with the bad news.
“It has begun,” he told her, his voice trembling. “Imperial stormtroopers have arrived at the spacepor
t and are spreading throughout the city.”
Leia took a careful breath. So Imperial Center’s response had come at last. “I understand,” she said.
“No, I don’t think you do,” Chivkyrie said urgently, glancing furtively both ways down the alley. “It is reported that Darth Vader himself is among them.”
That part wasn’t exactly unexpected, either, Leia reflected. Vader had always been the type to take things personally, and her role in the Death Star’s destruction was about as personal as one could get. Even so, his name sent a shiver through her. “I understand,” she said again. “Thank you for the warning. You’d better get moving.”
“What is the point?” Chivkyrie said wearily. “No one escapes Lord Vader.”
“Of course they do,” Leia said firmly. “I suggest you try the catacombs. The local patrollers have probably searched them by now, which means they’re not very likely to do so again.”
Chivkyrie snorted. “The stormtroopers will not care what the patrollers have or have not done.”
“But the stormtroopers aren’t looking for you,” Leia reminded him. “I doubt their orders mention anyone but me. Anyway, you have to try something.”
“You are right,” Chivkyrie said. “Forgive my moment of despair.”
“Everyone has such moments,” Leia said, her cheeks warming as she thought back on her own latest battles with that emotion. “The trick is to make sure they stay moments, and don’t lengthen into hours or days.”
“Or a lifetime,” Chivkyrie said.
“We’ll win,” Leia said quietly. “Someday. I know we will.” She leaned out the door, checking the alley. Still empty. “Now get going. And again, thank you for everything.”
For a moment the Adarian studied her eyes and face, as if committing them to a final memory. Then, bowing his head, he hurried away.
“Do you need also to leave?”
Leia turned. Vicria, the tapcafe’s manager, was standing beside one of the storage lockers, her orange eyes looking even brighter than usual in the dim light. “Not yet,” Leia said.
“Because you may go whenever you must,” Vicria went on. “You don’t belong here—I and all those who have seen you these past days know that.”
Leia swallowed. “Then more than ever I am grateful for your discretion.”
Vicria shook her head in a Mungran shrug, the movement sending a soft, fluid ripple through her mane. “Many have come to this neighborhood over the years to hide,” she said. “But most have been arrogant or hateful or bitter. Few have shown us such honor and courtesy as you have.”
She moved to Leia’s side, stepping into the doorway Chivkyrie had just vacated and looking up toward the boarded-up third-floor window across the alley. “We have been repaid in full for our discretion,” she said quietly. “You are welcome among us anytime, Leia Organa.”
Leia felt her throat tighten. So they even knew who she was. “You are a people of great honor, Vicria,” she said. “I will do what I can to see that no retribution comes upon you and the neighborhood for your kindness.”
“Do not sacrifice yourself for us,” Vicria warned, her tone turning gruff. “You are of far higher tier than we.”
“I will be certain not to carelessly throw away the gift you have given me,” Leia assured her. “But as to our respective tiers, I do not consider them a proper measure of our value as living, thinking beings. They are certainly not an indicator of loyalty or courage.”
“A strange way of thinking,” Vicria said. “But you are an outworlder. Your thoughts and ideas are not those of the Adarian or Mungran peoples.”
“Perhaps not,” Leia said. “But I have found that the yearning for freedom crosses all such lines and barriers. Not only those between different peoples, but also those between different tiers.”
“A strange way of thinking, indeed,” Vicria said. “Yet you are correct: with foreign soldiers searching the streets, perhaps it would be best for you to stay inside.”
“Hiding in plain sight, as my friend first proposed,” Leia agreed. The conversation about society and tiers had apparently turned uncomfortable enough for Vicria to change the subject.
But Leia had planted the seeds. Maybe something would eventually grow from them. “Besides,” she added, “I couldn’t leave yet anyway.”
“Why not?”
Leia held up her pad. “I still have two orders to put in.”
Disra took the last twenty meters to his office in a dead run, slamming open the door and diving for the secure comm. “Disra here,” he panted into the microphone. “Caaldra?”
“Finally,” Caaldra said tightly. “Where have you been? Never mind that. What the blazes are all these Imperials doing here?”
“Nothing to do with us,” Disra assured him. “They’re looking for a Rebel leader who was supposedly spotted in Makrin City a few days ago.”
“Is that going to be a problem?”
