Dark Force Rising (Star Wars) swtt-2

by Timothy Zahn

  Between two of them, back at the building's rear where he was hardly visible, was the motionless figure of a man wearing a blue scarf and patterned green tunic.

  Staring in her direction.

  Mara let her gaze drift on as if she hadn't seen him, her heart thudding suddenly in her throat. Stepping out of the alcove, she turned east toward the market and joined the flow of traffic.

  She didn't stay with it long, though. As soon as she was out of the mysterious loiterer's line of sight, she began cutting her way across the flow, heading across the street toward the townhouse window. She reached it three buildings d,own from the loiterer, ducked into the alleyway, and hurried toward the rear. If he was indeed monitoring Karrde's place, there was a good chance she could take him from behind.

  She reached "The rear of the buildings and circled around ... only to find that her quarry had vanished.

  For a moment she stood there, looking around her for any sign of the man's whereabouts, wondering what to do now. There was none of the insistent tingling that had gotten them away from Myrkr at the last second; but as she'd told Karrde, it wasn't a talent she could turn on and off. She looked down at the ground where the man had been standing. There were a few faint footprints in the thin coating of dust that had collected at the corner of the townhouse, giving the impression that the man had been there long enough to shuffle his feet a few times. A half dozen steps away, right in the center of another layer of dust, was a clear footprint pointing toward the west behind the row of townhouses.

  Mara looked in that direction, feeling her lip twist. A deliberate lead-on, obviously-footprints in dust never came out that clear and unsmudged unless carefully planted. And she was right. A hundred meters directly ahead, strolling casually along the rear of the buildings toward a north-south street, was the man in the blue scarf and patterned tunic. A not-very-subtle invitation to follow him.

  Okay, friend, she thought as she started off after him. You want to play? Let's play.

  She had closed the gap between them to perhaps ninety meters when he reached the cross flow of traffic and turned north into it. Another clear invitation, this time to close the gap further lest she lose him. But Mara had no intention of taking him up on this one. She'd memorized the geography of the city-vale their first day here, and it was pretty obvious that his intention was to lead her up to the more sparsely populated industrial areas to the north, where presumably he could deal with her without the awkward presence of witnesses. If she could get there first, she might be able to turn things around on him. Double-checking the blaster beneath her left sleeve, she cut through an alley between the buildings to her right and headed north.

  The valley stretched for nearly a hundred fifty kilometers in a roughly east-west direction, but at this point its north-south dimension was only a few kilometers. Mara kept up her pace, continually revising her course to avoid crowds and other impediments. Gradually, the houses and shops began to give way to light industry; and, finally, she judged she'd come far enough. If her quarry had kept with the leisurely pace of a man who didn't want to lose a tracker, she should now have enough time to prepare a little reception for him.

  There was, of course, always the possibility that he'd shifted to one of the other north-south streets somewhere along the way, changed direction east or west, or even doubled back completely and returned to Karrde's townhouse. But as she looked carefully around the corner of a building into the street he'd first turned onto, she discovered that his imagination was as limited as his surveillance technique. Halfway down the block, he was crouched motionless behind a row of storage barrels with his back to her, his blue scarf thrown back out of the way across his patterned green tunic, something that was probably a weapon clutched ready in his hand. Waiting, no doubt, for her to stroll into his trap. Amateur, she thought, lip twisting in contempt. Watching him closely, not even bothering with her blaster, she eased around the corner and started silently toward him.

  "That's far enough," a mocking voice said from behind her. Mara froze. The figure crouched by the barrels ahead of her didn't even twitch ... and it was only then that she belatedly realized that it was far too still to be simply waiting in ambush. Far too still, for that matter, to even be alive.

  Slowly, keeping her arms stretched straight out to her sides, she turned around. The man facing her was of medium height, with a somewhat bulky build and dark, brooding eyes. His undertunic hung open to reveal a lightarmor vest beneath it. In his hand, of course, was a blaster. "Well, well, well," he sneered. "What we got here? `Bout time you showed up was startin' to think you'd gotten lost or somethin'"

  "Who are you?" Mara asked.

