by Timothy Zahn
"So you sent Jade to hunt him down," Shada said, remembering the conversation she'd overheard back in the Solos' Orowood Tower apartment. "And Calrissian insisted on tagging along."
"Basically," Karrde said. "They started at Dagobah and worked their way outward, searching through old spaceport records for where he might have stopped off for repairs or refueling. They also dug up hints about him here and there—some from the Coruscant library, some from various fringe characters, some from Corellian Security, of all places—and started putting the pieces together."
"Talk about your lifetime jobs," Shada murmured.
"It wasn't quite that bad, but it did definitely take some years," Karrde said. "Especially as they both kept getting dragged off on other business or pulled in to help fix whatever Coruscant's crisis of the month was. Still, the trail was already so cold that a month or two here or there didn't make much of a difference. They kept at it until they wound up in Kathol sector and Exocron.
"And there, as far as we can tell, the trail ends."
For a moment the room was silent as Shada digested it all. "I take it they never actually saw Car'das himself?"
With a visible effort, Karrde seemed to draw himself back from whatever ghosts of the past he was gazing at. "They had explicit instructions not to," he said. "They were to find out where he was—and with a world as well hidden as Exocron they also needed to find a route into the place—and then they were to come home. I would take it from there."
"And this was how long ago?"
Karrde shrugged uncomfortably. "A few years."
"So what happened?"
"To be honest, I lost my nerve," he admitted. "After what I'd done, I wasn't at all sure how I was going to face him. Had no idea what I was going to say, how I was going to even try to make amends. So I kept finding excuses to put it off."
He took a deep breath. "And now it looks like I'm too late."
Shada grimaced. "You think Rei'Kas is working for him."
"Rei'Kas, possibly Bombaasa, probably a dozen others we haven't heard about," Karrde said heavily. "But he's definitely on the move. Only this time he seems to be concentrating on piracy and slaving instead of smuggling and information brokering. The more violent edge of the fringe... and I can only see one reason why he would do that.
"To come after me. Personally."
For a moment the word seemed to hang in the air like a death mark. "I don't think that necessarily follows," Shada said into the silence, moved by some obscure desire to argue the point. "Why can't he just be building up a force to carve himself a little empire here in the backwater? Take over Exocron, maybe, or even this little so-called Kathol Republic?"
"He's been here for nearly two decades, Shada," Karrde reminded her. "If he was into empire-carving, don't you think he would have done it before now?"
"If he was into taking you out, don't you think he would have done that before now, too?" Shada countered.
"He may have already tried."
"And then, what, given up after the first three years?"
Karrde shook his head. "It doesn't make sense to me, either," he conceded. "But I knew Car'das; and he wasn't the sort of person who could just sit around doing nothing. He was a ruthless man, hard and calculating, who never forgave a wrong against him and never let anyone or anything stand in the way of what he wanted. And he lived for challenges—the bigger, the better.
"And he knows I'm here, and that I'm looking for him. That little man—Entoo Nee—is all the proof we need of that."
An involuntary shiver ran through Shada. The Wild Karrde, which had felt so safe and secure up till now, suddenly felt small and very vulnerable. "And so here we are. Walking straight into his hands."
"You, at least, should have nothing to fear from him," Karrde assured her. "You're not connected in any way with me or my organization." He hesitated. "As a matter of fact, that's why I agreed to let you come along."
Shada stared at him as understanding suddenly slapped her like an ice-soaked rag. "You're expecting him to kill you, aren't you?" she breathed. "And you think...?"
"You're not associated with me, Shada," Karrde said quietly. "Everyone else aboard the ship is. I would have come alone, but I knew I couldn't survive the trip to Exocron in anything smaller or less well armed than the Wild Karrde. Car'das is a vengeful man; but like Bombaasa, he likes to consider himself cultured. I hope to talk him out of killing me, of course; I hope even more that he won't harm my crew. But if he's adamant on settling old scores... I hope at least I can persuade him to let you go back to the New Republic with a copy of the Caamas Document."
