by Timothy Zahn
Bel Iblis shook his head. “I’m not trying to get us out. I already told you that. We have a job to do; and that job is waiting for us in there.” He nodded out the viewport at the Ubiqtorate base.
“With Thrawn and a Star Destroyer sitting between us and it?” Booster snorted. “Don’t take this personally, General, and I’m sure you’re a fine military mind and all that. But you try to slug it out with Thrawn and we’re all roast dewback.”
“I know,” Bel Iblis said, his voice suddenly very deadly. “That’s why we’re not going to engage him. At least, not the way he expects us to.”
Booster eyed him cautiously. There was something about the other’s face and voice that was starting to send shivers through him. “What are you talking about?”
“We have to get past the Relentless, Terrik,” Bel Iblis said quietly, gazing out the viewport. “And we have to disable it enough in the process that it won’t be able to blast our slicers out of the sky before they can get to the computer extension and cut their way in.”
“What about the base’s own weapons?”
“And we have to do it fast enough that the base’s own weaponry won’t have time to turn on us,” Bel Iblis agreed. “Add it all up, and there’s only one way we can possibly pull it off.”
Still gazing out the viewport, he seemed to brace himself. “As soon as we can break clear of the tractor beams, we’re going to turn and drive as hard as we can straight for the Relentless.
“And we’re going to ram it.”
Booster felt the air go out of him in a silent rush. “You’re not serious,” he breathed.
Bel Iblis turned, looking him straight in the eye. “I’m sorry, Booster. Sorry about your ship; sorry about letting you and your crew come aboard in the first place.”
“General?” the helmsman called. “We’ve got a seventy-nine-degree displacement now. That’s the best we’re going to get.”
For another second, Bel Iblis held Booster’s gaze. Then, turning his eyes away, he stepped past him. “It will do,” he said. “All weapons: commence firing at tractor beam emplacements.”
Abruptly, out the viewport, a firestorm of turbolaser fire erupted, lancing outward from the angled hull in both directions. “And helm and sublight engines,” the general added calmly, “stand by for full emergency power.”
“There he is,” Elegos said, pointing. “Over there, just to starboard.”
“I see him,” Han said. For a minute there he’d lost Carib’s freighter in the swirling glare of the comet’s tail. “You see any of the miners he was talking about?”
“Not yet,” Elegos said. “Perhaps he was mistaken.”
“Not likely,” Han growled, the hairs on the back of his neck starting to tingle. He might not agree that Carib could pick out Imperials just by their flying style; but he sure didn’t doubt the guy could tell the difference between ore buckets and empty space. “I wonder where they could have gotten to?”
“Perhaps they’re being masked by the tail,” Elegos suggested “They may be working on the back quarter of the comet’s surface.”
“Miners never work back there,” Han said, shaking his head. “The dust and ice foul up alluvial dampers something fierce.”
“Then where are they?”
“I don’t know,” Han said grimly. “But I’m starting to get a very bad feeling about it. Key me a transmission to Carib’s freighter, will you?”
Elegos keyed the comm. “Ready.”
“Carib?” Han called. “You see anything?”
“Nothing,” the other’s voice came back. “But they were here, Solo.”
“I believe you,” Han said, throwing a quick look at the Falcon’s weapons board. The quads were ready, keyed remotely down here to him. “I think maybe it’s time for a real close look at the surface. See what might be tucked away in there out of sight.”
“Agreed,” Carib said. “You want us to lead the way down?”
“That freighter of yours armed?”
There was just the briefest of hesitations. “No, not really.”
“Then I’d better take point,” Han said, throwing more power to the sublight engines. “Hang back and let me pass you.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Do you wish me to go to one of the weapons bays?” Elegos asked quietly.
Han threw him a quick glance. “I thought Caamasi hated killing.”
“We do,” Elegos said soberly. “But we also accept that there are times when killing a few is necessary for a greater good. This may well be one of those times.”
“Maybe,” Han grunted, easing way back on his speed as the Falcon shot past the Action II. They were starting to get close in to the comet now, and he didn’t want to run into some loose piece of rock that might suddenly decide to break off into their path. “Don’t worry—whatever they’re hiding down there, I should be able to handle it okay by myself. It’s not like you can cram a lot of firepower into one of those ore buckets—”
And right in the middle of his sentence, right before his eyes, the comet and the stars beyond it abruptly vanished.
And in their place, its lights glowing evilly in the total blackness around it, was the dark shape of an Imperial Star Destroyer.
“Han!” Elegos gasped. “What—”
“Cloaked Star Destroyer!” Han snapped back, twisting the helm yoke viciously, the whole plan suddenly coming clear. That battle back there over Bothawui—all those ships beating each other into rubble—with a Star Destroyer waiting hidden here, ready to finish them all off and maybe burn Bothawui in the bargain. No survivors, no witnesses, only a battle everyone in the New Republic would blame everyone else for.
And the civil war that single battle would spark might never end.
“Get ready on the comm,” he told Elegos as the Falcon veered hard around back toward the invisible edge of the cloaking shield. “The second we’re clear—”
The order choked off as he was abruptly thrown hard against his restraints. Beneath him, the Falcon jerked to the side like a wounded animal, the roar of the sublight engines mixing with the creaking of stressed joints and supports. “What is it?” Elegos gasped.