  "Oh, no, Red, I'm the one what's askin' the questions here. Not that I need to, `course. That fancy stuff on top pret' well tells me aw I need t'

  know." He gestured with his blaster at her red-gold hair. "Shoulda gotten rid o' that-hide it or dyed it, y'know. Dead give'way. Pardon the `spression." Mara took a careful breath, forcing her muscles to unknot. "What do you want with me?" she asked, keeping her voice calm.

  "Same thin' every man really wants," he grinned slyly. "A pile o'

  hard cold cash."

  She shook her head. "In that case, I'm afraid you've picked the wrong person. I've only got about fifty on me."

  He grinned even wider. "Cute, Red, but you're wastin' your time. I know who y'are, aw right. You 'n' your pals are gonna make me real rich. C'mon-let's go."

  Mara didn't move. "Perhaps we can work a deal," she suggested, feeling a drop of sweat trickle down between her shoulder blades. She knew better than to be fooled by the other's careless speech and manner-whoever and whatever he was, he knew exactly what he was doing.

  On the plus side, she still had the blaster hidden beneath her sleeve; and she would give long odds that her assailant wouldn't expect that a weapon that potent might be small enough to conceal there. The fact that he hadn't already searched her seemed to confirm that assessment. But whatever she was going to do, she had to do it now, while she was still facing him. Unfortunately, with her hands spread apart there was no way for her to get at her weapon without telegraphing the movement. Somehow, she needed to distract him.

  "A deal, huh?" he asked lazily. "What kind o' deal you got in mind?"

  "What kind of deal do you want?" she countered. If there'd been a box anywhere near her feet, she might have been able to scoop it up with her foot and throw it at him. But though there was a fair amount of junk littering the street in this part of town, nothing suitable was within reach. Her half-boots were firmly fastened around her ankles, impossible to get loose without him noticing. Rapidly, she ran through an inventory of items she was carrying or wearing-nothing.

  But the Emperor's intensive training had included direct manipulation of the Force as well as the long-range communication abilities that had been her primary value to his regime. Those skills had vanished at the moment of his death, reappearing only briefly and erratically in the years since then. But if the sensory tingles and hunches had started again, perhaps the power was back, too ...

  "I'm sure we can double whatever you've been offered," she said.

  "Maybe even throw in something extra to sweeten the pot." His grin turned evil. "That's a real generous offer, Red. Real generous. Lotta men'd jump on that right away, sure `nough. Me"-he lifted the blaster a little higher-"I like stayin' with a sure thing."

  "Even if it means settling for half the money?" Two meters behind him, piled carelessly up against a retaining wall, was a small stack of scrap metal parts waiting to be picked up. A short length of shield tubing, in particular, seemed to he rather precariously positioned on one edge of a battered power cell case.

  Setting her teeth, clearing her thoughts as best she could, Mara reached her mind out toward the tubing.

  "On my pad, half a sure thing's better than twice o' nothin'," the man said. "Anyway, I don't 'spect you can outbid the Empire." Mara swallowed. She'd suspected it from the first; but the co
nfirmation still sent a shiver up her back. "You might be surprised at our resources, she said. The length of tubing twitched, rolled a couple of millimeters "Now, don't think so," the other said easily. "C'mon, let's go." Mara tilted a finger back toward the dead man crouched at the box behind her. "You mind telling me first what happened here?" Her assailant shrugged. "What's t' tell? I needed a decoy; he was wandering' around the wrong place at the wrong time. End o' story." His grin suddenly vanished. "Enough stalling Turn around and start walking...unless you're looking' to spite me by making me settle for the death fee instead."

  "No," Mara murmured. She took a deep breath, straining with every bit of strength she possessed, knowing that this was her last best chance And behind her captor, the tubing fell with a muffled clank onto the ground.

