by Timothy Zahn
She made no move to get off at this level, but let the slideway carry her on down. The next level was more of the same, with no one coming near the slideway. Luke could sense a definite annoyance beginning to seep through the alertness in Mara's mind, an annoyance aimed both at the aliens'
seeming disinterest in her and at their incompetence at basic internal security. She passed that level, and the next, and started down toward the next—
And suddenly there was a dizzying jolt that slammed like a ground-quake through her emotions, accompanied by a brief flash of pain.
Luke stiffened, eyes jerking open as he scrambled to his feet. But even as he did so he felt a warning flicker of reassurance from her, together with understanding of what had just happened. Without warning, the slideway section she'd been riding on had suddenly reversed direction, yanking her feet out from under her and slamming her flat on her chest on the ramp. And as the moment of dizziness from the impact faded away, her combat emotions flared to full alertness.
She was no longer alone.
Luke clenched his hands into helpless fists as he rode her emotions to try to pierce the hazy image. There were several people standing around her, of the same species as those they'd tangled with once already.
And as near as he could tell through the wavering view, one of them was calling Mara by name. For a moment he continued to talk to her, and though Luke couldn't hear any of the words he had the impression that he was asking her to accompany them farther into the fortress. She agreed. There was a flicker of inevitability as they took her BlasTech, and then the whole group was walking away from the slideway down a corridor that Mara recognized as decorated similarly to the barracks area they'd seen farther below.
Soon—all too soon—the group reached an open door. Another exchange of unheard words, a suppressed flutter of uneasiness from Mara, and she stepped alone through the door into the room beyond.
From her thoughts he could tell that there were others waiting inside for her. One of them—possibly more than one—called out to her as she moved farther inside. Mara answered, surges and flickers of emotion marking bits of information that the vagueness of their contact prevented Luke from getting himself. She continued to walk farther into the room—
And without warning, right in the middle of a step, the touch of her mind cut abruptly off, leaving Luke staring at the quiet lights of the command center. Heart pounding in his chest, he stretched out with the Force, trying to reestablish the contact. Mara? Mara!
But it was no use. There was no response, no returning contact, no sense of her presence. Nothing at all.
She was gone.
CHAPTER
27
Mara took in the room in a glance as she stepped through the doorway. It was long and narrow, stretching perhaps fifty meters back from the door but no more than five meters wide. Near the far wall was a solid-looking chair, facing away from her. Five meters beyond that, right at the room's back wall, were six more of the blue-skinned aliens, all wearing the same tight-fitting burgundy patchwork-design outfits as the ones who had escorted her here from the slideway. And like her escort, each of the aliens was wearing Imperial ranking bars on their chests beneath the high-topped black collars.
But even as her glance took in those details, her main attention was caught by the man in the center of the group, seated in a duplicate of the empty chair facing him a few meters away. His hair was gray, his skin lined with age; but his eyes were alert and shrewd, and his back was straight and proud.
And he was wearing the uniform and insignia of an Imperial admiral.
"So here you are at last, Mara Jade," he said, waving her forward with a gnarled hand. "I must say, you took your time."
"Sorry to have kept you waiting," Mara countered with an edge of sarcasm as she walked toward them. She could feel Luke's concern and nervousness at the back of her mind, and tried to send him a reassurance she didn't entirely feel. These people knew who she was and presumably what she was; and yet here they were, letting her move freely toward them. It all looked far too casual, and she didn't like it one bit. "If your people hadn't been so trigger-poppy, I'd have been here a lot sooner." The admiral bowed his head briefly. "My apologies. For whatever it's worth, it was an accident. Please, come sit down."
Mara continued forward, trying to watch all of them at once, her senses alert for trouble. If they had a trap set, it would be sprung somewhere before she got too close to them... And without warning, right in the middle of a step, Luke's presence suddenly vanished from her mind.
Her brain froze in shock, sheer momentum keeping her feet moving. Luke? Luke! Come on, where are you?