Han swallowed hard, his hands tightening uselessly on the yoke. “It’s a tractor beam,” he told the Caamasi, throwing a desperate glance at the sensor display. If it was an edgewise grab, something marginal or tenuous, he might be able to wiggle his way out.
But no. They had him. They had him solid.
He looked up again as a motion caught his eye: Carib’s freighter, now inside the cloaking shield with him, twisting helplessly in the same invisible grip. “They’ve got us, Elegos,” he sighed, the bitter taste of defeat in his mouth.
“They’ve got us both.”
CHAPTER
38
They ran into two more of the disguised Conner nets along the way, both of which Mara insisted on tripping and disposing of. Luke wasn’t convinced himself that that was necessary; but on the other hand he couldn’t see how it could hurt, either. If the first net hadn’t triggered any alarms—and there was no indication it had—then taking down the other two probably wouldn’t do anything, either. And at least it gave the insectoid service droids something to do that was back out of their way.
The background hum had also increased as they traveled down the tunnel, reaching a volume where Luke could definitely tell it was coming from above them. The fortress’s huge power generator, undoubtedly, sealed safely away inside solid rock beyond their reach.
And eventually, after perhaps a hundred meters, the tunnel ended in a large, well-lit room.
“I was right,” Mara murmured from Luke’s side as they stood together at the archway entrance. “I knew he’d have a place like this stashed away. Even in his own fortress, hidden away from his own people. I just knew it.”
Luke nodded silently, gazing into the chamber. It was roughly circular, dome-shaped at the top, sixty meters across at the base, and a good ten high at the cente
r, all carved out of solid rock. A three-meter-wide ring of tiled floor ran around the outer edge at the level of the tunnel, dropping then a meter down to the main floor, which was also tiled. Five meters up the sides, behind a protective railing, a balcony deeply indented into the rock ran two-thirds of the way around the room, its inner walls lined with electronic equipment.
On the main floor to their far right was a more modest version of the command center they’d found in the upper floor of the Hand of Thrawn. This one was only a single ring of consoles, centered not on a galactic holo but on the wide, squat cylinder of a superstorage library/computer information base. Again, as in the fortress above, a handful of glowing lights indicated the equipment was waiting patiently on standby. The rest of the main floor was empty except for a row of furniture lined up against one edge of the raised walkway beneath a plastic sheet.
But all of that was just background, things to be peripherally noted and filed away into his mind for later evaluation. From the first moment he and Mara had entered the room, Luke’s full attention had been focused on the deep alcove coming off the main room over to their left. Sealed there behind a solid transparisteel wall was a complete cloning apparatus: a Spaarti cylinder wrapped in nutrient tubes and flash-learning cables, surrounded by support equipment, all of it tied into a humming fusion generator.
And floating gently in the center of the cylinder, asleep or perhaps not even yet truly alive, was a blue-skinned adult humanoid. A humanoid with an exceptionally familiar face.
Grand Admiral Thrawn.
“Ten years,” Luke said quietly. “Just like you said. Just like you figured. He told them he’d return in ten years.”
“The old fraud,” Mara muttered, the words in sharp contrast to the reluctant awe Luke could sense in her. He could sympathize; the alcove and its occupant were intimidating in their subtle grandeur, and in their equally quiet threat. “Probably had the cycle set on a ten-year timer and just reset it back to zero every time he dropped by for a visit.”
“Probably,” Luke agreed, tearing his eyes away from the almost hypnotic sight of the floating clone and looking over at the ring of consoles at the other end of the room. “Artoo, get over there and find a computer jack you can link into. Start downloading everything you can find about the Unknown Regions area Thrawn opened up.”
The little droid warbled acknowledgment and rolled past him to one of the half-dozen ramps leading from the outer ring down to the main floor. He made it down the ramp without tipping over and headed for the console ring, his wheels clattering rhythmically across the small gaps between the tiles as he went. He stopped beside one of the consoles, whistled a confirmation, then extended his computer jack and plugged in.
“He’s in,” Luke said, turning back to the cloning tank. “Come on, I want a closer look at this.”
Together, he and Mara circled the room to the transparisteel wall. “Don’t touch it,” Mara warned as he leaned in close. “It’s probably wired with alarms.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Luke assured her, peering inside. From this angle he could see something that hadn’t been visible from the archway. “You see what else he’s got in there with him?”
“A couple of ysalamiri.” Mara nodded. “Just in case a wandering Jedi happened by.”
“Thrawn was the type to think of everything.”
“He sure was,” Mara agreed. “Except maybe that lake out there.”
Luke frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Over there,” Mara said, half turning and pointing across the room.
Luke turned to look. There was the rock wall, and the furniture beneath the plastic sheet, and the upper equipment balcony running around the dome above it. “What exactly am I looking at?” he asked.
“The water damage,” she said, pointing again. “On the wall across from the tunnel mouth. See?”