  He was good, all right. The tubing had hardly even finished its fall before he'd dropped to one knee, spinning around and spraying the area behind him with a splattering of quick cover fire as he searched for whoever was sneaking up on him. It took less than a second for him to recognize his mistake, and with another spray of blaster fire he spun back again. But one second was all Mara needed. His desperate blaster spray was still tracking toward her when she shot him neatly in the head. For a long moment she just stood there, breathing hard, muscles trembling with reaction. Then, glancing around to make sure no one was running to see what all the commotion was about, she holstered her weapon and knelt down beside him.

  There was, as she'd expected, precious little to find. An ID-probably forged-giving his name as Dengar Roth, a couple of spare power clips for his blaster, a backnp vibroblade knife, a data card and data pad, and some working capital in both local and Imperial currency. Stuffing the ID and data card into her tunic, she left the money and weapons where they were and got back to her feet. "There's your twice of nothing," she muttered, looking down at the body. "Enjoy it."

  Her eyes shifted to the piece of shield tubing that had saved her life. She'd been right. The twitches of power, as well as the hunches, were back. Which meant the dreams wouldn't be far behind.

  She swore under her breath. If they came, they came, and there was nothing much she could do except endure them. For the moment she had other, more pressing matters to deal with. Taking one final look around, she headed for home.

  Karrde and Dankin were waiting when she arrived back at the townhouse, the latter all but pacing the floor in his nervousness. "There you are," he snapped as she slipped in through the back door. "Where the blazes-?"

  "We've got trouble," Mara cut him off, handing the Dengar Roth ID to Karrde and brushing past them to the still largely disassembled communications room. Pushing aside a box of cables, she found a data pad and plugged in the card.

  "What kind of trouble?" Karrde asked, coming up behind her.

  "The bounty hunter kind," Mara said, handing him the data pad. Neatly framed in the center of the display, under a large 20,000, was Karrde's face.

  "We're probably all in there," she told him. "Or at least as many as grand Admiral Thrawn knew about."

  "So I'm worth twenty thousand now," Karrde murmured, paging quickly through the card. "I'm flattered."

  "Is that all you're going to say?" Mara demanded. He looked at her. "What would you like me to say?" he asked mildly.

  "That you were right and I was wrong about the Empire's interest in us?"

  "I'm not interested in laying blame," she told him stiffly. "What I want to know is what we're going to do about it."

  Karrde looked at the data pad again, a muscle tightening briefly in his jaw. "We're going to do the only prudent thing," he said. "Namely, retreat. Dankin, get on the secure comm and tell Lachton to start pulling the drop apart again. Then call Chin and his team and have them go over and repack the stuff in the equipment dumps. You can stay and help Mara and me here. I want to get off Rishi by midnight if at all possible."

  "Got it," Dankin said, already keying the encrypt codes into the comm board.

  Karrde handed the data pad back to Mara. "We'd better get busy." She stopped him with a hand on his arm. Ànd what happens when we run out of backnp bases?"

  He locked eyes with her. "We don't give up the Dreadnaughts under duress," he said, lowering his voice to just above a whisper. "Not to Thrawn; not to anyone else."

  "We may have to," she pointed out.

  His eyes hardened. "We may choose to," he corrected her. "We will never have to. Is that clear?"

  Mara grimaced to herself. "Yes."

  "Good." Karrde flicked a glance over her shoulder to where Dankin was speaking urgently into the comm. "We have a lot of work to do. Let's get to it."

  Mara would have bet that they couldn't reassemble their equipment in less than twenty-four hours. To her mild surprise, the crews had everything packed and ready to go barely an hour after local midnight. With suitably generous applications of funds to spaceport officials, they were off Rishi and to lightspeed an hour after that.

  And later that night, as the Wild Karrde drove through the mottled sky of hyperspace, the dreams started again.

  CHAPTER

  6

  From a distance it had looked like a standard-issue Bulk Cruiser: old, slow, minimally armed, with very little going for it in a fight except its size. But as with so very much of warfare, appearances in this case turned out to be deceiving; and if Grand Admiral Thrawn hadn't been on the Chimaera's bridge, Pellaeon had to admit that he might have been caught a bit by surprise.

