by Timothy Zahn
“The whole thing’s burnin’ useless, if you ask me,” the first growled, clearing his ID the same way. “Who they expect’s gonna come aboard, anyway? Some burnin’ pirate gang or something?”
Luke glanced questioningly at Karrde, wondering what they should do. But Mara was already moving toward the two gunners, the ID from her borrowed flight suit in hand. She stepped between them, reached the ID toward the slot—
And whipped the edge of her hand hard into the side of the first gunner’s neck.
The man’s head snapped sideways and he toppled to the floor without a sound. The second gunner had just enough time to gurgle something unintelligible before Mara sent him to join his friend.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” she snapped, feeling along the line where the door fitted into the car’s cylindrical wall. “Locked solid. Come on, Skywalker, get busy here.”
Luke ignited his lightsaber. “How much time have we got?” he asked as he carved a narrow exit through part of the door.
“Not much,” Mara said grimly. “Turbolift cars have sensors that keep track of the number of people inside. It’ll give us maybe another minute to do our ID checks before reporting us to the system computer. I need to get to a terminal before the flag transfers from there to the main computer and brings the stormtroopers down on top of us.”
Luke finished the cut and closed down the lightsaber as Mara and Karrde lifted the section down and out of the way. Beyond was the tunnel wall, not quite in line with the hole. “Good,” Mara said, easing through the gap. “We were starting to rotate when the system froze down. There’s room here to get into the tunnel.”
The others followed. The turbolift tunnel was roughly rectangular in cross-section, with gleaming guide rails along the walls, ceiling, and floor. Luke could feel the tingle of electric fields as he passed close beside the rails, and he made a mental note not to touch them. “Where are we going?” he whispered down the tunnel toward Mara.
“Right here,” she whispered back, stopping at a red-rimmed plate set in the wall between the guide rails. “Access tunnel—should lead back to a service droid storage room and a computer terminal.”
The lightsaber made quick work of the access panel’s safety interlock. Mara darted through the opening, blaster in hand, and disappeared down the dark tunnel beyond. Luke and Karrde followed past a double row of deactivated maintenance droids, each with a bewildering array of tools fanned out from their limbs as if for inspection. Beyond the droids the tunnel widened into a small room where, as predicted, a terminal sat nestled amid the tubes and cables. Mara was already hunched over it; but as Luke stepped into the room he caught the sudden shock in her sense. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“They’ve shut down the main computer,” she said, a stunned expression on her face. “Not just bypassed or put it on standby. Shut it down.”
“The Grand Admiral must have figured out you can get into it,” Karrde said, coming up behind Luke. “We’d better get moving. Do you have any idea where we are?”
“I think we’re somewhere above the aft hangar bays,” Mara said. “Those service techs got off just forward of the central crew section, and we hadn’t gone very far down yet.”
“Above the hangar bays,” Karrde repeated thoughtfully. “Near the vehicle deep storage area, in other words?”
Mara frowned at him. “Are you suggesting we grab a ship from up there?”
“Why not?” Karrde countered. “They’ll probably be expecting us to go directly to one of the hangar bays. They might not be watching for us to come in via vehicle lift from deep storage.”
“And if they are, it’ll leave us trapped like clipped mynocks when the stormtroopers come to get us,” Mara retorted. “Trying to shoot our way out of deep storage—”
“Hold it,” Luke cut her off, Jedi combat senses tingling a warning. “Someone’s coming.”
Mara muttered a curse and dropped down behind the computer terminal, blaster trained on the door. Karrde, still weaponless, faded back into the partial cover of the service tunnel and the maintenance droids lined up there. Luke flattened himself against the wall beside the door, lightsaber held ready but not ignited. He let the Force flow through him as he poised for action, listening to the dark, purposeful senses of the troopers coming up to the door and recognizing to his regret that no subtle mind touches would accomplish anything here. Gripping his lightsaber tightly, he waited …
Abruptly, with only a flicker of warning, the door slid open and two stormtroopers were in the room, blaster rifles at the ready. Luke raised his lightsaber, thumb on the activation switch—
And from the tunnel where Karrde had disappeared a floodlight suddenly winked on, accompanied by the sound of metal grinding against metal.