“I do now,” Luke said, nodding. The wall over there was subtly but definitely discolored, the stain marked with multiple vertical lines where water had seeped through the rock and dripped down. In fact, now that he was paying attention, he could see water oozing slowly through the rock in a dozen places. “Child Of Winds said the lake had been expanding,” he said. “Looks like it found a way in through the caverns.”
He turned back. “I’d say our clone reached his ten-year mark just in time.”
“What do you think he’ll be like?” Mara asked, her voice sounding odd. “I mean, how close to the original Thrawn will he be?”
Luke shook his head. “That’s an argument that’s been going on for decades,” he said. “With the same genetic structure plus a flash-learning pattern taken directly from the templet, a clone should theoretically be completely identical to the original person. But despite that, they’re never exactly the same. Maybe some of the mental subtleties get blurred over in transition, or maybe there’s something else unique inside us that a flash-learning reader isn’t able to pick up.”
He nodded toward the clone. “He’ll presumably have all of Thrawn’s memories. But will he have his genius, or his leadership, or his single-minded drive? I don’t know.”
He looked at Mara. “Which I suppose leads us to the question of what we do with him.”
“Funny you should ask that,” Mara said pensively. “Ten years ago, I’d have said flat out we blast our way in and get rid of him. Maybe even five years ago. But now … it’s not so simple anymore.”
Luke studied her profile, trying to sort through the mixture of emotions swirling through her. “You really were spooked by all that talk about distant threats, weren’t you?”
To his mild surprise, she didn’t take offense. “Fel and Parck are worried about it,” she reminded him. “You willing to bet they’re both wrong?”
“Not really,” Luke conceded, looking back at the clone. “I’m just trying to imagine what having Thrawn suddenly show up would do to the New Republic. Widespread panic would be my guess, with Coruscant scrambling to find enough ships for a preemptive strike at what’s left of the Empire.”
“You don’t think they’d listen to what he had to say?”
“The way Thrawn carved his way through the New Republic the last time?” Luke shook his head. “They wouldn’t trust him for a minute.”
“You’re probably right,” Mara said. “Parck said there were rumors he’d returned, though how a rumor like that could get started I don’t know. But he didn’t mention what the reaction had been.”
“And rumors are a lot different than if he actually walked in the door,” Luke pointed out.
For a minute they stood there in silence. Then Luke took a deep breath. “I suppose it’s an academic argument, really, when you come down to it,” he said. “Whatever the original Thrawn might have done, this particular being hasn’t done anything wrong. Certainly nothing that deserves a summary execution.”
“True,” Mara agreed. “Though I imagine you’d have trouble convincing some people of that. Next question, then: do we leave him here to wake up normally and join our friends upstairs? Bearing in mind that they’re not too happy with either us or the New Republic at the moment? Or do we see if we can speed up the growth process and take him back to Coruscant?”
Luke whistled softly under his breath. “You sure know how to find the hard questions, don’t you?”
“I’ve never had to find a hard question in my life,” she countered tartly. “They’ve always found me first.”
Luke smiled. “I know the feeling.”
“I’d rather you knew the answer,” she said. “Bottom line: could Coruscant handle it?”
From across the room came a sudden flurry of warbling. Luke turned, to see Artoo bouncing back and forth excitedly on his stubby legs. “What is it?” he called. “You find the Unknown Regions data?”
The droid twittered impatiently. “Okay, okay, I’ll be right there,” Luke soothed him, heading for the nearest ramp down to the main floor. He started to pass the sheet-covered furniture—
And paused, looking at the collection. There were half a dozen chairs of various types under there, plus a bed, a table, and a couple of things that looked like storage end tables. “What do you suppose this is all about?” he called back to Mara.
“Looks like the stuff he’ll need to make this place into a cozy little apartment once he’s out,” Mara suggested, dropping down to the main floor and coming up beside him. “He’ll want some time to recover, maybe get caught up with what’s been happening out there over the past ten years. In fact, I’d run you ten to one that console ring’s got a direct feed from whatever news/data links they’ve got upstairs.”
“Yes, but why is it all piled here instead of laid out waiting for him?” Luke asked. “It’s not like Thrawn wouldn’t have known what kind of arrangement his clone would like.”
“Interesting point,” Mara agreed, her voice suddenly uneasy.
Luke threw her a look. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, looking around. “Something just suddenly felt wrong.”
Luke looked around the room, too. Nothing seemed threatening … but suddenly he was feeling it, too. “Maybe we ought to get Artoo and clear out of here,” he suggested quietly. “Take whatever he’s got and just go.”
“Let’s first see how much he’s got,” Mara said. She turned back toward the droid and took a step—
“Who dares disturb the sleep of the Syndic Mitth’raw’nuruodo?” a deep voice thundered from above them.
Luke dropped into a half crouch, lightsaber reflexively raised above him. He looked up—
To an extraordinary sight. Above the railing and second-level equipment balcony, a large ovate section of the stone ceiling was undulating like some sort of rocky fluid. Even as he watched, it slowly formed itself into a giant face looking down at them. “Who dares disturb the sleep of the Syndic Mitth’raw’nuruodo?” the voice repeated.
“Now that’s a nice trick,” Mara murmured. “Well, go ahead—answer it.”
