Dark Force Rising (Star Wars) swtt-2

by Timothy Zahn

  Ferrier drew back. "Well, fine," he said, sounding more hurt than annoyed. "You want to do it all by yourselves, be my guest. But if we get to the ships first, your precious little New Republic's going to pay a lot more to get them. A lot more."

  Spinning around, he stalked off. "Come on, Han, let's get out of here," Lando muttered, his eyes on Ferrier's retreating back.

  "Yeah," Han said, looking around for the loiterers he'd spotted earlier. They, too, were drifting away. It didn't look like trouble; but he kept his hand on his blaster anyway until they were inside the Lady Luck with the hatch sealed.

  "I'll prep for lift," Lando said as they headed back to the cockpit.

  "You talk to Control, get us an exit slot."

  "Okay," Han said. "You know, with a little more bargaining-"

  "I don't trust him," Lando cut him off, running his hand over the start-up switches. "He was smiling too much. And he gave up too easily." It was a hard comment to argue against. And as Han had noted earlier, it was Lando's ship. Shrugging to himself he keyed for spaceport control. They were out in ten minutes, once again leaving an unhappy group of controllers behind them. "I hope this is the last time we have to come here," Han said, scowling across the cockpit at Lando. "I get the feeling we've worn out our welcome."

  Lando threw him a sideways glance. "Well, well. Since when did you start caring what other people thought about you?"

  "Since I married a princess and started carrying a government ID," Han growled back. "Anyway, I thought you were supposed to be respectable, too."

  "It comes and goes. Ah-ha." He smiled humorlessly at Han. "It looks like while we were talking to Ferrier, someone sneaked up and put something on our hull. Ten'll get you one it's a homing beacon."

  "What a surprise," Han said, keying his display for its location. It was on the rear lower hull, back near the ramp where it would be out of most of the lift-off turbulence.

  "What do you want to do with it?"

  "The Terrijo system's more or less on the way to Pantolomin," Lando said, consulting his display. "We'll swing through there and drop it off."

  "Okay." Han scowled at his display. "Too bad we can't put it on another ship right here. That way he wouldn't even know what direction we're going."

  Lando shook his head. "He'll know we've spotted it if we put down on New Cov now. Unless you want to take it off up here and try to toss it onto another passing ship." He glanced at Han; paused for a longer look. "We're not going to try it, Han," he said firmly. "Get that look out of your eye.

  "Oh, all right," Han grumbled. "That'd get him off our backs, though."

  "And might get you killed in the process," Lando retorted. "And then I'd have to go back and explain it to Leia. Forget it." Han gritted his teeth. Leia. "Yeah," he said with a sigh. Lando looked at him again. "Come on, buddy, relax. Ferrier hasn't got a hope of beating us. Trust me-we re going to win this one." Han nodded. He hadn't been thinking about Ferrier, actually. Or about the Katana fleet. "I know," he said.

  The Lady Luck disappeared smoothly through one of the ducts in the transparisteel dome, and Ferrier shifted his cigarra to the other side of his mouth. "You're sure they won't find the second beacon?" he asked. Beside him, the oddly shaped shadow between a pile of shipping crates stirred. "They will not," it said in a voice like cold running water.

  "You'd better be right," Ferrier warned, a note of menace in his voice. "I didn't stand there and take that garbage from them for nothing." He glared at the shadow. "As it was, you almost gave the game away," he said accusingly. "Solo looked straight back at you once.

  "There was no danger," the wraith said flatly. "Humans need movement to see. Not-moving shadows are of no concern."

  "Well, it worked this time," Ferrier was willing to concede. "You're still lucky it was Solo and not Calrissian who looked-he saw you once before, you know. Next time, keep your big feet quiet.

  The wraith said nothing. "Oh, go on, get back to the ship," Ferrier ordered. "Tell Abric to get 'er ready to lift. We've got ourselves a fortune to make."

  He threw a last look upward. "And maybe," he added with grim satisfaction, "a smart-mouthed gambler to take out."