Shada shook her head. "Karrde, this is insane—"
"At any rate, that's the whole story," he cut her off easily, standing up and swinging his chair back to where it had been. "Oh, except for the fact that the huge data library Car'das had built up over the years vanished along with him, which is why we think he may have a copy of the Caamas Document. And now, you do need to get to that bacta tank. I'll see you later." With a nod, he left. "Karrde, this is insane," Shada repeated again, quietly, to the empty room. It was only later, floating in the bacta tank, that the other part of it occurred to her. Karrde was hoping, he had said, that Car'das would allow her to leave.
But he wasn't guaranteeing it.
CHAPTER
15
Splitter Of Stones said something in that irritating Qom Jha almost-voice and fluttered to his usual upside-down perch on a stunted stalactite. "Great," Luke announced. "We seem to be here." Mara raised her glow rod beam from the ground in front of her and scanned the walls of the passageway, hardly daring to believe the grueling four-day trip was finally over. Cities or starships or even a quiet encampment under the open sky—those were her milieus of choice. This business of grubbing around dark, dusty tunnels with grime and dripping water and dank air all around was emphatically not her cup of elba.
But she'd survived it, and she hadn't wanted to kill any of the Qom Jha more than twice a day, and the astromech droid hadn't caused too many problems, and Skywalker had been unexpectedly congenial company. And now, they were finally here.
Of course, from now on they would be facing the High Tower, with all its unknown dangers. But that was all right. Danger was also one of her milieus of choice.
One of Luke's, too, come to think of it.
"There it is," Luke said, his own searching glow rod beam settling on a patch of rock along the wall a few meters ahead down the passageway. "Just this side of that archway."
"Archway?" Mara repeated, frowning as she turned her glow rod that direction. Surely someone hadn't actually built an archway down here in the middle of nowhere, had they?
No. It looked rather like an archway, certainly, with its more or less vertical side pillars creating a two-meter-wide bottleneck in the cavern passageway and its mostly circular upper arch butting up against the ceiling three meters above. But anything more than a cursory glance showed instantly that it was a natural formation, created by some trick of erosion or rock intrusion or long-gone water flow.
"It was a figure of speech," Luke said, shifting his light to the formation, too. "Sort of brings to mind that archway in Hyllyard City on Myrkr, doesn't it?"
"You mean the big mushroom-shaped thing you did your best to drop on us?" she countered.
"The one we had to grind our way through three days' worth of forest to get to? The one where half the stormtroopers in the Empire were sitting around waiting for us to show up?"
"That's the place," he said, and she could sense his amusement at her recitation. "You left out where you wanted to kill me more than anything else in the galaxy."
"I was young then," Mara said briefly, shifting her light away. "So where's this opening?"
"Right there," Luke said, returning his glow rod beam to a crumpled-looking section of wall just below the ceiling. In the center of the light was a small open area that seemed to vanish into the darkness beyond.
"I see it," Mara said.
There didn't seem to be any air coming from it; there must be some other blockage farther down the line. "Looks cozy."
"Not for long," Luke said, handing her his glow rod and igniting his lightsaber. "Everyone stay back—this'll probably throw rock chips around." He swung the blade into the wall, slicing into the stone—
And with a sputter of green light, the blade vanished.
Artoo screeched, and Mara caught the flash of astonishment from Luke as he stumbled briefly before catching his balance. "What happened?" she demanded.
"I don't know," he said, holding the weapon up close and looking obliquely into the end. "I thought I had it locked on... let me try it again."
He touched the switch, and with its usual snap-hiss the blade blazed into existence again. Luke watched it for a moment, then settled into a stable combat stance and again swung the tip of the blade into the rock wall.
And once again, the blade cut only a little ways into the rock before sputtering away. One of the Qom Jha fluttered his wings and said something. "Yes," Luke said, and Mara could feel the sudden ugly suspicion in his mind as distant memories drifted up.
"Yes what?" she demanded.
