by Timothy Zahn
Han gritted his teeth. So she knew. He hadn't been sure before, but he was now. Leia knew that what the Empire had been after this whole time was her unborn children.
And knowing that, she still wanted to meet with the Empire's agents. For a long minute he gazed at her, his eyes searching the features of that face he'd grown to love so deeply over the years, his memory bringing up images of the past as he did so. The young determination in her face as, in the middle of a blazing firelight, she'd grabbed Luke's blaster rifle away from him and shot them an escape route into the Death Star's detention-level garbage chute. The sound of her voice in the middle of deadly danger at Jabba's, helping him through the blindness and tremor and disorientation of hibernation sickness. The wiser, more mature determination visible through the pain in her eyes as, lying wounded outside the Endor bunker, she had nevertheless summoned the skill and control to coolly shoot two stormtroopers off Han's back.
And he remembered, too, the wrenching realization he'd had at that same time: that no matter how much he tried, he would never be able to totally protect her from the dangers and risks of the universe. Because no matter how much he might love her-no matter how much he might give of himself to her-she could never be content with that alone. Her vision extended beyond him, just as it extended beyond herself, to all the beings of the galaxy. And to take that away from her, whether by force or even by persuasion, would be to diminish her soul. And to take away part of what he'd fallen in love with in the first place.
"Can I at least go with you?" he asked quietly. She reached up to caress his cheek, smiling her thanks through the sudden moisture in her eyes. "I promised I'd go alone," she whispered, her voice tight with emotion. "Don't worry, I'll be all right."
"Sure." Abruptly, Han got to his feet. "Well, if you're going, you're going. Come on-I'll help you get the Falcon prepped."
"The Falcon?" she repeated. "But I thought you were going to New Cov."
"I'll take Lando's ship," he called over his shoulder as he strode to the door. "I've got to get it back to him, anyway.
"But-"
"No argument," he cut her off. "If this Noghri of yours has something besides talking in mind, you'll stand a better chance in the Falcon than you will in the Lady Luck." He opened the door and stepped into the reception area.
And stopped short. Standing directly between him and the door, looking for all the world like a giant hairy thundercloud, Chewbacca was glowering at him. "What?" Han demanded.
The Wookiee's comment was short, sharp, and very much to the point.
"Well, I don't much like it, either," Han told him bluntly. "What do you want me to do, lock her up somewhere?"
He felt Leia come up behind him. "I'll be all right, Chewie," she assured him. "Really I will."
Chewbacca growled again, making it abundantly clear what he thought of her assessment. "You got any suggestions, let's hear 'em," Han said. Not surprisingly, he did. "Chewie, I'm sorry," Leia said. "I promised Khabarakh I'd come alone."
Chewbacca shook his head violently, showing his teeth as he growled his opinion of that idea. "He doesn't like it," Han translated diplomatically.
"I got the gist, thank you," Leia retorted. "Listen, you two; for the last time-"
Chewbacca cut her off with a bellow that made her jump half a meter backward. "You know, sweetheart," Han said, "I really think you ought to let him go with you. At least as far as the rendezvous point," he added quickly as she threw him a glare. "Come on-you know how seriously Wookiees take this life debt thing. You need a pilot, anyway.
For just a second he could see the obvious counter argument in her eyes: that she was perfectly capable of flying the Falcon herself. But only for a second. "All right," she sighed. "I guess Khabarakh won't object to that. But once we reach the rendezvous, Chewie, you do as I tell you, whether you like it or not. Agreed?"
The Wookiee thought about it, rumbled agreement. "Okay," Leia said, sounding relieved. "Let's get going, then. Threepio?"
"Yes, Your Highness?" the droid said hesitantly. For once, he'd had the brains to sit quietly at the reception desk and keep his loose change out of the discussion. It was a marked improvement over his usual behavior, Han decided. Maybe he ought to let Chewbacca get angry more often.
"I want you to come with me, too," Leia told the droid. "Khabarakh spoke Basic well enough, but the other Noghri may not, and I don't want to have to depend on their translators to make myself understood."