The stormtroopers took a long step into the room, angling to opposite sides of the door, their blaster rifles swinging reflexively toward the light and sound as two black-clad naval troopers crowded into the room behind them. The stormtroopers spotted Mara crouching beside the terminal, and the blaster rifles changed direction to track back toward her.
Mara was faster. Her blaster spat four times, two shots per stormtrooper, and both Imperials dropped to the floor, one with blaster still firing uselessly in death reflex. The naval troopers behind them dived for cover, firing wildly toward their attacker.
A single sweep of the lightsaber caught them both.
Luke closed down the weapon and ducked his head out the doorway for a quick look around. “All clear,” he told Mara, coming back in.
“For now, anyway,” she countered, holstering her blaster and picking up two of the blaster rifles. “Come on.”
Karrde was waiting for them at the access panel they’d come in by. “Doesn’t sound like the turbolifts have been reactivated yet,” he said. “It should be safe to move through the tunnels a while longer. Any trouble with the search party?”
“No,” Mara said, handing him one of the blaster rifles. “Effective diversion, by the way.”
“Thank you,” Karrde said. “Maintenance droids are such useful things to have around. Deep storage?”
“Deep storage,” Mara agreed heavily. “You just better be right about this.”
“My apologies in advance if I’m not. Let’s go.”
Slowly, by comlink and intercom, the reports began to come in. They weren’t encouraging.
“No sign of them anywhere in the detention level area,” a stormtrooper commander reported to Pellaeon with the distracted air of someone trying to hold one conversation while listening to another. “One of the waste chute gratings in detention has been found cut open—that must be how they got Karrde out.”
“Never mind how they got him out,” Pellaeon growled. “The recriminations can wait until later. The important thing right now is to find them.”
“The security teams are searching the area of that turbolift alert,” the other said, his tone implying that anything a stormtrooper commander said must by definition be important. “So far there’s been no contact.”
Thrawn turned from the two communications officers who had been relaying messages for him to and from the hangar bays. “How was the waste chute grating cut open?” he asked.
“I have no information on that,” the commander said.
“Get it,” Thrawn said, his tone icy. “Also inform your search parties that two maintenance techs have reported seeing a man in a TIE fighter flight suit in the vicinity of that waste collector. Warn your guards in the aft hangar bays, as well.”
“Yes, sir,” the commander said.
Pellaeon looked at Thrawn. “I don’t see how it matters right now how they got Karrde out, sir,” he said. “Wouldn’t our resources be better spent in finding them?”
“Are you suggesting that we send all our soldiers and stormtroopers converging on the hangar bays?” Thrawn asked mildly. “That we thereby assume our quarry won’t seek to cause damage elsewhere before attempting their escape?”
“
No, sir,” Pellaeon said, feeling his face warming. “I realize we need to protect the entire ship. It just seems to me to be a low-priority line of inquiry.”
“Indulge me, Captain,” Thrawn said quietly. “It’s only a hunch, but—”
“Admiral,” the stormtrooper commander interrupted. “Report from search team 207, on deck 98 nexus 326-KK.” Pellaeon’s fingers automatically started for his keyboard; came up short as he remembered that there was no computer mapping available to pinpoint the location for him. “They’ve found team 102, all dead,” the commander continued. “Two were killed by blaster fire; the other two …” He hesitated. “There seems to be some confusion about the other two.”
“No confusion, Commander,” Thrawn put in, his voice suddenly deadly. “Instruct them to look for near-microscopic cuts across the bodies with partial cauterization.”
Pellaeon stared at him. There was a cold fire in the Grand Admiral’s eyes that hadn’t been there before. “Partial cauterization?” he repeated stupidly.
“And then inform them,” Thrawn continued, “that one of the intruders is the Jedi Luke Skywalker.”
Pellaeon felt his mouth drop open. “Skywalker?” he gasped. “That’s impossible. He’s on Jomark with C’baoth.”