  CHAPTER

  19

  The Etherway was clearly visible now, dropping like a misshapen rock out of the sky toward its assigned landing pit. Standing in the protective shadow of the exit tunnel, Karrde watched its approach, stroking the grip of his blaster gently with his fingertips and trying to ignore the uneasiness still tickling the back of his mind. Mara was over three days late in bringing the freighter back from Abregado-not a particularly significant delay under normal conditions, but this trip had hardly qualified as normal. But there had been no other ships on her tail as she entered orbit, and she'd transmitted all the proper "all clear" code signals to him as she dropped into the approach pattern. And aside from the incompetence of the controllers, who'd taken an inordinate amount of time to decide which pit she was actually being assigned to, the landing itself had so far been completely routine. Karrde smiled wryly as he watched the ship come down. There had been times in the past three days when he'd thought about Mara's hatred of Luke Skywalker, and had wondered if she had decided to drop out of his life as mysteriously as she'd dropped into it. But it seemed now that his original reading of her had been correct. Mara Jade wasn't the sort of person who gave her loyalty easily, but once she'd made a decision she stuck with it. If she ever ran out on him, she wouldn't do so in a stolen ship. Not stolen from him, anyway.

  The Etherway was on its final approach now, rotating on its repulsorlifts to orient its hatchway toward the exit tunnel. Obviously, Karrde's reading of Han Solo had been correct, too. Even if the other hadn't been quite gullible enough to send a Mon Cal Star Cruiser out to Myrkr, he'd at least kept his promise to get the Etherway out of impoundment. Apparently, all of Karrde's private worrying of the past three days had been for nothing. But the uneasiness was still there.

  With a hiss of back-release outgassing, the Etherway settled to the stress-scored paving of the landing pit. His eyes on the closed hatchway, Karrde pulled his comlink from his belt and thumbed for his backup spotter.

  "Dankin? Anything suspicious in sight?"

  "Not a thing," the other's voice came back promptly. "Looks very quiet over there."

  Karrde nodded. "All right. Keep out of sight, but stay alert." He replaced the comlink in his belt. The Etherway's landing ramp began to swing down, and he shifted his hand to a grip on his blaster. If this was a trap, now would be the likely time to spring it.

  The hatchway opened, and Mara appeared. She glanced around the pit as she started down the ramp, spotting him immediately in his chosen shadow.

  "Karrde?" she called.

  "Welcome home, Mara," he said, stepping out into the light. "You're a bit late."

  "I wound up making a little detour," she said grimly, coming toward him.

  "That can happen," he said, frowning. Her attention was still flitting around the pit, her face lined with a vague sort of tension.

  "Trouble?" he asked quietly.

  "I don't know," she murmured. "I feel-" She never finished the sentence. At Karrde's belt his comlink suddenly squawked, screeched briefly with the electronic stress of blanket jamming, and then went silent. "Come on," Karrde snapped, drawing his blaster and spinning back toward the exit. At the far end of the tunnel he could see shapes moving; lifting his blaster, he fired toward the violent thunderclap of a sonic boom shattered the air around him, slamming hard against his head and nearly toppling him to the ground. He glanced up, ears ringing, just as two slower-moving TIE fighters swooped past overhead, laying down a spitting pattern of laser fire at the mouth of the exit tunnel. The paving erupted into steaming blocks of half-molten ceramic under the assault, blocking any chance of quick escape in that direction. Kaerde snapped off a reflexive if meaningless shot toward the TIE fighters; and he was just beginning to shift his aim back toward the figures in the tunnel when a dozen stormtroop
ers suddenly leaped into view at the upper rim of the landing pit, sliding down droplines to the ground. "Down!" he snapped at Mara, his voice hardly audible to his paralyzed sense of hearing. He dived for the ground, hitting awkwardly on his left arm and bringing his blaster to bear on the nearest stormtrooper. He fired, missing by half a meter...and he was just noticing the curious fact that the Imperials weren't returning fire when the blaster was deftly plucked from his hand.

  He rolled half over, looking up at Mara with stunned disbelief.

  "What-"

  She was standing over him, her face so pinched with emotion he could hardly recognize it, her lips moving with words he couldn't hear. But he didn't really need any explanation. Strangely, he felt no anger at her; not for concealing her Imperial past from him all this time, nor for now returning to her origins. Only chagrin that he'd been fooled so easily and so thoroughly ... and a strange regret that he had lost such a skilled associate.

  The stormtroopers hauled him to his feet and moved him roughly toward a drop ship that was settling onto the paving beside the Etherway; and as he stumbled toward it, a stray thought occurred to him.