But there was no response. No emotion, no sense of mind or thought, no sense of presence at all. Incredibly, impossibly, he was gone.
Gone.
"Come sit down," the admiral said again. "I imagine you must be quite worn out after all you've been through."
"You're too kind," Mara said, the words sounding distant and mechanical through the pounding of blood in her ears as she forced her feet to keep moving her forward. What in the worlds could possibly have happened to him?
There could only be one answer. Somehow, they'd gotten past his Jedi senses, had penetrated his Jedi powers, and had launched a sudden, undetected, and unblocked attack. And Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, was unconscious.
Or dead.
The thought slashed into her mind, cutting through her heart like a jagged blade. No—it couldn't be. It couldn't. Not now.
The gray-haired man was still gazing at her, a thoughtful look on his face, and with an agonized effort Mara shoved the fear and pain away to the back of her mind. If Luke was merely unconscious, they could still get out of this. If he was dead, she would most likely soon be joining him. Either way, this was no time to let her emotions muddy her thinking.
She made it the rest of the way to the chair and sank carefully into it. "You don't need to look quite so worried," the admiral said soothingly. "We have no intention of harming you."
"Of course not," Mara said, hearing the bitterness in her voice. "Just like you had no intention of harming me on my last trip in here?"
The admiral's lip twitched. "As I said before, that was a regrettable accident," he said. "They were shooting at the vermin flying around near you—we've had some problems in the past with them getting inside. When you started shooting back, I'm afraid they jumped to the wrong conclusion. My deepest apologies."
"That makes me feel so much better," Mara growled. "Now what?" The admiral seemed mildly surprised. "We talk," he said. "Why else do you think we gave you our location in the first place? We wanted you to come see us."
"Ah," Mara said. So her guess earlier had been right—those two ships had deliberately flown off on vectors that would lead her here.
Unless, of course, he was lying after the fact to cover up his pilots' blunders. "You could have just sent me an invitation," she told him, feeling her forehead crease slightly as she stretched out toward him with the Force. Odd; for some reason, she couldn't seem to touch him. Not him, not the aliens flanking him. "Or would that have been too straightforward and easy?" The admiral smiled knowingly. "With an open invitation I doubt you would have come alone. Something more vague seemed a better arrangement. I apologize for not having an escort waiting, by the way—your landing caught us a bit by surprise."
"As did your arrival earlier inside the fortress," the alien standing at the admiral's right added, his voice smooth and cultured, his glowing red eyes steady on Mara. "If we'd known you were coming our people would have been much more careful with their charrics. May I ask how you managed to penetrate the fortress without being spotted?"
"We turned ourselves into vermin and flew in, of course," Mara told him. "It was faster than walking."
"Of course," the admiral said with a smile. "Or perhaps you scaled up the side of the fortress and came in through one of the cracks?"
Mara shook her head. "Sorry. Trade secret."
>
"Ah," the admiral said, still smiling. "It's not important; I was merely curious. The point is that you are here, Mara, just as we wished. May I call you Mara, by the way? Or would you prefer Captain Jade or some other title?"
"Call me anything you want," Mara told him. "And what should I call you? Or doesn't anyone in this place have a name?"
"All thinking beings have names, Mara," the man said. "Mine is Admiral Voss Parck. It's a pleasure to meet you at last."
"Likewise," Mara said, staring at him as a ripple of shock went through her. Voss Parck: the Victory Star Destroyer captain who had found Thrawn on a deserted world and brought him to the Imperial court. And who had subsequently joined him in his shame and supposed exile from the Empire.
But the man in front of her...
"I imagine I look rather older than you might have expected," Parck said offhandedly. "Assuming you had any expectations at all, of course. I may have overly flattered myself to assume the Emperor's Hand would even remember my name, let alone my face."
"I remember both," Mara said. "You were one of the people every faction in the court used as an example of what not to do in the middle of a political fight." She glanced at the aliens. "But then, those were the same people who also thought Palpatine sent Thrawn out here as a punishment. So what did they know?"