"Of course, Your Highness," Threepio said, tilting his head slightly to the side.
"Good." Leia turned to look up at Han, licked her lips. "I guess we'd better get going."
There were a million things he could have said to her. A million things he wanted to say. "I guess," he said instead, "you'd better."
CHAPTER
5
"You'll forgive me," Mara said conversationally as she finished the last bit of wiring on her comm board, "if I say that as a hideout, this place stinks."
Karrde shrugged as he hefted a sensor pack out of its box and set it down on the side table with an assortment of other equipment. "I agree it's not Myrkr," he said. "On the other hand, it has its compensations. Who'd ever think of looking for a smuggler's nest in the middle of a swamp?"
"I'm not referring to the ship drop," Mara told him, reaching beneath her loose-flowing tunic sleeve to readjust the tiny blaster sheathed to her left forearm. "I mean this place."
"Ah. This place." Karrde glanced out the window. "I don't know. A bit public, perhaps, but that, too, has its compensations."
"A little public?" Mara echoed, looking out the window herself at the neat row of cream-white buildings barely five meters away and the crowds of brightly clad humans and aliens hurrying along just outside. "You call this a liulc public?"
"Calm down, Mara," Karrde said. "When the only viable places to live on a planet are a handful of deep valleys, of course things are going to get a bit crowded. The people here are used to it, and they've learned how to give each other a reasonable degree of privacy. Anyway, even if they wanted to snoop, it wouldn't do them much good."
"Mirror glass won't stop a good sensor probe," Mara countered. "And crowds mean cover for Imperial spies."
"The Imperials have no idea where we are. He paused and threw her an odd look. "Unless you know differently."
Mara turned away. So that was how it was going to be this time. Previous employers had reacted to her strange hunches with fear, or anger, or simple bald-faced hatred. Karrde, apparently, was going to go for polite exploitation. "I can't turn it on and off like a sensor pack," she growled over her shoulder. "Not anymore.
"Ah," Karrde said. The word implied he understood; the tone indicated otherwise. "Interesting. Is this a remnant of some previous Jedi training?" She turned to look at him. "Tell me about the ships." He frowned. "Excuse me?"
"The ships," she repeated. "The capital warships that you were very careful not to tell Grand Admiral Thrawn about, back when he visited us on Myrkr. You promised to give me the details later. This is later." He studied her, a slight smile creasing his lips. "All right," he said. "Have you ever heard of the Katana fleet?" She had to search her memory. "That was the group also called the Dark Force, wasn't it? Something like two hundred Dreadnaught-class Heavy Cruisers that were lost about ten years before the Clone Wars broke out. All the ships were fitted with some kind of new-style full-rig slave circuitry, and when the system malfunctioned, the whole fleet jumped to lightspeed together and disappeared."
"Nearly right," Karrde said. "The Dreadnaughts of that era in particular were ridiculously crew-intensive ships, requiring upwards of sixteen thousand men each. The full-rig slave circuitry on the Katana ships cut that complement down to around two thousand."
Mara thought about the handful of Dreadnaught cruisers she'd known.
"Must have been an expensive conversion."
"It was," Karrde nodded. "Particularly since they played it as much for public relations as they did for pu
re military purposes. They redesigned the entire Dreadnaught interior for the occasion, from the equipment and interior decor right down to the dark gray hull surfacing. That last was the origin of the nickname 'Dark Force," incidentally, though there was some suggestion that it referred to the smaller number of interior lights a two-thousand-crewer ship would need. At any rate, it was the Old Republic's grand demonstration of how effective a slave-rigged fleet could be." Mara snorted. "Some demonstration."
"Agreed," Karrde said dryly. "But the problem wasn't in the slave circuitry itself. The records are a little vague-suppressed by those in charge at the time, no doubt-but it appears that one or more of the fleet's crewers picked up a hive virus at one of the ports of call on their maiden voyage. It was spread throughout all two hundred ships while in dormant state, which meant that when it suddenly flared up it took down nearly everybody at once." Mara shivered. She'd heard of hive viruses leveling whole planetary populations in pre-Clone Wars days, before the medical science of the Old Republic and later the Empire had finally figured out how to deal with the things. "So it killed the crews before they could get to help."