  He was betrayed and captured and probably facing death ... but at least he now had a partial answer to the mystery of why Mara wanted to kill Luke Skywalker.

  Mara glared at the Grand Admiral, her hands curled into fists, her body trembling with rage. "Eight days, Thrawn," she snarled, her voice echoing oddly through the background noises of the Chimaera's vast shuttle bay. "You said eight days. You promised me eight days."

  Thrawn gazed back with a polite calmness that made her long to burn him down where he stood. "I changed my mind," he said coolly. "It occurred to me that Karrde might not only refuse to divulge the Katana fleet's location, but might even abandon you here for suggesting that he make such a deal with us."

  "The gates of hell you did," Mara snapped back. "You planned to use me like this right from the start."

  "And it got us what we wanted," the red-eyed freak said smoothly.

  "That's all that matters."

  Deep within Mara, something snapped. Ignoring the armed stormtroopers standing just behind her, she threw herself at Thrawn, fingers hooking like a hunting bird's talons for his throat And came to an abrupt bone-wrenching stop as Thrawn's Noghri bodyguard sidled in from two meters away, threw his arm across her neck and shoulder, and spun her around and halfway to the deck.

  She grabbed at the iron-hard arm across her throat, simultaneously throwing her right elbow back toward his torso. But the blow missed; and even as she shifted to a two-handed grip on his arm, white spots began to flicker in her vision. His forearm was pressing solidly against her carotid artery, threatening her with unconsciousness.

  There wasn't anything to be gained by blacking out. She relaxed her struggle, felt the pressure ease. Thrawn was still standing there, regarding her with amusement. "That was very unprofessional of you, Emperor's Hand," he chided.

  Mara glared at him and lashed out again, this time with the Force. Thrawn frowned slightly, fingers moving across his neck as if trying to brush away an intangible cobweb. Mara leaned into her tenuous grip on his throat; and he brushed again at his neck before understanding came. "All right, that's enough," he said, his voice noticeably altered, his tone starting to get angry. "Stop it, or Rukh will have to hurt you." Mara ignored the order, digging in as hard as she could. Thrawn gazed unblinkingly back at her, his throat muscles moving as he fought against the grip. Mara clenched her teeth, waiting for the order or hand movement that would signal permission for the Noghri to choke her, or for the stormtroopers to burn her down.

  But Thrawn remained silent and unmoving ... and a minute later, gasping for breath, Mara had to concede defeat.

  "I trust you've learned the limits of your small powers," Thrawn said coldly, fingering his throat. But at least he didn't sound amused anymore. "A little trick the Emperor taught you?"

  "He taught me a great many tricks," Mara bit out, ignoring the throbbing in her temples. "How to deal with traitors was one of them." Thrawn's glowing eyes glittered. "Have a care, Jade," he said softly.

  "I rule the Empire now. Not some long-dead Emperor; certainly not you. The only treason is defiance of my orders. I'm willing to let you come back to your rightful place in the Empire-as first officer, perhaps, of one of the Katana Dreadnaughts. But any further outbursts like this one and that offer will be summarily withdrawn."

  "And then you'll kill me, I suppose," Mara growled. "My Empire isn't in the habit of wasting valuable resources, the other countered. "You'd be given instead to Master C'baoth as a little bonus gift. And I suspect you would soon wish I'd had you executed."

  Mara stared at him, an involuntary shiver running up her back. "Who is C'baoth?"

  "Joruus C'baoth is a mad Jedi Master," Thrawn told her darkly. "He's consented to help our war effort, in exchange for Jedi to mold into whatever twisted image he chooses. Your friend Skywalker has already walked into his web; his sister, Organa Solo, we hope to deliver soon." His face hardened. "I would genuinely hate for you to have to join them."

  Mara took a deep breath. "I understand," she said, forcing out the words. "You've made your point. It won't happen again." He eyed her a moment, then nodded. "Apology accepted," he said.

  "Release her, Rukh. Now. Do I take it you wish to rejoin the Empire?" The Noghri let go of her neck-reluctantly, Mara thought-and took a short step away. "What about the rest of Karrde's people?" she asked.

  "As we agreed, they're free to go about their business. I've already canceled all Imperial search and detention orders concerning them, and Captain Pellaeon is at this moment calling off the bounty hunters."