"And you think Mitth'raw'nuruodo's mission was otherwise?" the alien at Parck's right asked.
"I know otherwise," Mara assured him, looking him up and down. "Tell me, Admiral, does the whole race talk like Thrawn? Or is this some special cultural training you give your troops in case they're all invited out for High Day drinks?"
The alien's eyes narrowed—"Calm yourself, Stent," Parck said dryly, holding up a hand. "You must understand that one of Mara Jade's most subtle weapons has always been her talent for irritating people. Irritated people don't think clearly, you see."
"Or maybe I just don't like any of you very much," Mara said, feeling a touch of annoyance at Parck's quick and casual insight. Usually her enemies didn't figure that one out nearly so quickly. The slower ones never figured it out at all. "But enough about me. Let's hear about this grand push of yours out into the Unknown Regions. You gave up a lot, after all: Coruscant, the status and camaraderie of the Imperial Fleet—" Deliberately, she looked at Stent. "Civilization." Stent's eyes narrowed again, but Parck merely smiled. "You've met Thrawn," he said, his voice softening to near-reverence. "Any true warrior would have given up whatever was necessary for the chance to serve under him."
"Except those of his own people, I gather," Mara countered. "Or did I hear the story wrong of how he wound up on Coruscant?"
"No, I'm sure you heard correctly," Parck said with a shrug. "But like everything else people think they know about Thrawn, that particular story is somewhat incomplete."
"Is it, now," Mara said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs, a posture designed by its apparent helplessness to put suspicious people at ease. With the same motion she surreptitiously rocked the chair back a bit, trying to gauge its weight. Very heavy, unfortunately, which eliminated it as a grab-and-throw weapon. "I seem to have some time on my hands. Why don't you start at the beginning?"
Stent laid his hand on Parck's shoulder. "Admiral, I'm not sure—"
"It's all right, Stent," Parck calmed him, his eyes steady on Mara. "We can hardly expect her help unless she has all the facts, now, can we?"
Mara frowned. "My help in what?"
"It started better than half a century ago," Parck said, ignoring her question. "Back when the Outbound Flight project was preparing to fly, just before the Clone Wars broke out. Well before your time, of course—I don't know if you'd even have heard of it."
"I've read about the Outbound Flight," Mara said. "A group of Jedi Masters and others decided to head out to another galaxy and see what was there."
"Ultimately, their destination was indeed another galaxy." Parck nodded. "But before that particular expedition began, it was decided to send them and their ship on a, shall we say, shakedown cruise: a great circle through part of the vast Unknown Regions of our own galaxy." He waved a hand back toward Stent and the guards. "A route, as it turned out, that was to bring it across the edge of territory controlled by the Chiss."
Chiss. So that was what they called themselves. Mara ran the name through her memory, searching for any reference the Emperor might have made to them. Nothing. "And the Chiss didn't feel like being good hosts that day?"
"Actually, the ruling Chiss families never had the chance to decide one way or the other," Parck said. "Palpatine had already decided that the Jedi represented a grave threat to the Old Republic, and had sent an assault force into the region to quietly take care of Outbound Flight when they showed up."
"And there they were, busily setting up their ambush, when Thrawn found them." He shook his head. "You have to understand the situation, Mara, to truly appreciate it. On one side were handpicked units of Palpatine's own private army, equipped with fifteen top-line combat ships. On the other side were Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo of the Chiss Expansionary Defense and perhaps twelve small and insignificant border patrol ships."
"I appreciate it just fine," Mara said, suppressing a shudder. "How badly did Thrawn slaughter them?"
"Utterly," Parck said, the ghost of a smile creasing his face. "I believe only a single one of Palpatine's ships remained capable of flight, and that only because Thrawn wanted some of the invaders left alive to interrogate.
"Fortunately for that remnant, and perhaps one day for the galaxy as a whole, among the survivors was the leader of the task force, one of Palpatine's advisers. A man named Kinman Doriana." Mara swallowed. That name she most certainly did remember. He'd been Palpatine's right-hand man, supposedly one of the grand architects of his rise to power. "I've heard it, yes," she said.
