by Timothy Zahn
Formbi swiveled sharply to face him. "That has nothing to do with the Redoubt," he said stiffly. "It is completely and purely a matter of honor and morality. The Chiss are never to be the aggressor people. We cannot and will not make war against any until and unless we have been attacked. That has been our law for a thousand years, Master Skywalker, and we will not bend from it."
"I understand," Luke said hastily, taken aback by the vehemence of Formbi's response. No wonder Thrawn and his aggressive military philosophy had rubbed these people backward. "I didn't mean to imply anything else. Please forgive me for not making myself clear."
"Yes, of course," Formbi said, the fire in his eyes fading somewhat as he pulled himself back under control. "And forgive me in turn for my outburst. The subject... let's simply say that it's been a matter of strenuous discussion in recent days among the Nine Ruling Families."
Luke lifted an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Yes," Formbi said in a tone that said, Drop the subject. "At any rate, I thank you for your offer of assistance, but your Jedi powers of navigation should not be needed."
Luke bowed. "As you wish, Aristocra. If you choose to reconsider, we stand ready to assist." Turning, he headed back toward where Mara was standing, wondering yet again how Leia could make this diplomacy stuff look so simple.
The Geroons, he noted, seemed to be near the end of their conversation. The alien on the display was humming something that sounded like a cross between a military fanfare and a Huttese opera excerpt, and Bearsh had just started his equally musical reply.
"What was that all about?" Mara asked as Luke came up beside her.
"I was offering Formbi our help in navigating the Redoubt," Luke said, frowning. There was a new tension in his wife's face that hadn't been there when he'd left a minute ago. "He says they can do it themselves. What's wrong?"
"I don't know," Mara said, her eyes narrowed as she swept her gaze slowly around the room. "Something just hit me..."
"Something bad?" Luke suggested, stretching out to the Force as he tried to read the pattern of her thoughts. "Something dangerous?"
"Something not right," she said. "Something very much not right. Not dangerous, I don't think, at least not in and of itself. Just... not right."
Across the observation deck, the two-toned music stopped. "Thank you, Aristocra Formbi," Bearsh said, switching back to his stilted Basic. After the Geroon language, the words sounded startlingly drab. "My people express regret that they cannot all pay homage to the heroes of Outbound Flight, but we understand your concerns."
His mouths made quick chopping motions. "At any rate, our vessel would most certainly not survive the voyage. And if the Geroon people perish, what use then would be Outbound Flight's sacrifice?"
"What use, indeed," Formbi agreed. Turning toward the command floor, he lifted his voice. "We are ready, Captain Talshib," he called. "Take us to Outbound Flight."
* * *
Feesa had called this place the forward observation lounge during their inspection tour of the Chaf Envoy, Jinzler remembered as he sipped the drink he'd brought with him and gazed out the curved viewport stretching across the entire end of the room in front of him. It had had a spectacular view of the Chiss starscape at the time, as well as a large collection of comfortable-looking chairs and couches, and he'd made a mental note to come back later after things had quieted down.
Now, of course, half a standard hour into their trip to Outbound Flight, the view wasn't nearly so interesting. Hyperspace, after all, looked pretty much the same anywhere you went.
But the couch was still comfortable, he had his drink and his solitude, and they were on their way to Outbound Flight. At the moment, that was all he asked out of life.
He lifted his glass to the mottled patterns of hyperspace streaming by. To Lorana, he gave a silent toast.
Behind him, the lounge door slid open. "Hello?" a voice called tentatively.
Jinzler sighed. So much for the solitude part. "Hello," he called back. "This is Dean—Ambassador Jinzler," he corrected himself.
"Oh," the other said tentatively, and as Jinzler turned he could see a shadowy figure move into the darkness. "I am Estosh. Do I intrude?"
One of the Geroons. The youngest, in fact, if Jinzler was remembering the introductions correctly. "No, of course not," he assured the alien. "Come in."