  "And Karrde himself?"

  Thrawn studied her face. "He'll remain aboard until he tells me where the Katana fleet is. If he does so with a minimum of wasted time and effort on our part, he'll receive the three million in compensation which you and I agreed on at Endor. If not...there may not be much left of him to pay compensation to."

  Mara felt her lip twitch. He wasn't bluffing, either. She'd seen what a full-bore Imperial interrogation could do. "May I talk to him?" she asked.

  "Why?"

  "I might be able to persuade him to cooperate." Thrawn smiled slightly. "Or could at least assure him that you did not, in fact, betray him?"

  "He'll still be locked in your detention block," Mara reminded him, forcing her voice to stay calm. "There's no reason for him not to know the truth."

  Thrawn lifted his eyebrows. "On the contrary," he said. "A sense of utter abandonment is one of the more useful psychological tools available to us. A few days with only thoughts of that sort to relieve the monotony may convince him to cooperate without harsher treatment."

  "Thrawn-" Mara broke off, strangling back the sudden flash of anger.

  "That's better," the Grand Admiral approved, his eyes steady on her face. "Especially considering that the alternative is for me to turn him directly over to an interrogator droid. Is that what you want?"

  "No, Admiral," she said, feeling herself slump a little. "I just ... Karrde helped me when I had nowhere else to go.

  "I understand your feelings," Thrawn said, his face hardening again.

  "But they have no place here. Mixed loyalties are a luxury no officer of the Imperial Fleet can afford. Certainly not if she wishes someday to be given a command of her own."

  Mara drew herself up again to her full height. "Yes, sir. It won't happen again."

  "I trust not." Thrawn glanced past her shoulder and nodded. With a rustle of movement, her stormtrooper escort began to withdraw. "The deck officer's station is just beneath the control tower," he said, gesturing to the large transparisteel bubble nestled in among the racked TIE fighters three-quarters of the way up the hangar bay's back wall. "He'll assign you a shuttle and pilot to take you back to the surface."

  It was clearly a dismissal. "Yes, Admiral," Mara said. Stepping past him, she headed toward the door he'd indicated. For a moment s
he could feel his eyes on her, then heard the faint sound of his footsteps as he turned away toward the lift cluster beyond the starboard blast doors. Yes; the Grand Admiral had made his point. But it wasn't exactly the one he'd intended to make. With that single casual act of betrayal, he had finally destroyed her last wistful hope that the new Empire might someday measure up to the one that Luke Skywalker had destroyed out from under her. The Empire she'd once been proud to serve was gone. Forever. It was a painful revelation, and a costly one. It could erase in one stroke everything she'd worked so hard to build up for herself over the last year.

  It could also cost Karrde his life. And if it did, he would die believing that she had deliberately betrayed him to Thrawn. The thought twisted in her stomach like a heated knife, mixing with her bitter anger toward Thrawn for lying to her and her shame at her own gullibility in trusting him in the first place. No matter how she looked at it, this mess was her fault.

  It was up to her to fix it.

  Beside the door to the deck officer's office was the huge archway that led from the hangar bay proper into the service and prep areas behind it. Mara threw a glance over her shoulder as she walked, and spotted Thrawn stepping into one of the turbolifts, his tame Noghri at his side. Her stormtrooper escort, too, had disappeared, its members probably returning to their private section aft for debriefing over the mission they'd just completed. There were twenty or thirty other people in the bay, but none of them seemed to be paying any particular attention to her. It was probably the only chance she would ever get. With her ear cocked for the shout-or the blaster shot-that would mean she'd been noticed, she bypassed the deck officer's office and stepped past the retracted blast doors into the prep area.

  There was a computer terminal just inside the archway, built against the wall where it would be accessible to both the forward prep area and the aft hangar bay. Its location made it an obvious target for unauthorized access, and as a consequence it would undoubtedly be protected by an elaborate entry code. Probably changed hourly, if she knew Thrawn; but what even a Grand Admiral might not know was that the Emperor had had a private back door installed into the main computer of every Star Destroyer. It had been his guarantee, first during his consolidation of power and then during the upheaval of Rebellion, that no commander could ever lock him out of his own ships. Not him, and not his top agents.