by Timothy Zahn
Luke nodded and set off, striving to look like he belonged there. His footsteps echoed on the metal deck, bringing back memories of that near-disastrous visit to the first Death Star.
But he’d been a wide-eyed kid then, dazzled by visions of glory and heroism and too naive to understand the deadly dangers that went with such things. Now, he was older and more seasoned, and knew exactly what it was he was walking into.
And yet was walking into it anyway. Dimly, he wondered if that made him less reckless than he’d been the last time, or more so.
He reached the door and paused beside it, pretending to study a data pad that had been in one of the flight suit’s pockets until the corridor was deserted. Then, taking one last deep breath of clear air, he opened the door and stepped inside.
Even holding his breath, the stench hit him like a slap in the face. Whatever advancements the Empire might have made in the past few years, their shipboard garbage pits still smelled as bad as ever.
He let the door slide shut behind him, and as it did so he heard the faint sound of an internal relay closing. He’d cut things a little too close; Mara must already have activated the compression cycle. Breathing through his mouth, he waited … and a moment later, with a muffled clang of heavy hydraulics, the walls began moving slowly toward each other.
Luke swallowed, gripping his lightsaber tightly as he tried to keep on top of the tangle of garbage and discarded equipment that was now starting to buck and twist around his feet. Getting into the detention level this way had been his idea, and he’d had to talk long and hard before Mara had been convinced. But now that he was actually here, and the walls were closing in on him, it suddenly didn’t seem like nearly such a good idea anymore. If Mara couldn’t adequately control the walls’ movement—or if she was interrupted at her task—
Or if she gave in for just a few seconds to her hatred for him …
The walls came ever closer, grinding together everything in their path. Luke struggled to keep his footing, all too aware that if Mara was planning a betrayal he wouldn’t know until it was too late to save himself. The compressor walls were too thick for him to cut a gap with his light-saber, and already the shifting mass, beneath his feet had taken him too far away from the door to escape that way. Listening to the creak of tortured metal and plastic, Luke watched as the gap between the walls closed to two meters … then one and a half … then one …
And came to a shuddering halt just under a meter apart.
Luke took a deep breath, almost not noticing the rancid smell. Mara hadn’t betrayed him, and she’d handled her end of the scheme perfectly. Now it was his turn. Moving to the back end of the chamber, he gathered his feet beneath him and jumped.
The footing was unstable, and the garbage compactor walls impressively tall, and even with Jedi enhancement behind the jump he made it only about halfway to the top. But even as he reached the top of his arc he drew his knees up and swung his feet out; and with a wrenching jolt to his legs and lower back, he wedged himself solidly between the walls. Taking a moment to catch his breath and get his bearings, he started up.
It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared it would be. He’d done a fair amount of climbing as a boy on Tatooine and had tackled rock chimneys at least half a dozen times, though never with any real enthusiasm. The smooth walls here in the compactor offered less traction than stone would have, but the evenness of the spacing and the absence of sharp rocks to dig into his back more than made up for it. Within a couple of minutes he had reached the top of the compactor’s walls and the maintenance chute that would lead—he hoped—to the detention level. If Mara’s reading of the schedule had been right, he had about five minutes before the guard shift changed up there. Setting his teeth together, he forced his way through the magnetic screen at the bottom of the chute and, in clean air again, started up.
He made it in just over five minutes, to discover that Mara’s reading had indeed been right. Through the grating that covered the chute opening he could hear the sounds of conversation and movement coming from the direction of the control room, punctuated by the regular hiss of opening turbolift doors. The guard was changing; and for the next couple of minutes both shifts would be in the control room. An ideal time, if he was quick, to slip a prisoner out from under their noses.
Hanging on to the grating by one hand, he got his lightsaber free and ignited it. Making sure not to let the tip of the blade show through into the corridor beyond, he sliced off a section of the grating and eased it into the shaft with him. He used a hook from his flight suit to hang the section to what was left of the grating, and climbed through the opening.
The corridor was deserted. Luke glanced at the nearest cell number to orient himself and set off toward the one Mara had named. The conversation in the control room seemed to be winding down, and soon now the new shift of guards would be moving out to take up their positions in the block corridors. Senses alert, Luke slipped down the cross corridor to the indicated cell and, mentally crossing his fingers, punched the lock release.
Talon Karrde looked up from the cot as the door slid open, that well-remembered sardonic half smile on his face. His eyes focused on the face above the flight suit, and abruptly the smile vanished. “I don’t believe it,” he murmured.
“Me, either,” Luke told him, throwing a quick glance around the room. “You fit to travel?”
“Fit and ready,” Karrde said, already up and moving toward the door. “Fortunately, they’re still in the softening-up phase. Lack of food and sleep—you’re familiar with the routine.”
“I’ve heard of it.” Luke looked both ways down the corridor: Still no one. “Exit’s this way. Come on.”
They made it to the grating without incident. “You must be joking, of course,” Karrde said as Luke maneuvered his way into the hole and got his feet and back braced against the chute walls.
“The other way out has guards at the end of it,” Luke reminded him.
“Point,” Karrde conceded, reluctantly looking into the gap. “I suppose it’d be too much to hope for a rope.”