“Was Captain,” Thrawn corrected icily. “He’s here now.” He took a deep, controlled breath; and as he let it out, the momentary anger seemed to fade away. “Obviously, our vaunted Jedi Master failed to keep him there, as he claimed he’d be able to. And I’d say that we now have our proof that Skywalker’s escape from Myrkr wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision.”
“You think Karrde and the Rebellion have been working together all along?” Pellaeon asked.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Thrawn told him, turning to look over his shoulder. “Rukh?”
The silent gray figure moved to Thrawn’s side. “Yes, my lord?”
“Get a squad of noncombat personnel together,” Thrawn ordered. “Have them collect all the ysalamiri from Engineering and Systems Control and move them down to the hangar bays. There aren’t nearly enough to cover the whole area, so use your hunter’s instincts on their placement. The more we can hamper Skywalker’s Jedi tricks, the less trouble we’ll have taking him.”
The Noghri nodded and headed for the bridge exit. “We could also use the ysalamiri from the bridge—” Pellaeon began.
“Quiet a moment, Captain,” Thrawn cut him off, his glowing eyes gazing unseeing through the side viewport and the edge of the planet turning beneath them. “I need to think. Yes. They’ll try to travel in concealment whenever possible, I think. For now, that means the turbolift tunnels.” He gestured to the two communications officers still standing beside his chair. “Order turbolift control to put the system back into normal service except for the 326-KK nexus between deck 98 and the aft hangar bays,” he instructed them. “All cars in that area are to be moved to the nearest cluster point and remain locked there until further notice.”
One of the officers nodded and began relaying the order into his comlink. “You trying to herd them toward the hangar bays?” Pellaeon hazarded.
“I’m trying to herd them in from a specific direction, yes,” Thrawn nodded. His forehead was creased with thought, his eyes still gazing at nothing in particular. “The question is what they’ll do once they realize that. Presumably try to break out of the nexus; but in which direction?”
“I doubt they’ll be foolish enough to return to the supply ship,” Pellaeon suggested. “My guess is that they’ll bypass the aft hangar bays entirely and try for one of the assault shuttles in the forward bays.”
“Perhaps,” Thrawn agreed slowly. “If Skywalker is directing the escape, I’d say that was likely. But if Karrde is giving the orders …” He fell silent, again deep in thought.
It was somewhere to start, anyway. “Have extra guards placed around the assault shuttles,” Pellaeon ordered the stormtrooper commander. “Better put some men inside the ships, too, in case the intruders make it that far.”
“No, they won’t make for the shuttles if Karrde’s in command,” Thrawn murmured. “He’s more apt to try something less obvious. Perhaps TIE fighters; or perhaps he’ll return to the supply shuttles after all, assuming we won’t expect that. Or else—”
Abruptly, his head snapped around to look at Pellaeon. “The Millennium Falcon,” he demanded. “Where is it?”
“Ah—” Again, Pellaeon’s hand reached uselessly for his command board. “I ordered it sent to deep storage, sir. I don’t know whether or not the order’s been carried out.”
Thrawn jabbed a finger at the stormtrooper commander. “You—get someone on the hangar bay computer and find that ship. Then get a squad there.”
The Grand Admiral looked at Pellaeon … and for the first time since ordering the intruder alert, he smiled. “We have them, Captain.”
Karrde pulled away the section of cable duct that Luke had cut and carefully looked through the opening. “No one seems to be around,” he murmured over his shoulder, his voice almost inaudible over the background rumble of machinery coming through from the room beyond. “I think we’ve beaten them here.”
“If they’re coming at all,” Luke said.
“They’re coming,” Mara growled. “Bet on it. If there was one thing Thrawn had over all the other Grand Admirals, it was a knack for predicting his enemies’ strategy.”
“There are a half dozen ships out there,” Karrde continued. “Unmarked Intelligence ships, from the look of them. Any would probably do.”
“Any idea where we are?” Luke asked, trying to see past him through the cable duct. There was a fair amount of empty space out there surrounding the ships, plus a gaping light-rimmed opening in the deck that was presumably the shaft of a heavy vehicle lift. Unlike the one he remembered from the Death Star’s hangar bay, though, this shaft had a corresponding hole in the ceiling above it to allow ships to be moved farther up toward the Star Destroyer’s core.
