by Timothy Zahn
"All right, here's the plan," Luke told her, stretching out with the Force. As near as he could tell, the entire area outside the hidden door was clear. "We'll leave Artoo and the Qom Jha in here and do a little reconnoiter on our own."
"Sounds good." Mara pulled out her blaster and checked it, and Luke could sense her working to control her private misgivings about going back in there. Understandable, of course; she was the one who'd gotten shot. Luke had had something of the same trouble the first time he'd gone back to visit Cloud City. "How about leaving one of our comlinks here with them?"
"Good idea," Luke agreed, pulling his comlink from his belt and putting it in Artoo's light-duty grasping arm. "Don't forget and turn it off," he admonished the droid. Artoo warbled indignantly, the translation scrolling across the datapad. "Yes, I know," Luke assured him. "I was just kidding."
"What?" Mara asked.
"He said turning off comlinks at critical moments was Threepio's trick," Luke told her. "Private joke. You ready?"
He could sense her reaching out to the Force for calm. "Ready," she said. "Let's do it." The secret door, gratifyingly enough, opened as quietly as the other one had. With Luke in the lead, they stepped out, closing the door behind them.
"Now this," Mara said quietly in his ear, "is like the Hijarna fortress." Luke nodded acknowledgment, looking around. They were in a vast chamber, with short wall segments scattered around apparently at random linking the floor with the relatively low ceiling. The shiny wall coverings, elaborate flooring, and wall sconces they'd seen below were absent, leaving nothing but unadorned and unrelieved black stone. Despite that, though, the place seemed oddly airy.
"Doesn't look like our friends downstairs are using this area," he said. "I wonder why." Mara took a few steps to the side and pointed around the end of one of the wall segments.
"There's your answer," she said. "Come on—let's go see." She disappeared around the wall. Luke followed, noticing for the first time a gentle flow of air coming from that direction.
And the reason for it was quickly clear. Beyond the wall, at the far side of the room, the black stone had been gashed open to the sky.
"Collateral damage from the battle that knocked down that tower, I'll bet," Mara said, already crossing to the gash.
"Be careful," Luke warned her, hurrying to catch up.
"Yeah, yeah," Mara said. She reached the gash and cautiously looked out. "I was right," she said, pointing. "There it is. Or what's left of it."
Luke reached her side and looked out. They were looking across a vast, circular rooftop that slanted downward from their position at a reasonably steep angle. The stub of Mara's ruined tower was ahead of them and slightly to the left, eighty meters or so away. The distance and dim sunlight made it hard to tell for sure, but to Luke's eye the jagged edge looked slightly melted. "And you say this stone absorbs turbolaser fire," he said.
"Like a very dry sponge," Mara agreed grimly. "Whoever the builders of this place were, they must have had some impressive enemies."
"Let's hope they were satisfied with wrecking that one tower and then went away," Luke said, giving the rest of the rooftop a quick but careful examination. Symmetrically placed on the right side of the slanting rooftop was another tower, this one undamaged, stretching a good ninety meters into the sky and topped with a ring of ominous-looking protrusions. Weapons systems, undoubtedly. At the far end of the roof, almost two hundred meters from where he and Mara stood, he could see twin bumps that seemed to extend outward from the roof and then continue down the wall on that side. Twin guardhouses, possibly, flanking the main entrance. Beyond the roof, he could see a smooth surface stretching through the craggy mountaintop away from the fortress that could only be an access road. In the center of the fortress was a thirty-meter-long structure whose flat-topped roof extended horizontally out from the main rooftop, making the whole thing look rather like a round-cornered wedge that had been stuck on as an afterthought.
"There's a landing pad on top," Mara said, pointing to the structure. "You can just make out the markings."
Luke nodded. The markings were dim, but visible enough when you knew to look for them.
"They probably have lights they can turn on when something friendly is on its way in."