“Sorry. The only place to tie it is this grate, and they’d spot that in no time.” Luke frowned at him. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
“It’s the falling from them that worries me,” Karrde said dryly. But he was already climbing into the opening, though his hands were white-knuckled where he gripped the grating.
“We’re going to rock-chimney it down to the garbage masher,” Luke told him. “You ever done that before?”
“No, but I’m a quick study,” Karrde said. Looking back over his shoulder at Luke, he eased into a similar position against the chute walls. “I presume you want this hole covered up,” he added, pulling the grating section from its perch and fitting it back into the opening. “Though it’s not going to fool anyone who takes a close look at it.”
“With luck, we’ll be back at the hangar bay before that happens,” Luke assured him. “Come on, now. Slow and easy; let’s go.”
They made it back to the garbage compactor without serious mishap. “The side of the Empire the tourists never see,” Karrde commented dryly as Luke led him across the tangle of garbage. “How do we get out?”
“The door’s right there,” Luke said, pointing down below the level of the mass they were walking on. “Mara’s supposed to open the walls again in a couple of minutes and let us down.”
“Ah,” Karrde said. “Mara’s here, is she?”
“She told me on the trip here how you were captured,” Luke said, trying to read Karrde’s sense. If he was angry at Mara, he was hiding it well. “She said she wasn’t in on that trap.”
“Oh, I’m sure she wasn’t,” Karrde said. “If for no other reason than that my interrogators worked so hard to drop hints to the contrary.” He looked thoughtfully at Luke. “What did she promise for your help in this?”
Luke shook his head. “Nothing. She just reminded me that I owed you one for not turning me over to the Imperial
s back on Myrkr.”
A wry smile twitched Karrde’s lip. “Indeed. No mention, either, of why the Grand Admiral wanted me in the first place?”
Luke frowned at him. The other was watching him closely … and now that he was paying attention, Luke could tell that Karrde was holding some secret back from him. “I assumed it was in revenge for helping me escape. Is there more to it than that?”
Karrde’s gaze drifted away from him. “Let’s just say that if we make it away from here the New Republic stands to gain a great deal.”
His last word was cut off by a muffled clang; and with a ponderous jolt the compactor walls began slowly moving apart again. Luke helped Karrde maintain his balance as they waited for the door to be clear, stretching his senses outward into the corridor beyond. There were a fair number of crewers passing by, but he could sense no suspicion or special alertness in any of them. “Is Mara doing all this?” Karrde asked.
Luke nodded. “She has an access code for the ship’s computer.”
“Interesting,” Karrde murmured. “I gathered from all this that she had some past connection with the Empire. Obviously, she was more highly placed than I realized.”
Luke nodded, thinking back to Mara’s revelation to him back in the Myrkr forest. Mara Jade, the Emperor’s Hand … “Yes,” he told Karrde soberly. “She was.”
The walls reached their limit and shut down. A moment later there was a click of a relay. Luke waited until the corridor immediately outside was deserted, then opened it and stepped out. A couple of maintenance techs working at an open panel a dozen meters down the corridor threw a look of idle curiosity at the newcomers; throwing an equally unconcerned glance back their way, Luke pulled the data pad from his pocket and pretended to make an entry. Karrde played off the cue, standing beside him and spouting a stream of helpful jargon as Luke filled out his imaginary report. Letting the door slide closed, Luke stuffed the data pad back into his pocket and led the way down the corridor.
Mara was waiting at the turbolift cluster with the spare flight suit draped over her arm. “Car’s on its way,” she murmured. For a second, as her eyes met Karrde’s, her face seemed to tighten.
“He knows you didn’t betray him,” Luke told her quietly.
“I didn’t ask,” she growled. But Luke could sense some of her tension vanish. “Here,” she added, thrusting the flight suit at Karrde. “A little camouflage.”
“Thank you,” Karrde said. “Where are we going?”
“We came in on a supply shuttle,” Mara said. “We cut an exit hole in the lower hull, but we should have enough time to weld it airtight before they send us back to the surface.”
The turbolift car arrived as Karrde was adjusting the fasteners on his borrowed flight suit. Two men with a gleaming power core relay on a float table were there before them, taking up most of the room. “Where to?” one of the techs asked with the absent politeness of a man with more important things on his mind.
“Pilot ready room 33–129-T,” Mara told him, using the same tone.
The tech entered the destination on the panel and the door slid shut; and Luke took his first really relaxed breath since Mara had put the Skipray down on Wistril five hours ago. Another ten or fifteen minutes and they’d be safely back in their shuttle.
Against all odds, they’d done it.
The midpoint report from the hangar bay came in, and Pellaeon paused in his monitoring of the bridge deflector control overhaul to take a quick look at it. Excellent; the unloading was running nearly eight minutes ahead of schedule. At this rate the Chimaera would be able to make its rendezvous with the Stormhawk in plenty of time for them to set up their ambush of the Rebel convoy assembling off Corfai. He marked the report as noted and sent it back into the files; and he had turned his attention back to the deflector overhaul when he heard a quiet footstep behind him.