"Apparently in a matter of hours, though that's just an educated guess," Karrde said. "What turned the whole thing from a disaster into a debacle was the fact that this particular hive virus had the charming trait of driving its victims insane just before it killed them. The dying crewers lasted just long enough to slave their ships together ... which meant that when the Katana command crew also went crazy and took off the entire fleet went with them."
"I remember now," Mara nodded slowly. "That was supposedly what started the big movement toward decentralization in automated ship functions. Away from big, all-powerful computers into hundreds of droids."
"The movement was already on its way, but the Katana fiasco pretty well sealed the outcome," Karrde said. "Anyway, the fleet disappeared somewhere into the depths of interstellar space and was never heard from again. It was a big news item for a while, with some of the less reverent members of the media making snide wordplays on the 'Dark Force' name, and for a few years it was considered a hot prospect by salvage teams who had more enthusiasm than good sense. Once it finally dawned on them just how much empty space was available in the galaxy to lose a couple hundred ships in, the flurry of interest ended. At any rate, the Old Republic soon had bigger problems on its hands. Aside from the occasional con artist who'll try to sell you a map of its location, you never hear about the fleet anymore."
"Right." It was, of course, obvious now where Karrde was going with this. "So how did you happen to find it?"
"Purely by accident, I assure you. In fact, it wasn't until several days afterward that I realized what exactly I'd found. I suspect none of the rest of the crew ever knew at all."
Karrde's gaze defocused, his eyes flattening with the memory. "It was just over fifteen years ago," he said, his voice distant, the thumbs of his intertwined hands rubbing slowly against each other. "I was working as navigator/sensor specialist for a small, independent smuggling group. We'd rather botched a pickup and had had to shoot our way past a pair of Carrack cruisers on our way out. We made it all right, but since I hadn't had the time to do a complete lightspeed calculation, we dropped back to realspace a half light-year out to recalculate." His lip twitched. "Imagine our surprise when we discovered a pair of Dreadnaughts waiting directly in our path."
"Lying dead in space.
Karrde shook his head. "Actually, they weren't, which was what threw me for those first few days. From all appearances, the ships seemed to be fully functional, with both interior and running lights showing and even a standby sensor scan in operation. Naturally, we assumed it was part of the group we'd just tangled with, and the captain made an emergency jump to lightspeed to get us out of there."
"Not a good idea," Mara murmured.
"It seemed the lesser of two evils at the time," Karrde said grimly.
"As it turned out, we came close to being fatally wrong on that account. The ship hit the mass shadow of a large comet on the way out, blowing the main hyperdrive and nearly wrecking the rest of the ship on the spot. Five of our crew were killed in the collision, and another three died of injuries before we could limp back to civilization on the backup hyperdrive." There was a moment of silence. "How many of you were left?" Mara asked at last.
Karrde focused on her, his usual sardonic smile back on his face. "Or in other words, who else might know about the fleet?"
"If you want to put it that way.
"There were six of us left. As I said, though, I don't think any of the others realized what it was we'd found. It was only when I went back to the sensor records and discovered that there were considerably more than just the two Dreadnaughts in the area that I began to have my own suspicions."
"And the records themselves?"
"I erased them. After memorizing the coordinates, of course." Mara nodded. "You said this was fifteen years ago?"
"That's right," Karrde nodded back. "I've thought about going back and doing something with the ships, but I never had the time to do it properly. Unloading two hundred Dreadnaughts on the open market isn't something you rush into without a good deal of prior preparation. Even if you have markets for all of them, which has always been problematic."
"Until now."
He cocked an eyebrow. "Are you suggesting I sell them to the Empire?"
"They're in the market for capital ships,"' she reminded him.