"With turbolasers ready at the top of that tower in case they're not so friendly." Easing through the gap in the wall, Mara took a few steps out onto the rooftop, peering toward the landing pad. "Looks like the area under the pad is open in front," she reported. "Probably their hangar. Might be a handy place to make for if we ever get caught too far away from our exit." She turned back around—
And her breath caught, a surge of surprise shooting through her. "Whoa," she said, her eyes tracking upward. "Come take a look at this."
Maneuvering through the crack, Luke crossed to her side and turned around. Rising from atop the room they'd just been in was yet another tower.
And it had friends. Spaced around the curve of the fortress rooftop to the left were three more, all of the same design. Even with Luke's skewed perspective, he could tell that these four rear towers were both thicker and a good twenty meters taller than the single one standing below them. And as with the one below, each of these was also crowned by a ring of weapons emplacements.
"This must have been one impressive place in its heyday," Mara commented. Her voice was steady, but Luke could tell that she was feeling the same vague uneasiness he was. "Like the one on Hijama. I wish to blazes I knew what they were built to protect."
"Or to defend against," Luke added, taking one last look around the rooftop. No lights; no movement; no signs of life at all. "Let's get back inside and find the way down." The way down was on the far side of one of the other wall segments: a smaller version of the spiral slideway they'd used in the barracks section down below. Unlike that one, though, the slideway here wasn't moving. "Either damaged or shut down for lack of use," Mara said, easing a cautious eye over the edge. "Next level down doesn't look inhabited, either."
"This whole section is probably out of use," Luke said as they started down. "The way the roof slopes toward the broken tower, each of the levels ought to have a little more floor space as we go down. They've probably set up shop on the larger levels."
"Makes sense," Mara agreed. "Let's keep going until we reach a floor with a working slideway somewhere on it. That should be either their highest working level or close to it." The floors did indeed extend farther outward as they continued down, with the pattern of random wall segments changing with each level. It wasn't until the fourth level that Luke finally caught the faint hum of working machinery. "I think we're here," he murmured, shifting his grip on his lightsaber and stretching out with the Force. There still didn't seem to be anyone nearby.
"Looks like it," Mara agreed, cupping a hand around one ear. "That sounds like one of the slideways. Shall we take a look?"
Luke nodded. "I'll go first. You stay behind me."
He headed out, moving as silently as he could across the empty space, trying to ignore Mara's annoyance from behind him. She could call it overprotectiveness if she wanted—and she undoubtedly was calling it exactly that—but after watching her do five days in a healing trance he much preferred to err on the side of caution. He reached one of the rare—at least on this level—wall segments and eased an eye around it. Beyond it, set right up against the far wall, was the spiral slideway they had heard. "All right," Luke murmured over his shoulder. "Real easy, now—" He sensed Mara's emotional call; but it wasn't coming from directly behind him. He glanced around, feeling a flash of annoyance of his own as he spotted her standing at the corner of one of the other wall segments twenty meters off to his left. She beckoned to him, a quick, impatient gesture. And there was a sudden sense of dread in her emotions...
He made it to her side in less than ten seconds. "What is it?" he hissed. She nodded toward the wall, a silent churning in her eyes and mind. "Around there," she said. Lightsaber ready in his hand, Luke slid aro
und the end of the wall segment. Beyond it was a large open space that had been set up as a sort of command center, though it was currently as unoccupied as everywhere else they'd been today. Two circles of command consoles had been laid out, the boards and displays winking status lights toward the empty chairs in front of them. To one side, a larger and more elaborate chair ringed by its own status boards had been set up on a meter-high platform where it could overlook the entire operation. And in the center of it all was a sight that sent a shiver of memory along Luke's spine: a holographic map of the galaxy, with the sectors of the New Republic, the Empire, and the rest of the known regions marked out in a bewildering array of a dozen different colors. The whole variegated mosaic stretched across perhaps a quarter of the huge spiral, fading into neutral white where the edges of the Outer Rim Territories gave way to the vastness of the Unknown Regions beyond. It was a duplicate of the galactic holo Emperor Palpatine had had in his throne room in Mount Tantiss.