“Good evening, Captain,” Thrawn nodded, coming up beside Pellaeon’s chair and giving the bridge a leisurely scan.
“Admiral,” Pellaeon nodded back, swiveling to face him. “I thought you’d retired for the night, sir.”
“I’ve been in my command room,” Thrawn said, looking past Pellaeon at the displays. “I thought I’d make one last survey of ship’s status before I went to my quarters. Is that the bridge deflector overhaul?”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, wondering which species’ artwork had been favored with the Grand Admiral’s scrutiny tonight. “No problems so far. The cargo unloading down in Aft Bay Two is running ahead of schedule, too.”
“Good,” the Grand Admiral said. “Anything further from the patrol at Endor?”
“Just an addendum to that one report, sir,” Pellaeon told him. “Apparenlty, they’ve confirmed that the ship they caught coming into the system was in fact just a smuggler planning to sift again through the remains of the Imperial base there. They’re continuing to back-check the crew.”
“Remind them to make a thorough job of it before they let the ship go,” Thrawn said grimly. “Organa Solo won’t have simply abandoned the Millennium Falcon in orbit there. Sooner or later she’ll return for it … and when she does, I intend to have her.”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon nodded. The commander of the Endor patrol group, he was certain, didn’t need any reminding of that. “Speaking of the Millennium Falcon, have you decided yet whether or not to do any further scan work on it?”
Thrawn shook his head. “I doubt that would gain us anything. The scanning team would be better employed assisting with maintenance on the Chimaera’s own systems. Have the Millennium Falcon transferred up to vehicle deep storage until we can find some use for it.”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, swiveling back and logging the order. “Oh, and there was one other strange report that came in a few minutes ago. A routine patrol on the supply base perimeter came across a Skipray blastboat that had made a crash landing out there.”
“A crash landing?” Thrawn frowned.
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, calling up the report. “Its underside was in pretty bad shape, and the whole hull was scorched.”
The picture came up on Pellaeon’s display, and Thrawn leaned over his shoulder for a closer look. “Any bodies?”
“No, sir,” Pellaeon said. “The only thing aboard—and this is the strange part—was an ysalamir.”
He felt Thrawn stiffen. “Show me.”
Pellaeon keyed for the next picture, a close-up of the ysalamir on its biosupport frame. “The frame isn’t one of our designs,” he pointed out. “No telling where it came from.”
“Oh, there’s telling, all right,” Thrawn assured him. He straightened up and took a deep breath. “Sound intruder alert, Captain. We have visitors aboard.”
Pellaeon stared up at him in astonishment, fumbling fingers locating and twisting the alert key. “Visitors?” he asked as the alarms began their throaty wailing.
“Yes,” Thrawn said, his glowing red eyes glittering with a sudden fire. “Order an immediate check of Karrde’s cell. If he’s still there, he’s to be moved immediately and put under direct stormtrooper guard. I want another guard ring put around the supply shuttles and an immediate ID check begun of their crews. And then”—he paused —“have the Chimaera’s main computer shut down.”
Pellaeon’s fingers froze on his keyboard. “Shut down—?”
“Carry out your orders, Captain,” Thrawn cut him off.
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said between suddenly stiff lips. In all his years of Imperial service he had never seen a warship’s main computer deliberately shut down except in space dock. To do so was to blind and cripple the craft. With intruders aboard, perhaps fatally.
“It will hamper our efforts a bit, I agree,” Thrawn said, as if reading Pellaeon’s fears. “But it will hamper our enemies’ far more. You see, the only way for them to have known the Chimaera’s course and destination was for Mara Jade to have tapped into the computer when we brought her and Karrde aboard.”
“That’s impossib
le,” Pellaeon insisted, wincing as his computer-driven displays began to wink out. “Any access codes she might have known were changed years ago.”
“Unless there are codes permanently hard-wired into the system,” Thrawn said. “Set there by the Emperor for his use and that of his agents. Jade no doubt is counting on that access in her rescue attempt; therefore, we deprive her of it.”
A stormtrooper stepped up to them. “Yes, Commander?” Thrawn said.
“Comlink message from detention,” the electronically filtered voice announced. “The prisoner Talon Karrde is no longer in his cell.”
“Very well,” the Grand Admiral said darkly. “Alert all units to begin a search of the area between detention and the aft hangar bays. Karrde is to be recaptured alive—not necessarily undamaged, but alive. As to his would-be rescuers, I want them also alive if possible. If not—” He paused. “If not, I’ll understand.”
CHAPTER
23
The wail of the alarm sounded over the overhead speaker; and a few seconds later the turbolift car came to an abrupt halt. “Blast,” one of the two gunners who had replaced the service techs in the car muttered, digging a small ID card from the slot behind his belt buckle. “Don’t they ever get tired of running drills up there on the bridge?”
“Talk like that might get you a face-to-face with a stormtrooper squad,” the second warned, throwing a sideways glance at Luke and the others. Stepping past the first gunner, he slid his ID card into a slot on the control board and tapped in a confirmation code. “It was a lot worse before the Grand Admiral took over. Anyway, what do you want ’em to do, announce snap drills in advance?”
“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—