"And they're offering value plus twenty percent." He cocked an eyebrow at her. "I thought you didn't much care for the Empire."
"I don't," she retorted. "What's the other option give them to the New Republic?"
He held her gaze. "That might be more profitable in the long run. Mara's left hand curled into a tight fist, her stomach churning with mixed feelings. To let the Dreadnaughts fall into the hands of the New Republic, successor to the Rebel Alliance that had destroyed her life, was a hateful thought. But on the other hand, the Empire without the Emperor was only a pale shadow of its former self, hardly even worthy of the name anymore. It would be pearls before swine to give the Dark Force to them. Or would it? With a Grand Admiral in charge of the Imperial Fleet again, perhaps there was now a chance for the Empire to gain some of its old glory. And if there was..."What are you going to do?" she asked Karrde.
"At the moment, nothing," Karrde said. "It's the same problem we faced with Skywalker, after all: the Empire will be swifter to exact vengeance if we go against them, but the New Republic looks more likely to win in the end. Giving Thrawn the Katana fleet would only delay the inevitable. The most prudent course right now is to stay neutral."
"Except that giving Thrawn the Dreadnaughts might get him off our exhaust trail," Mara pointed out. "That would be worth the trade right there." Karrde smiled faintly. "Oh, come now, Mara. The Grand Admiral may be a tactical genius, but he's hardly omniscient. He can't possibly have any idea where we are. And he certainly has more important things to do than spend his resources chasing us down."
"I'm sure he does," Mara agreed reluctantly. But she couldn't help remembering how, even at the height of his power and with a thousand other concerns, the Emperor had still frequently taken the time to exact vengeance on someone who'd crossed him.
Beside her the comm board buzzed, and Mara reached over to key the channel. "Yes?"
"Lachton," a familiar voice came from the speaker. "Is Karrde around?"
"Right here," Karrde called, stepping to Mara's side.
"How's the camouflage work going?"
"We're about done," Lachton said. "We ran short of flash-netting, though. Do we have any more?"
"There's some at one of the dumps," Karrde told him.
"I'll send Mara to get it; can you have someone come in to pick it up?"
"Sure, no problem. I'll send Dankin-he hasn't got much to do at the moment anyway.
"All right. The netting will be ready by the time he gets here." Karrde gestured, and Mara keyed off the ch
annel.
"You know where the Number Three dump is?" he asked her. She nodded. "Four twelve Wozwashi Street. Three blocks west and two north."
"Right." He peered out the window. "Unfortunately, it's still too early for repulsorlift vehicles to be on the streets. You'll have to walk."
"That's all right," Mara assured him. She felt like a little exercise, anyway. "Two boxes be enough?"
"If you can handle that many," he told her, looking her up and down as if making sure her outfit conformed to local Rishi standards of propriety. He needn't have bothered; one of the first rules the Emperor had drummed into her so long ago was to blend in as best she could with her surroundings. "If not, Lachton can probally make do with one."
"All right. I'll see you later."
Their townhouse was part of a row of similar structures abutting one of the hundreds of little market areas that dotted the whole congested valley. For a moment Mara stood in the entry alcove of their building, out of the busy flow of pedestrian traffic, and looked around her. Through the gaps between the nearest buildings she could see the more distant parts of the city-vale, most of it composed of the same cream-white stone so favored by the locals. In places, she could see all the way to the edge, a few small buildings perched precariously partway up the craggy mountains that rose sharply into the sky on all sides. Far up those mountains, she knew, lived loose avian tribes of native Rishi, who no doubt looked down in bemused disbelief at the strange creatures who had chosen the most uncomfortably hot and humid spots of their planet in which to live.
Dropping her gaze from the mountains, Mara gave the immediate area a quick scan. Across the street were more townhouses; between her and them was the usual flow of brightly clad pedestrians hurrying to and from the market area to the east. Reflexively, her eyes flicked across the townhouses, though with each window composed of mirror glass there wasn't a lot there for her to see. Also reflexively, she glanced across each of the narrow pedestrian alleyways between the buildings.
