by Timothy Zahn
“Thank you,” Disra said, trying not to sound too impatient. The sooner he could cut off this garrulous fool, the sooner he and Tierce could start going over the report line by line. “You’ll be receiving a commendation for your quick work.”
“Two points, first, if I may, Your Excellency,” Uday said, holding up two fingers.
“I’m sure it’s all in your report,” Disra said, reaching for the off switch. “Thank you—”
“According to the note that accompanied the file, the sighting was made by a TIE fighter off Pakrik Minor,” Uday said. “That turns out not to be the case.”
Disra froze, finger poised over the switch. “Explain.”
“The file is actually a compilation of two separate sightings,” Uday said. “One was made in the Kauron system, we think, the other either in the Nosken or Drompani systems. Neither was made by a TIE fighter, either.”
Disra threw a hard look at Tierce. The Royal Guardsman’s face had turned to stone. “How do you know?” he demanded.
“That they didn’t come from TIE fighters?” Uday asked. “The sensor profiles are all wrong. I’d guess an X-wing or A-wing for the first one, some kind of well-equipped warship for the second. Not a New Republic ship—the verification signature is wrong for that.” The colonel shrugged. “As to where they were made, that’s easily pulled from the background star patterns.”
Disra took a careful breath. “Thank you, Colonel,” he said. “You’ve been most helpful. As I said, a commendation will be forthcoming.”
“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Uday said.
Disra stabbed the comm switch, and the colonel’s face vanished. “Well,” the Moff said, looking at Tierce again. “It seems we’ve been lied to.”
“It does indeed,” Tierce said, his voice soft, his expression gone suddenly deadly. “I think, Your Excellency, that we have been betrayed.”
Disra swore viciously. “That kriffing clone. That kriffing clone. We should never have trusted them. Thrawn should never have started this kriffing project in the first place.”
“Calm down,” Tierce said, his tone suddenly sharp. “Thrawn knew what he was doing. And don’t forget that a good many of those clones died fighting for the Empire.”
“They’re still an abomination,” Disra snarled. He’d spoken with clones; had ordered them into battle; had even sold them to the Cavrilhu Pirates in exchange for Zothip’s precious Preybird starfighters. They still made his skin crawl. “And you can’t trust any of them.”
“Can we get off Carib Devist and clone treachery for a minute?” Flim put in tautly. “Seems to me the question ought to be why he sent us a faked record in the first place. What did he have to gain?”
Tierce took a deep breath, clearly forcing calmness into himself. “That is indeed the question. Disra, how did the record come in?”
“Aboard a drone probe from the Ubiqtorate contact station at Parshoone,” Disra told him. “Sent by the agent in charge—”
“Sent directly here?” Tierce cut him off. “No handoffs or course changes?”
“No,” Disra said, one hand curling into a fist as it suddenly and belatedly struck him. “They wanted Bastion’s location.”
“And they got it,” Tierce said darkly, his comlink already in his hand. “Major Tierce to Capital Security: full background alert. Possible spies in the city; locate and put under surveillance. Do not—repeat, do not—detain at present. Confirmation from Moff Disra will be forthcoming.”
He got an acknowledgment and keyed off. “You need to send them a confirmation, Your Excellency,” he said.
“I know,” Disra said, frowning at him. “Excuse me if I seem unusually dense today; but you don’t want them detained? Spies or saboteurs in my city, and you don’t want them detained?”
“I don’t think they’re saboteurs,” Tierce said. “After all, they’ve been here at least a couple of days and nothing has blown up.”
“Oh, that’s comforting,” Disra said icily. “Why don’t you want them detained?”
“As Thrawn often said, within every problem lies an opportunity.” Tierce shifted his gaze to the side. “It occurs to me we have an extremely interesting opportunity here.”
Frowning, Disra followed his gaze …
“You’d better not be thinking what I think you’re thinking,” Flim warned, his eyes flicking uneasily back and forth between Tierce and Disra.
“Of course we are,” Tierce assured him. “A Rebel spy team, being confronted personally by Grand Admiral Thrawn? It would be the perfect cap to your performance.”