Luke swallowed, tearing his eyes away from the holo to give the surrounding equipment a closer look. Yes, the consoles were indeed Imperial issue: status and computer-access boards from a Star Destroyer or other major capital ship. The chairs, likewise, were straight from a Star Destroyer's bridge crew pits.
And the overseer chair and boards were those of an Imperial fleet admiral. Such as the one Grand Admiral Thrawn would have used.
He felt the whisper of air as Mara came up close beside him. "I think we've found our link to the Imperials," he told her. "It looks like even Palpatine may have had a hand in this place." Her hair swished against his shoulder as she shook her head. "You're missing the point, Luke," she muttered. "Look at that holo. I mean really look at it." Luke frowned, focusing on the galactic spiral again. What in space was she referring to?
And then, abruptly, he caught his breath. No. No—he was seeing things. Surely he was seeing things.
But he wasn't. At the edge of the known galaxy, where Palpatine's holo had shown only the white stars of the Unknown Regions, an entirely new area had been colored in.
A huge new area.
"Funny, isn't it," Mara said, the dread still swirling through her. "He was exiled from the Imperial court, you know. Just summarily thrown out."
"Who was?" Luke asked.
"Grand Admiral Thrawn," she said. "Picked the wrong side in one of the political battles that were always going on there and lost. Everyone else in the cabal wound up demoted or imprisoned or else reassigned to a semiprivate torture chamber like garrison duty in the Outer Rim. But not Thrawn. Oh, no. Even the Outer Rim was too good for this ungrateful alien who'd been accepted into Imperial society and paid them back for their kindness with a slap in the face. No, they had to come up with something very special for him."
"And that something was exile to the Unknown Regions?"
Mara nodded. "If the Outer Rim was a torture cell, the Unknown Regions was a fully populated rancor pit," she said. "So with some prodding—and probably a lot of deal-making—they got Palpatine to put him aboard a Star Destroyer and send him on a one-way trip past the Outer Rim." She snorted out a derisive laugh. "And just to add insult to injury, they managed to make it a mapping expedition. Imagine—one of the best strategists the Empire had ever known being reduced to mapping duty. Ruining his life and his reputation with a single stroke. I'll bet they were chuckling together about it for years afterward."
Luke shook his head. "I seem to be missing the joke."
"So did they," Mara said, her dark mood darkening even further. "The joke is that it apparently never occurred to any of them that Palpatine was always one step ahead of whatever was happening in his court. And if he was a step ahead, a strategist like Thrawn was at least two steps ahead." Luke's mouth felt dry. "Are you saying that Thrawn and Palpatine had the whole thing planned out from the beginning?"
"Of course they did." Mara gestured at the holo. "Just look at all the territory he opened up. He couldn't possibly have done that by himself, with just a single Star Destroyer, Palpatine must have been feeding him men and ships all along the way."
"But that can't all be Imperial territory," Luke said. "I mean... it can't."
"Why not?" Mara countered. "Oh, I agree there probably aren't more than a few actual colonies out there. But you can bet there are Imperial garrisons scattered all over the place, plus intel centers and listening posts and probably a few full-blown shipyards. And if I know Thrawn, probably a whole network of alliances with the natives, too."
"But if that's Imperial territory, why hasn't the Empire made any use of it?" Luke argued. "I've seen the data, Mara—they're down to practically nothing over there."
"It's obvious, isn't it?" she said quietly. "They're not using it because they don't know it's there." For a long minute neither of them spoke. Luke gazed at the holo, listening to the distant hum of the spiral slideway, the terrible implications of those gently glowing lights tumbling over each other in his mind. There had to be the equivalent of two hundred fifty sectors there—nearly thirty times the Empire's current size.
With thirty times the Empire's number of warships, garrisons, and shipyards? Very possibly. If all those resources were suddenly put at Bastion's disposal... "We need more information," he said, starting toward the console rings. "Let's see if there's a computer jack Artoo can plug into."
"Risky," Mara warned. "This is a command center, and command centers always have security flags set up to catch unauthorized access."