"There must be cortosis ore in this rock," he told her. He held his glow rod up to the rock face, the light dancing off tiny sparkles.
Mara shook her head. "Never heard of it."
"It's apparently fairly rare," Luke said. "All I really know about it is that it shuts down lightsabers. Corran and I ran into some Force-users once who'd made sets of body armor out of woven cortosis fibers. It was quite a surprise."
"I'll bet," Mara said, a memory of her own drifting up. "So that's what the slab of rock was Palpatine had between the double walls of his private residence."
Luke lifted an eyebrow. "He had cortosis ore around his residence?"
"And around some of his other offices and throne rooms, too, I think," Mara said. "I never knew the proper name for the stuff. From what he told me, I gather that if your lightsaber has dimetris circuits anywhere in the activation loop, hitting the rock starts a feedback crash running through the system that takes only a fraction of a second to shut the whole thing down. A little something extra to slow down any stray Jedi who might come after him."
"The things you learn as Emperor's Hand," Luke murmured. "Do you know if there's any way to cut it?"
"Oh, sure—hundreds of them," Mara assured him, slipping her pack onto the ground. "Aside from the lightsaber thing, the stuff's basically useless. It's too weak and crumbly to build with—a good blaster carbine bolt will shatter it. Let me see—ah."
She pulled out one of the grenades Karrde had sent and shined her glow rod on the yield number.
"Yes, this ought to work if you want to try it."
One of the Qom Jha put in another comment. "Keeper Of Promises thinks grenades would be a bad idea," Luke translated. "He says we're not that far from the High Tower itself, and that sound carries pretty far underground."
"He's probably right," Mara conceded, putting the grenade away and studying the rock where Luke had been cutting. "On the other hand, you're only getting a few centimeters at a time this way. Extra noise or extra delay. Your pick."
Luke ran a hand thoughtfully across the rock, and Mara could sense his concentration as he stretched out to the Force. "Let's try it with the lightsabers for a while," he suggested slowly. "At least a couple of hours. That should give us a better estimate of how long it's actually going to take."
"Fine," Mara said. "We can always switch to the grenades if we decide it's going too slow." She played her glow rod over the rock. "So along with caverns full of predators, we now have a wall that blocks lightsabers. How convenient for someone."
"It could be just coincidence," Luke said. But he didn't sound like he believed it. "Well, there's nothing for it but to get started." He frowned suddenly. "Unless you think this might damage the lightsabers."
Mara shrugged. "I can't see how it would, but I really don't know. Hopefully, we'll be able to pick up any trouble before it gets too bad."
"True," Luke agreed, looking down at his astromech droid. "Artoo: full sensors, and keep an eye on the lightsabers. Let us know if they seem to be overheating or anything." The droid beeped acknowledgment and extended his little sensor unit. "We probably should start this as a triangle," Mara suggested, crossing the passageway and wedging her glow rod into a crevice where it would illuminate the area beneath the Qom Jha sneak hole. "Carving down at an angle on opposite sides. That should keep our blades out of each other's way, and angled cuts are usually better at weakening the underlying rock."
"Sounds good." Luke looked up at the three Qom Jha, grouped close together on the ceiling.
"Splitter Of Stones, why don't you head back to Eater Of Fire Creepers. Tell him we're almost ready for the extra scouts he promised to send into the High Tower with us." The Qom Jha said something. "No, but we will be soon," Luke said. "And you'd better take one of the others with you."
Sitting on a lump of stone beneath the archway, Child Of Winds flapped his wings and said something that sounded eager. "No, not you," Luke told the young Qom Qae firmly. "Keeper Of Promises, you go with him."
There was a brief comment from the Qom Jha that sounded vaguely condescending, and then Splitter Of Stones and Keeper Of Promises dropped off their perches and flapped off back into the darkness toward the cave entrance. Child Of Winds fired off a sarcastic-sounding shot as they left, then settled huffily back onto his rock. "I'll bet I'm missing some really witty repartee here," Mara said sourly, pulling her lightsaber from her belt and taking up position to the left of the cut Luke had started.