“The perfect slab under my funeral pyre, you mean,” Flim shot back. “Are you crazy, Tierce? They get one glimpse of me, and you’re going to have a martyred Grand Admiral on your hands.”
“Which might not be such a bad idea,” Disra growled, keying confirmation of Tierce’s security alert into his board. “Tierce is right—this is a perfect chance to demonstrate your omniscience.”
“I can hardly wait,” Flim said sourly, crossing his arms.
“Calm down, Admiral,” Tierce said, nudging Disra aside and keying the display for a search grid overview. “We’ll have them spotted in fifteen minutes, and the whole thing will be over in thirty.”
There was a beep from the display. “Your Excellency?”
Muttering a curse, Disra keyed the comm switch. “Yes, what is it?”
A young, earnest-looking man appeared on the display. “Major Kerf, Your Excellency: spaceport control,” he identified himself. “I thought you’d like to know that his shuttle has just landed.”
Disra shot a look over the display at Tierce, got a shrug in response. “Whose shuttle has just landed?”
“I thought you knew, sir,” Kerf said, looking a little bewildered. “He said he was on his way to the palace to see you, and I just assumed—”
“Never mind your assumptions, Major,” Disra snapped. “Who is it?”
“Why, the admiral, sir,” Kerf stammered. “You know—Admiral Pellaeon.”
· · ·
The waiter at the open-air tapcafe set the plate of mesh-cooked trimpian slices down on the table, accepted payment with a not-quite sneer, and strolled his way back toward the overhang where the bar was located. “He’s a real gem, isn’t he,” Lando grumbled, glaring after him.
“Probably figures M’challa scholars wouldn’t know good service if it fell over them, so why bother,” Han said, picking up one of the slices and dipping it into the yellow-swirled miasra sauce, being careful not to let the sleeve of his robe drag into it. Despite the fact they again had no progress to show for their morning’s work, he was actually feeling better than he had earlier.
Lando, on the other hand, seemed to have caught his bad mood. “So what, that means our money’s no good?” he growled. “I tell you, Han, they’re getting cocky again.”
“Yeah, I know,” Han said, taking a bite as he looked out at the people hurrying along the streets bordering the tapcafe. Hurrying about their business, with a light step and an optimism they probably hadn’t had in years. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out why.
Grand Admiral Thrawn had returned.
“They have to realize they’re still completely overmatched,” he pointed out around his mouthful. “They’ve got, what, a thousand systems left?”
“It’s not a lot,” Lando agreed, snagging a piece of the trimpian for himself and dabbing it delicately into the miasra sauce. Lobot, Han noted, without the distraction of conversation or moodiness to slow him down, was already on his second slice. “But you sure wouldn’t know it by looking at them.”
“Yeah,” Han said, looking around some more. Happy people, cheerful people, confident that the universe was about to open up and rain wonders down on them again. It was enough to turn a bad mood really rotten …
He paused, the tangy bite of trimpian between his teeth suddenly forgotten. Beyond the pedestrians, the vehicular traffic had come to a momentary halt as a speeder truck halfway do
wn the block maneuvered toward a loading ramp. And in one of the landspeeders a few meters back from the tapcafe—
“Lando—over there,” he hissed, nodding toward the landspeeder. “That dark green open-top landspeeder. The guy with the thick blond beard?”
Lando pulled back the side of his hood for better visibility. “I’ll be a scruffy nerfherder,” he breathed. “That’s not Zothip, is it?”
“Sure looks like him,” Han agreed grimly, fighting the impulse to pull his own hood a little tighter around his face. Captain Zothip, head of the Cavrilhu Pirates, and one of the nastier forms of semi-intelligent rotscum he’d ever had the misfortune to cross paths with. Considering the bounty on Zothip’s head, there shouldn’t have been a civilized planet anywhere in the galaxy where he should have been able to show his ugly face.