"Thank you," Estosh said, groping his way through the maze of furniture to Jinzler's couch. "What do you do here?"
"Nothing, really," Jinzler said. "I was just watching the light-years fly past, and thinking about Outbound Flight."
"They were a great people," Estosh said softly, sitting gingerly down beside Jinzler. "Which of course makes you yourself a great person," he hastened to add.
Jinzler grimaced in the dark. "Perhaps," he said.
"You are great," Estosh insisted. "Even if you do not feel it."
"Thank you," Jinzler said. "Tell me, what do you know about what happened?"
"I was not yet alive at that time, so I know only what I have been told," Estosh said. "I know that long before your people arrived the Vagaari came to our worlds, conquering and destroying and taking everything of value to themselves. They used us as laborers and craftspeople and slaves. They sent us into unsafe mines and dangerous mountains, and forced us to walk before them on warfields that we might die instead of them." He gave a shiver that shook the whole couch. "They wore us down until we were almost nothing."
"And then Outbound Flight came?"
Estosh sighed deeply, a sound like a whistle in a deep cave. "You cannot imagine it, Ambassador Jinzler," he said. "Suddenly they were there before us, weapons blazing from all directions, shattering our oppressors' vessels and destroying them."
Ahead, the churning hyperspace sky faded abruptly into starlines, and the starlines collapsed into a brilliant mass of stars. "Must be one of the navigation stops Aristocra Formbi mentioned," Jinzler commented, gazing out at the view. "Impressive, isn't it?"
"Indeed," Estosh said. "It is a shame the Chiss have no worlds here they would be willing to give us. To live here among such beauty—"
"Quiet," Jinzler cut him off, listening hard as a quiet warning bell went off in the back of his mind. Something was wrong...
Abruptly, it clicked. "The engines," he said, scrambling to his feet.
"You feel that? They're sputtering."
"Yes," Estosh breathed. "Yes, I do. What does it mean?"
"It means something's wrong with them," Jinzler said. "Or with the control lines. Or," he added grimly, "with the people in the command center."
* * *
Mara had just pulled off her boots in preparation for bed when the deck seemed to shiver beneath her feet.
She paused, stretching out to the Force, all her senses alert. "Luke?"
"Yes," he murmured, frowning in concentration. "Feels like something funny's going on with the engines."
"They've picked up a wobble," Mara said, flipping her legs up over the edge of the bed and rolling across to Luke's side, the side that had the comm panel. Stretching out, she jabbed the button. "Command center, this is Jedi Skywalker," she called. "What's going on?"
"There is nothing to be worried about, Jedi Skywalker," a Chiss voice answered. "There is a problem with the control lines to the aft end of the vessel."
"What kind of problem?"
"It is not your concern," the voice said tartly. "It is a small problem only, and we will deal with it. Stay in your quarters."
There was a click as the connection was cut from the other end. "I can hear the soothing tones of General Drask's voice in that order," Luke said, grabbing his shirt and starting to put it back on. "Sounds like he's been talking to his people about us."
"We going to check it out anyway?" Mara asked, rolling back to where she'd left her boots.
"Actually, I was thinking we might try a different approach," Luke said, finishing with his shirt and reaching for his lightsaber. "We've already seen one noisy diversion aboa
rd this ship, and there's a lot of the same smell to this one."
"I agree," Mara said, picking up her own lightsaber. "He said the problem is aft. We go forward?"
"Right," Luke said. "You've been studying the ship. What's up there someone might be interested in?"
"All sorts of good stuff," she told him. "Forward navigational sensors, meteor defense systems, shield generators, some crew quarters, and bulk storage."
"Including food?"
"Right," Mara said. "Best of all, not very far back from the bow is the commander's glider."
"The hyperdrive-capable boat Fel told us about?"
"That's the one," Mara said. "Pick your target."