He stopped, grimacing. Unfortunately, she had a point. "All right, then," he said, turning again to face her. "What's your plan?"
"We go directly to the source." Mara took a deep breath. "I go downstairs and talk to them." Luke felt his mouth drop open. "And you call my plans risky?"
"You have a better suggestion?"
"That's beside the point," he growled. "Anyway, if someone's going to go down there, it ought to be me."
"Not a chance," Mara said firmly. "Point one: they shot at you on the way in, but they didn't shoot at me. Point two: you said yourself you had the feeling they wanted to see me. Point three: if the situation degenerates to the point where a rescue is called for, you and your Jedi skills are better against a crowd than mine. And point four—"
With a tight smile, she unhooked her lightsaber and stepped over to him. "Point four is that they may not know the extent of my Force skills," she said, handing him the weapon. "If shove comes to shake, that may give me the edge I'd need."
Luke fingered her lightsaber, feeling the familiar coolness in his hand. His own first lightsaber, the one Obi-Wan had given him, which he had given her in turn on the palace rooftop on Coruscant. He'd been younger than she was when he'd first taken that lightsaber into danger. Younger, less experienced, and far brasher. But still...
"And the last thing I need right now is for you to start getting all overprotective," Mara added, just the hint of a warning glare in her eyes. "I've survived just fine all these years. I can take care of myself."
Luke locked eyes with her. Odd, he thought, that he'd forgotten just how brilliant a green those eyes were. Though perhaps it was just the lighting. "No way I can talk you out of it?" he asked, trying one last time.
"Not unless you can come up with a better plan," she said, pulling out her comlink and sleeve blaster. "Here—there's no point in my keeping these. They'll just take them away from me anyway. I'll keep my BlasTech; they'd be suspicious if I came in completely unarmed." Luke took the comlink and sleeve blaster from her, his hand lingering on hers before she withdrew it, oddly unwilling to let it go. "I wish we hadn't left the other comlink with Artoo," he said. "You could have kept this one and I'd have been able to listen in on what was going on."
"If something goes sour, you might need to whistle up the Qom Jha in a hurry," she reminded him.
"Anyway, can't you follow me with the Force?"
"I can follow your presence," Luke said. "I can get your emotions and probably some images that way. But I can't get much in the way of
words."
"Too bad you're not Palpatine," Mara commented, busying herself with removing her sleeve holster. "I could talk to him just fine."
Luke felt a stab of guilt and shame, her earlier indictment of his dark side dabbling flooding back. She caught the emotion, or else the expression on his face, and smiled tightly. "Hey, I was kidding," she assured him, handing him the sleeve holster. "Look, you just follow what you can. I'll give you a full report on the details when I get back."
"All right," Luke said. "Be careful, okay?"
To his surprise, she reached out and took his hand. "I'll be fine," she told him, squeezing his hand briefly before letting go. "See you."
And with that she was gone, slipping out of the command center and around the wall toward the slideway.
With a sigh, Luke stepped over to the nearby wall segment and sank down into a crouch with his back pressed against it. Closing his eyes for better concentration, he stretched out with the Force. In times past, on Dagobah and Tierfon and other places, he'd been able to use the Force to obtain glimpses of future places and events. Now, as Mara headed down the slideway, he tried to focus that same ability onto real-time observation, hoping to be able to see what was happening to her.
It worked, too, at least after a fashion. The image he got of Mara and her surroundings was faint and foggy, heavily colored by her emotions and shifting mental state, and with the same discomfiting tendency to ripple or metamorphose that seemed to be characteristic of Jedi visions in general. But with Mara's mind there to act as anchor, he was able to quickly drag the images back to something at least vaguely understandable. It was hardly ideal, but it seemed clear that it was all he was going to get.
The slideway from this level seemed to be roughly the same size as the one they had used to get down from the roof. Mara moved to the inner section and headed down, apparently making no attempt at concealment. The lack of any sudden combat twinges in her emotions as she reached the next level implied she didn't see anyone, though he had the impression that she was still hearing distant sounds.