"Not really," Luke said, igniting his lightsaber and moving to the opposite side. "You ready?" Mara ignited her lightsaber. "Let's do it."
* * *
They'd been at it for nearly an hour, and had completed the outline for their opening, when Artoo suddenly squealed.
"Hold it, Mara," Luke called, closing down his lightsaber and wondering briefly what was wrong. He'd been concentrating closely on the weapon and hadn't felt even a hint of any problem with it. He glanced over at Artoo—
And paused for a closer look. The droid's sensor unit was extended, but it wasn't aimed at the lightsabers. It was, instead, pointed down the passageway ahead.
"Mara?" he called, shifting the weapon to his left hand and pulling out his glow rod. He played it down the tunnel as, behind him, Mara shut down her lightsaber.
And in the sudden silence, he heard a noise. A rustling sound, like thousands of distant, throaty voices whispering wordlessly to each other. A mindless rumbling that was echoed in his mind as he stretched out toward it with the Force.
And it was getting closer.
"I don't like the sound of that," Mara murmured, stepping to his side.
"Me, neither," Luke said, keying his glow rod to its brightest setting and sweeping it around again. Nothing was visible, but the way the tunnel twisted and bent in both directions that didn't mean much. He ran through his Jedi sense-enhancement techniques...
Fire creepers! Builder With Vines said excitedly from the ceiling behind him. They are coming!
"What?" Mara demanded.
"He said fire creepers are coming," Luke relayed.
"Uh-oh," Mara said. "Their Bargainer's name—'Eater Of Fire Creepers.' "
"Yes," Luke said, looking up at the Qom Jha. His wings were fluttering with some kind of anticipation. "I've been assuming a fire creeper was some sort of plant. Builder With Vines, what are these things?"
They are small but dangerous creatures, the Qom Jha said. They will eat and destroy all things in their path, and can kill anything they find.
"He says small but dangerous," Luke told Mara, sweeping the glow rod down the tunnel again.
"In which case, that much noise implies there must be one blazing lot of them on the way," Mara concluded grimly, looking around. "I get the very bad feeling we're about to meet a new species of roverines."
Luke
shivered. He'd seen holovids of those infamous insect predators on their annual march across the Davirien jungles. Roverines traveled in swarms of hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions, literally stripping the landscape of every bit of plant life as they passed over it. Plant life, and any animals that were too slow or too sick to get out of their way, eating such stragglers down to polished bone. "Builder With Vines, how fast do they travel?" he called.
"Too fast," Mara snapped before the Qom Jha could answer. "Look—here they come." Luke caught his breath. Ahead, just at the farthest spot the glow rod beam could reach, the front edge of a pulsating sheet of black had appeared, filling the entire floor and spilling perhaps a meter up the walls as well. Even as he watched, the edge flowed like some viscous liquid into a slight dip in the floor, reappearing as it flowed up again over the lip.
And Mara was right. They were coming far too fast.
"I'd say we've got maybe a minute before they get here," Mara said. "If you've got any clever tricks up your sleeve, this is the time to trot them out."
Luke bit at his lip, his mind racing. There was a way, he knew, to use the Force to create a low-level personal shield. But to maintain the shield long enough, especially against so many individual adversaries, would be practically impossible. Besides, it was doubtful he could also shield Mara that way, and she almost certainly didn't know the technique herself. Using the Force to move each individual fire creeper out of the way as they passed would be an equally impossible task, even with Mara working alongside of him.
And if these insects were anything like Davirien roverines, it would only take one of them getting through and sinking a poisoned stinger to shake their control and alert the rest of the swarm to the presence of food. No, their only hope was to stay out of the fire creepers' way entirely. Either somewhere farther down the tunnel, or else—
"The archway," Mara said suddenly. "We'll need footrests about two meters up—"
"Right," Luke said, igniting his lightsaber and stepping into the opening as he measured the distance with his eyes. Yes, it would just work.