And yet there he was, crammed into a landspeeder with five equally ugly bodyguards in the middle of the Imperial capital, shouting obscenities at the speeder truck as if he owned the whole town. “I’d say we’ve found the pirate-Empire link Luke and me have been looking for,” he muttered. “Clones and all.”
“I’d say you’re right,” Lando said, his robe twitching as he shivered. “I sure hope you’re not going to suggest we follow him and confirm it.”
Han shook his head. “Not a chance, pal. I tangled with him once a long time ago. I haven’t the slightest interest in trying it again.”
“Me, neither.” Lando exhaled audibly. “You know something, Han? We’re getting old.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Han said. “Come on, let’s eat up and get back to the library.”
He glanced up at the brilliant sunlight and blue, cloudless sky. “Suddenly this town seems a lot less friendly than it did five minutes ago.”
· · ·
The speeder truck finished its maneuvering, the traffic began to move again, and Solo and the others went back to their meal.
And setting a high-denomination coin down beside her own half-finished snack, Karoly left the tapcafe and slipped out into the stream of pedestrians. Suddenly, there was something more interesting than Solo and Calrissian and their library research to attract her attention.
Something far more interesting.
The dark green Kakkran landspeeder hadn’t made it more than a street away when she found what she was looking for: an old, beat-up Ubrikkian 9000, untended, parked at the side of the street. Palming her Mistryl-issue inciter, she hopped into the driver’s seat, taking the control stick with one hand and sliding the inciter beneath the readout panel with the other. The motor coughed reluctantly to life, and with a glance over her shoulder she pulled out into a gap in the vehicular stream. A casual observer would have seen nothing unusual; she could only hope that the owner wouldn’t miss his vehicle until she was finished with it.
She wove in and out of traffic until she had trimmed enough off Zothip’s lead to be able to catch frequent glimpses of the dark green Kakkran. The more official-looking buildings, including what was obviously the local governor’s palace, were situated on the higher ground at the northern edge of the city off to their left. If the Imperial connection Solo had mentioned was real, the pirates should be turning off anytime now.
But to her growing surprise, they didn’t. Instead, the Kakkran continued east, angling northward only after the palace was far behind them. They reached the outskirts of the city and headed out into the wooded hills that bordered the area to the north, and Karoly found herself dropping farther and farther back as the traffic thinned out.
The pirates changed roads twice more, curving farther and farther north, and Karoly began to regret she’d never gotten around to picking up a map of the area. The road they were on seemed to be taking them in a circle around the city, which made no sense to her at all unless they were trying to come up on the palace from behind.
She was still toying with that thought when the Kakkran suddenly pulled to the side of the road and disappeared into the trees.
She pulled off, too, slipping out of her Ubrikkian and heading into the woods on foot. She’d gone only a little ways when the sound of the repulsorlifts ahead of her cut off.
“You sure this is it?” a rough voice drifted back toward her through the trees. “Doesn’t look like any escape route I’ve ever seen.”
“Trust me, Captain,” a more cultured voice assured him. “I scoped the place out thoroughly the last time we were here.” Karoly got a glimpse of movement through the trees, headed for the cover of a squat bush—
“Here it is,” the cultured man said; and as Karoly dropped into a crouching position behind the bush she saw one of the six pirates reach out an arm and swing away some hanging branches from a tree growing out of the rocky cliff face. “Your typical Imperial rat-run.”
Zothip grunted, ducking down to peer inside. “Couple of landspeeders stashed away in there. The tunnel wide enough for ’em, Control?”
“I presume we’ll find out,” the cultured man said. “Grinner, get it started.”
The pirates disappeared beneath the hanging branches, and a minute later there was the sound of a repulsorlift powering up. The sound revved, then faded away into the distance. Karoly gave them a count of ten, then eased to the tree and ducked under the branches.
She found herself in a small room, no more than twice as wide as the tile-walled tunnel that extended into the hills from its rear wall, with a small Slipter landspeeder parked along the side. In the distance, she could see the reflected glow from the other landspeeder’s lights receding rapidly down the tunnel.