“No, of course not,” Disra said, thinking fast. After the broken HoloNet call from the Commodore, and Disra’s subsequent failure to raise the BloodScar base again, he’d assumed Caaldra had been killed. Apparently the man had once again cheated death.
Which brought up some interesting possibilities. Disra had all he really needed already, but Caaldra’s presence might add a nice extra touch. If he could lure him down. “You’re on your way in, I assume?”
“I’m on my way to the Greencliff Regional Spaceport,” Caaldra said. “The idiot directing traffic from the Executor told me no one was allowed to land at the palace.”
“You didn’t ask for Makrin Main?”
“That’s where he wanted to send me,” Caaldra said. “I talked him out of it.”
Disra frowned. “What on Imperial Center for? Main’s both closer and bigger.”
“It’s also crawling with Imperials,” Caaldra retorted. “Considering my cargo consists of fifty AT-STs, I don’t think either of us wants me anywhere near the place.”
Disra felt his mouth drop open. “Fifty what?”
“Remember I said the BloodScars lost my special cargo?” Caaldra reminded him, sounding grimly pleased with himself. “I got it back.”
“And you brought it here?”
“The Executor didn’t offer me the option of turning around and running,” Caaldra said acidly.
Fifty stolen AT-STs. This just got better and better. “Forget the Imperials and Greencliff,” Disra told him. “I’ll call the Executor and get you routed directly here to the palace.”
“I already told you, the controller said I couldn’t land there.”
“Because Governor Choard closed off the grounds,” Disra countered. “But what the governor has taken away, he can give back again. Go ahead and change your landing vector—I’ll get it fixed.”
The comm went silent. Disra slumped back in his chair, wincing as his freshly sweaty back pressed against the cool cloth of his shirt. Fifty AT-STs. No wonder Caaldra had been so upset when they vanished. With those, plus the BloodScars and their allied gangs, they might actually have been able to pull off their grand conspiracy.
Or they could have if Disra had ever really intended to go through with it.
But even though the whole charade was very close to being over, it wasn’t there quite yet. Keying the comm again, he signaled for the Executor.
Mara was still fuming when, far ahead, she noticed one of the ships heading to the planet below begin to drift out of line.
She frowned, leaning forward as she studied the freighter’s new vector. Some kind of malfunction? Her sensors weren’t showing any problem, but the equipment on this ship was hardly up to the standards she was accustomed to. Perhaps the other pilot had developed a problem with his attitude system, especially now that they were getting into atmosphere. The distant craft rolled slightly, its aspect shifting toward her—
Mara caught her breath. For a moment she stared, then jabbed at her board, keying for her best magnification.
Her ship’s best wasn’t
particularly good. But it was good enough. The drifting freighter was the Happer’s Way.
She slapped the comm switch. “Executor, I have a ship breaking approach pattern,” she said tersely. “Please advise as to its intentions.”
Imperial military rigidity being what it was, she fully expected to have to fight uphill to actually get any information. But the controller apparently hadn’t forgotten the young woman who had successfully petitioned to speak to Vader and, more important, been allowed to walk away from the meeting. “The freighter Happer’s Way has been newly authorized to land at the governor’s palace,” he told her.
The governor’s palace. She should have known. “I thought you said no one was being allowed in there.”
“Apparently it’s been granted an exception.”
Mara nodded to herself as she watched the freighter drop ever farther off the Greencliff approach vector. So that was the game. The governor would open his grounds to Caaldra, who would then sneak his stolen AT-STs to safety right past the Imperials’ collective nose. “Order it off,” she said.
“Excuse me?” the controller asked, sounding startled.
“I said order it off,” Mara repeated. “It was cleared to Greencliff, and that’s where it’s going to land.”
“But the governor’s office has authorized it to land on his grounds.”
“Irrelevant,” Mara said. “The governor’s office has jurisdiction over the palace and palace grounds, but the freighter’s still in open atmosphere.” She hesitated, but this was no time for half measures. “Tell him that if he doesn’t get back on the Greencliff vector, you’ll shoot him down.”
There was a pause, and Mara heard the subtle click of a comm switchover. “Emperor’s Hand, this is Admiral Bentro,” a new and calmer voice said. “I can’t threaten a civilian freighter without a reason. Especially not one under the protection of a sector governor.”
“I’m giving you an order, Captain,” Mara said. “The recognition code is Hapspir, Barrini, Corbolan, Triaxis.”
There was another brief pause. “Understood,” Bentro said. “But if I could just contact Lord Vader first for—”