  But Thrawn had been on the bridge, and had recognized immediately the unlikelihood that the Rebellion's strategists would have put such an important convoy under the protection of such a weak ship. And so, when the Bulk Cruiser's bays suddenly erupted with three full squadrons of A-wing starfighters, the Chimaera's TIE interceptors were already in space and swarming to the attack.

  "Interesting tactic," Thrawn commented as the gap between the Chimaera and the Rebel convoy began to sparkle with laser flashes. "If not especially innovative. The idea of converting Bulk Cruisers to starfighter carriers was first proposed over twenty years ago."

  "I don't recall it ever being implemented," Pellaeon said, feeling a twinge of uneasiness as he eyed the tactical displays. A-wings were faster even than those cursed X-wings, and he wasn't at all sure how well his TIE

  interceptors would handle them.

  "Excellent fighters, A-wings," Thrawn said, as if reading Pellaeon's thoughts. "Not without their limitations, though. Particularly here-high-speed craft like that are far more suited to hit-and-fade operations than to escort duty. Forcing them to remain near a convoy largely neutralizes their speed advantage." He cocked a blue-black eyebrow at Pellaeon. "Perhaps we're seeing the result of Admiral Ackbar's removal as Supreme Commander."

  "Perhaps." The TIE interceptors did indeed seem to be holding their own against the A-wings; and the Chimaera itself was certainly having no trouble with the Bulk Cruiser. Beyond the battlefront, the rest of the convoy was trying to huddle together, as if that would do them any good. "Ackbar's people are still in charge, though."

  "Obviously."

  "We've been over this territory already, Captain," Thrawn said, his voice cooling slightly. "Planting a vacuum-tight collection of evidence against Ackbar would have ruined him far too quickly. The more subtle attack will still neutralize him, but it will also send ripples of uncertainty and confusion through the Rebellion's entire political system. At the very least, it will distract and weaken them just at the moment when we'll be launching the Mount Tantiss campaign. At its best, it could split the entire alliance apart." He smiled. "Ackbar himself is replaceable, Captain. The delicate political balance the Rebellion has created for itself is not."

  "I understand all that, Admiral," Pellaeon growled. "My concern is with your assumption that that Bothan on the Council can be relied upon to push things so close to your theoretical breakup point.

  "Oh, he'll push, all right," Thrawn said, his smile turning sardonic as he gazed out at the battle blazing on around t
he enemy convoy. "I've spent many hours studying Bothan art, Captain, and I understand the species quite well. There's no doubt at all that Councilor Fey'lya will play his part beautifully. As beautifully as if we were pulling his strings directly." He tapped a key on his board. "Starboard batteries: one of the Frigates in the convoy is easing into attack position. Assume it's an armed backup and treat it accordingly. Squadrons A-2 and A-3, move to protect that flank until the Frigate has been neutralized."

  The batteries and TIE wing commander acknowledged, and some of the turbolaser fire began to track on the Frigate. "And what happens if Fey'lya wins?" Pellaeon persisted. "Quickly, I mean, before all this political confusion has a chance to set in. By your own analysis of the species, any Bothan who's risen as high as Fey'lya has would have to be highly intelligent."

  "Intelligent, yes, but not necessarily in any way that's dangerous to us," Thrawn said. "He'd have to be a survivor, certainly, but that kind of verbal skill doesn't necessarily translate into military competence." He shrugged. "Actually, a victory by Fey'lya would merely prolong the whole awkward situation for the enemy. Given the kind of support Fey'lya's been cultivating among the Rebellion military, the politicians would have to go through another polarizing struggle when they realized their mistake and tried to replace him."

  "Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, suppressing a sigh. It was the kind of tangled subtlety that he'd never really felt comfortable with. He just hoped the Grand Admiral was right about the potential gains; it would be a shame for Intelligence to have engineered such a brilliantly successful bank job and then not get anything of real value out of it.

  "Trust me, Captain," Thrawn said into his unspoken worries. "I dare say the wasting of political effort has already begun, in fact. Ackbar's staunchest allies would hardly have left Coruscant at this critical point unless they were desperately searching for evidence to clear him." Pellaeon frowned at him. "Are you saying that Solo and Organa Solo are headed for the Palanhi system?"