Using her inciter, she started up the Slipter, hoping the sound of the pirates’ own vehicle would cover up the extra noise. Swinging it around, leaving the lights off, she headed off in pursuit.
“Report from Security Team Eight, sir,” the young trooper at the comm monitor said, his voice academy crisp. “Three possibles have been spotted in a landspeeder outside the Timaris Building. Security Team Two reporting two possibles have just entered a jewelry store on the fourteenth block of Bleaker Street.”
“I’ve got data feeds from both teams,” the trooper at one of the computer displays added. “Running facial matches now.”
“He’ll be running them against the complete Fleet record system over at Ompersan, Your Excellency,” the lieutenant standing beside Disra explained. “If they’ve ever crossed paths with the Empire, their faces will be in there.”
“Very good, Lieutenant,” Disra said, looking around the darkened palace situation room with a mixture of satisfaction and envy. Satisfaction, because the command team he’d installed here a year ago was working with the kind of speed and efficiency that had once been the proud hallmark of the Imperial military. Envy, because it wasn’t him they were performing for. “Any suggestions, Admiral?”
Standing behind the main comm monitor station, Thrawn lifted his eyebrows politely. In the dim lighting his glowing red eyes looked even brighter than usual. “I suggest Your Excellency,” he said, the word “suggest” carrying just the barest emphasis, “that we first allow the analysis staff to do their work. There’s nothing to be gained by showing our hand until we’re sure who the spies are.”
“Maybe they all are,” Disra countered, suddenly tired of the polite condescension. In character or not—dangerous or not—it was high time he took the con man down a stroke or two. “Coruscant has been trying to learn Bastion’s current location for a good two years now. I doubt they would waste that hard-fought knowledge just to drop one or two spies on us.”
He could feel Tierce’s eyes on him, and the heat of the Guardsman’s disapproval of his verbal challenge. But Thrawn’s blue-black eyebrows merely lifted politely. “What do you suggest, then, Your Excellency? That a saboteur team has been sent in to bring down our planetary shields in preparation for a major attack?”
Disra stared at him, the sudden jolt momentarily sidetracking his irritation. That was precisely the scheme they themselves were working against the Bothan homeworld of Bothawui. W
hat in the Empire was Flim doing talking openly about such a thing here?
He was saved from his sudden confusion by the trooper at the computer console. “Report from Ompersan, Admiral,” the other announced. “Suspected possibles have been cleared. All are listed as Imperial citizens.”
“Very good,” Thrawn acknowledged. “Continue the search. Your Excellency, I presume you have not forgotten your appointment.”
Disra looked at his chrono, suppressing a scowl. Yes, Pellaeon would be arriving at the palace any minute now. And between that time crunch and the confusion his barbed remark about saboteurs had caused, the con man had managed to blunt the Moff’s verbal attack without saying anything that could be construed as insubordination.
Just the sort of thing the real Thrawn might have done. Disra supposed he ought to be pleased. “Thank you for the reminder, Admiral,” he said. “Carry on here. And let me know the minute—the minute—you find anything.”
They had been back at work for half an hour when Lobot’s fingers abruptly came to a halt. “What is it?” Han asked, the smell of the miasra sauce on his breath wafting by Lando’s ear as Han leaned over his shoulder. “Are we in?”
“I don’t know,” Lando said, frowning at Lobot. The other’s face had changed subtly, too, at about the same time his fingers had stopped typing. More importantly, the pattern of tiny lights on the frequency readout of his cyborg implant had changed. “Something’s interrupted his contact with Moegid.”
“Uh-oh,” Han muttered under his breath. “You think they’re on to us?”
“I don’t know,” Lando said again, studying Lobot’s profile and wondering if he should try talking to him. Lobot’s eyes seemed almost glazed over, as if he were in a trance or deep in thought. “I’ve never seen that comm pattern before.”
“Um.” Han reached out and experimentally touched Lobot’s shoulder. There was no response. “Backup frequency, maybe?”
“Could be,” Lando agreed. “I didn’t know they’d set up a second biocomm frequency, but that would make sense. I just wish—”