"Well, you can't expect him to make it easy on us," Luke said philosophically. "Here's the plan. You head for the bow along the main starboard corridor, watching for anyone or anything suspicious. I'll backtrack past the Geroon shuttle, see if there's any unusual activity in that area, then cross over to port side and check out the Imperials' transport. If everything looks okay, I'll head forward along the port-side corridor and meet you at the bow."
"Sounds good," Mara said. "See you there. And watch yourself."
"You, too."
The starboard corridor was largely deserted as Mara made her way forward, her senses alert for trouble. Most of the on-duty crewers were apparently aft, dealing with the engine trouble, while the rest were either snugged comfortably in their beds or engaged in other late-evening relaxations. The fact that the whole crew had obviously not been turned out implied that Drask did indeed consider the problem to be a minor one. Just the sort of low-key, not-quite-crisis-level event their mysterious data card thief might use for his next bit of sleight of hand.
She just wished she knew which of the possible targets he was after this time. Still, with a little luck, maybe she'd get a chance to ask him.
She was nearly to the bow when the corridor lights abruptly went out.
She froze in her tracks, pressing her back against the side wall in a pocket of shadow thrown by a misaimed emergency light. Wisps of sensation seemed to swirl around her as she stretched out with the Force, marking the presence of thoughts and emotions somewhere ahead. Someone was definitely moving around nearby. Maybe two someones.
Maybe even three.
She scowled to herself, peering into the darkness as she fought to push the hazy impressions into something solid. Between the Chiss and Geroons, the presence of so many unfamiliar minds surrounding her was severely limiting her ability to focus. There, ahead and to the right? Was that one of the beings she was sensing?
And then, from a side corridor in that direction, came a barely audible clink, as if someone had brushed the bulkhead with something hard. Holding her lightsaber ready, she slipped toward the archway leading into the corridor, keeping to the shadows as much as she could.
There was another faint clink as she reached the archway, this one much closer. She pressed her back to the wall and lifted her lightsaber high, thumb ready on the activator.
For a second she held the pose. Then, in a sudden smooth surge of motion, she swung around, igniting her lightsaber as she rotated, and planted herself in combat stance squarely in the center of the archway—
To find herself facing an Imperial stormtrooper as he simultaneously swung out from behind a coolant pump into the same stance, his BlasTech E-11 pointed squarely back at her.
Mara's first impulse, from somewhere deep in the dark corners of her mind, was to lower her weapon and order him to lower his. Her second impulse, from a more recent frame of reference, was to slash the blue lightsaber blade forward and cut him in half. Her final impulse, as her brain finally caught up with the conflicting reflexes, was to simply do nothing.
Fortunately, perhaps, the stormtrooper himself seemed to have no such confusion of loyalties or responses. Even as Mara fought back the urge to kill, he snapped the muzzle of his weapon upward away from her. "Jedi Skywalker," he said. "My apologies."
"No problem," Mara said, fighting the words out through a momentarily stiff throat as she closed down her lightsaber. That unexpected surge of past patterns had been incredibly disconcerting. "What are you doing here?"
"Commander Fel heard of the problem with the ship's engines and ordered me to secure the bow from potential danger," he said. "You?"
"Same thing," Mara said, peering down the darkened corridor over his shoulder. "You find anything?"
"The area around the glider appears secure," he said. "My intention was to continue forward and check the shield generators."
"Fine," Mara said. "We'll go together."
"Acknowledged," he said. Without asking, he stepped past her and moved into point position, ahead and slightly to Mara's left. In silence, they continued forward.
They had gone perhaps ten more meters when Mara caught a glimpse of something ahead. "Hold," she murmured, running through the Jedi sight-enhancement techniques as they stopped. It hadn't been a movement she'd seen, exactly, but something else.
The stormtrooper, with his helmet's own vision enhancements, got it first. "We're looking through the archway into the shield generator room," he murmured back. "That was a reflection from the generator shell."
"Right," Mara agreed, trying to overlay the view ahead onto her mental schematic of this part of the ship. A reflection off the semi-spherical cap of the shield generator meant someone was inside the room, moving port and possibly aft.