“We’re near the bottom of the deep storage section, I think,” Karrde told him. “A deck or two above the aft hangar bays. The chief difficulty will be if the lift itself is a deck down, blocking us from access to the bay and entry port.”
“Well, let’s get in there and find out,” Mara said, fingering her blaster rifle restlessly. “Waiting here won’t gain us anything.”
“Agreed.” Karrde cocked his head to the side. “I think I hear the lift coming now. They’re slow, though, and there’s enough cover by the ships. Skywalker?”
Luke ignited his lightsaber again and quickly cut them a hole large enough to get through. Karrde went first, followed by Luke, with Mara bringing up the rear. “The hangar bay computer link is over there,” Mara said, pointing to a freestanding console to their right as they crouched beside a battered-looking light freighter. “As soon as the lift passes I’ll see if I can get us into it.”
“All right, but don’t take too long at it,” Karrde warned. “A faked transfer order won’t gain us enough surprise to be worth any further delay.”
The top of a ship was becoming visible now as it was lifted from the hangar bays below. A ship that seemed remarkably familiar …
Luke felt his mouth drop open in surprise. “That’s—no. No, it can’t be.”
“It is,” Mara said. “I’d forgotten—the Grand Admiral mentioned they were taking it aboard when I talked to him at Endor.”
Luke stared, a cold lump forming in his throat as the Millennium Falcon rose steadily up through the opening. Leia and Chewbacca had been aboard that ship … “Did he say anything about prisoners?”
“Not to me,” Mara said. “I got the impression he’d found the ship deserted.”
Which meant that wherever Leia and Chewbacca had gone, they were now stranded there. But there was no time to worry about that now. “We’re taking it back,” he told the others, stuffing his lightsaber into his flight suit tunic. “Cover me.”
“Skywalker—” Mara hissed; but Luke was
already jogging toward the shaft. The lift plate itself came into view, revealing two men riding alongside the Falcon: a naval trooper and a tech with what looked like a combined data pad/control unit. They caught sight of Luke—
“Hey!” Luke called, waving as he hurried toward them. “Hold on!”
The tech did something with his data pad and the lift stopped, and Luke could sense the sudden suspicion in the trooper’s mind. “Got new orders on that one,” he said as he trotted up to them. “The Grand Admiral wants it moved back down. Something about using it as bait.”
The tech frowned down at his data pad. He was young, Luke saw, probably not out of his teens. “There’s nothing about new orders here,” he objected.
“I haven’t heard anything about it, either,” the trooper growled, drawing his blaster and pointing it vaguely in Luke’s direction as he threw a quick look around the storage room.
“It just came through a minute ago,” Luke said, nodding back toward the computer console. “Stuff’s not transferring very fast today, for some reason.”
“Makes a good story, anyway,” the trooper retorted. His blaster was now very definitely pointed at Luke. “Let’s see some ID, huh?”
Luke shrugged; and, reaching out through the Force, he yanked the blaster out of the trooper’s hand.
The man didn’t even pause to gape at the unexpected loss of his weapon. He threw himself forward, hands stretching toward Luke’s neck—
The blaster, heading straight toward Luke, suddenly reversed direction. The trooper caught the butt end full in the stomach, coughed once in strangled agony, and fell unmoving to the deck.
“I’ll take that,” Luke told the tech, waving Karrde and Mara to join him. The tech, his face a rather motley gray, handed the data pad to him without a word.
“Good job,” Karrde said as he came up beside Luke. “Relax, we’re not going to hurt you,” he added to the tech, squatting down and relieving the gasping trooper of his comlink. “Not if you behave, anyway. Take your friend to that electrical closet over there and lock yourselves in.”
The tech glanced at him, looked again at Luke, and gave a quick nod. Hoisting the trooper under the armpits, he dragged him off. “Make sure they get settled all right, and then join me in the ship,” Karrde told Luke. “I’m going to get the preflight started. Are there any security codes I need to know about?”