"I thought you would have," Parck said, nodding. "Very much a shadow adviser—few people ever even heard his name, let alone knew his true position and power. But among those who did it was sometimes speculated that his untimely death left a gap which Palpatine ultimately tried to fill with three other people: Darth Vader, Grand Admiral Thrawn—" He smiled again. "And you."
"You're too kind," Mara said evenly, not even a whisper of pride rising within her at such a statement. So she had indeed had position and authority in Palpatine's eyes, perhaps more than even she had realized.
But it didn't matter. That part of her life had died, unmourned, a long time ago. "You're very well informed, too."
"This was Thrawn's personal base," Parck said, waving a hand around him. "And information, as you may have noticed, was one of his few obsessions. The databases in the fortress core below us are possibly the most extensive in the galaxy."
"Magnificent, I'm sure," Mara said. "Too bad all his knowledge couldn't keep him from getting killed."
She had hoped to spark some kind of reaction from them. To her surprise, though, none of them so much as blinked. Parck, in fact, actually smiled. "Never assume, Mara," he warned. "But that's getting ahead of the story. Where were we?"
"Doriana and Outbound Flight," Mara said.
"Thank you," Parck said. "At any rate, Doriana explained the entire situation to Thrawn and convinced him that Outbound Flight had to be destroyed. Two weeks later, when the ship arrived in Chiss space, Thrawn was waiting."
"Good-bye, Outbound Flight," Mara murmured.
"Yes," Parck agreed. "But though that was the end of that, it was the beginning of trouble for Thrawn himself. The Chiss military philosophy, you see, did not recognize the morality of preemptive strikes. What Thrawn did was, in their minds, equivalent to murder." Mara snorted gently. "No offense, Admiral, but it sounds to me like it's your perceptions that need an overhaul. How can the slaughter of a bunch of Jedi Masters minding their own business be anything but murder?"
Parck looked at her gravely. "You'll understand, Mara," he said, his voice almost trembling. "In time, you'll understand."
Mara fr
owned. The man was either a terrific actor or there was something buried in all of this that had him well and truly terrified. Again, she stretched out with the Force; again, she couldn't seem to touch him at all.
With an obvious effort, Parck pulled himself together. "But again, I'm getting ahead of myself. As I said, Thrawn's action did not sit well with the ruling Chiss families. He was able to talk his way clear and retain his position, but from that point on they watched him very carefully.
"And eventually, as he dealt with some of the Chiss's enemies, he pushed things just a little too far. He was brought up on charges, stripped of all rank, and sent into exile on an uninhabited world at the edge of Imperial space."
"Where who should show up but a Victory Star Destroyer," Mara said. "Captained by a man willing to take the risk of bringing him back to Coruscant." She raised her eyebrows. "Only it wasn't nearly as much of a risk as everyone thought, was it?"
Parck smiled. "It most certainly wasn't," he said. "In fact, I learned later that Palpatine had made at least two unsuccessful attempts over the years to contact the Chiss and offer Thrawn a position with his soon-to-be Empire. No, he was most pleased with my gift, though because of the political realities of the court he had to keep that pleasure hidden."
"So Thrawn went into private military training and eventually rose to the highest rank Palpatine could offer," Mara said. "And then, what, arranged to have himself sent back here so he could make the Chiss ruling families pay for what they'd done to him?"
Parck looked shocked. "Certainly not. The Chiss are his people, Mara—he has no interest in hurting them. Quite the opposite, in fact. He came back here to protect them."
"From what?"
Stent gave a contemptuous snort. "From what," he bit out harshly. "You soft, complacent female. You think that because you lounge around your quiet worlds behind a ring of warships that the rest of the galaxy is a safe place to live? There are a hundred different threats out there that would freeze your blood if you knew about them. The ruling families can't stop them; neither can any other power in the region. If our people are to be protected, it's up to us."