Unfortunately, there were three other exits from the compartment in that direction: one heading aft toward the shield monitor room behind it, one heading forward toward a small cluster of crew quarters, and the third all the way across the chamber to a mirror-image archway into the portside corridor. Three possible ways out, with only her and one stormtrooper available to cover them all.
Except that Luke should be on his way toward that far portside exit. Luke? She sent out the mental call.
Coming, the reply came, accompanied by a glimpse of the portside corridor. It was apparently as dark over there as it was on this side of the ship, but he seemed to be making good progress and she had the sense that he was nearby.
At any rate, they couldn't afford to wait any longer. "All right," she murmured to the stormtrooper. "You keep going straight ahead. Make sure he doesn't double back and get out through the starboard archway up there. If it looks like you can do it without risking him getting behind you, go ahead and sweep him portside. I'll head back to that last cross corridor and try to cut him off before he can get out through the monitor room."
"Acknowledged," the stormtrooper said. Lifting his BlasTech, he moved cautiously forward.
Mara didn't wait to see how he fared, but turned and moved as quickly and silently as possible back to the cross-corridor. Unlike the main passageway, this one had several jogs in it as it wended its way around and between rooms of various sizes and shapes. That meant more cover for her, of course; unfortunately, it also meant she wouldn't get a glimpse of the exit she was trying to block until she was practically on top of it. Setting her teeth, stretching out to the Force, she headed in.
She'd gone maybe five steps when the whole thing fell completely apart.
From somewhere ahead came a sharp shout and the sudden scuffle of running feet. Breathing a curse, Mara ducked ahead around the next jog in the corridor, coming into view of the generator room exit just in time to see the reflected blue flash of a Chiss charric heat weapon. Someplace in the distance, over the ruckus, she heard the distinctive snap-hiss of Luke's lightsaber. Sprinting to the doorway, she ducked through—
There was just the briefest flicker of warning, and she barely got her lightsaber ignited in time to block another charric blast that would have burned her upper right shoulder if it had gotten through. "Hold it!" she snapped, ducking back into the relative protection of the doorway as another pair of charric bolts shot past her face.
"Halt!" a harsh Chiss voice countered. "Identify!"
"Who do you think?" Mara shot back. "How man
y people have you got aboard with lightsabers?"
For a moment there was no reply. But at least the shooting had stopped. "Very well, Jedi Skywalker," the Chiss said in a somewhat more polite tone. "Come forward."
Warily, Mara stepped into the room. Over by the starboard shield generator to her right were two armed Chiss dressed in leisure clothing, apparently having come straight from the crew quarters a couple of corridors away. Behind them was the stormtrooper she'd sent in, his BlasTech held in ready position across his chest. Possibly the reason they'd stopped shooting at her, the cynical thought crossed her mind.
She turned her head to her left. At the far end of the generator room, Luke was coming toward the party from the portside archway, his lightsaber blade looking brighter than usual in the gloom.
And in the long gap between Luke and the Chiss, standing straight and tall and yet looking strangely vulnerable and forlorn, was Dean Jinzler.
CHAPTER 9
"There's really nothing to tell," Jinzler protested as Mara led him to one of the lounge's couches and gave him a not-entirely-gentle push down onto it. "I was sitting right here, watching the stars, when the lights went out."
"Were you alone?" Luke asked, stretching out with the Force. The man clearly knew he was in trouble, yet was amazingly calm for all that. It was the sort of calm Luke had seen before, sometimes in a person who no longer had anything to lose.
Unfortunately, he'd also seen it in people with hidden tricks up their sleeves, or in people who fully believed they could lie their way out of anything. So far, he still couldn't tell which category Jinzler fit into.
"By then I was," Jinzler said. "A little earlier I'd been talking with one of the Geroons—Estosh, the young one—but he left when the engines started acting up. He said he was worried there was going to be another fire. I stayed here until the lights went out, as I said, at which point I decided something serious must be happening and started back toward my quarters."
