by Timothy Zahn
“That of course depends on what he has planned,” Karrde said. He was eyeing Lando closely, Han noticed suddenly. As closely as Lando was eyeing him. “So what do you suggest as your next move?”
“Our next move,” Lando said, leaning on the word, “is to get this blasted Caamas issue out of the way so we can focus on Thrawn. And that means finding out exactly who the guilty Bothans were.”
“That could be a problem,” Karrde said, his voice studiously calm. “As far as I know, the Imperials have only two complete sets of records left: one at the Ubiqtorate base at Yaga Minor, the other at the current Imperial capital on Bastion.”
“I don’t suppose you’d happen to know where Bastion is,” Leia said.
“I’m afraid not,” Karrde said, glancing at her and then returning his attention to Lando. “Bastion’s proper name is one secret the Imperials have managed to keep.”
“I wasn’t necessarily talking about the Imperials,” Lando said. “I was thinking someone else might have the records we’re looking for.”
Han blinked at Lando. Suddenly the other’s insistence that he join them here tonight for their talk with Karrde was taking on a whole new dimension. “You mean that Karrde—?”
“I don’t have the records, Calrissian,” Karrde said. “If I did, I’d have offered them to you long before now.”
“I know that,” Lando said, his voice heavy with significance. “I was referring to a different source entirely.”
“Who also probably doesn’t have them,” Karrde said coldly.
Lando’s expression didn’t change. “But who might.”
For a pair of heartbeats the two men continued to gaze at each other. Han threw a frown at Leia, saw his same puzzlement mirrored in her own face. “Is there something here we need to know about?” he asked carefully.
“No,” Lando said. “Or maybe I should say not yet.”
“Leia, Calrissian and I need to have a short talk,” Karrde said, getting abruptly to his feet. “Is there a place where we can have some privacy?”
“You can use the boys’ bedroom,” Leia said, pointing down the hallway. “Last door on the left.”
“Thank you.” Karrde gestured Lando to the hallway. “After you, Calrissian.”
Shada had added an extra anchor to her safety line about two meters above her, on the assumption that if and when the Noghri got reinforcements up to the rooftop they might simply cut the line without bothering to haul her up first for the formality of questioning. Now, dangling a hundred meters above the ground, she eased her low-light eyepiece around the edge of the darkened window beside her and peered inside.
It was a child’s bedroom—a children’s bedroom, she corrected herself, spotting the second bed pushed against the far wall. Currently unoccupied; and since none of the three Solo children had followed their parents out of the air-speeder, it was reasonable to assume the room would stay that way.
Replacing the eyepiece into its jumpsuit pocket, she pulled out one of her three Zana M6W-9 molecular stilettos and extended its invisibly slender blade. Like a lightsaber, a molecular stiletto could cut through nearly anything. Unlike a lightsaber, though, the Zana’s blade was incredibly delicate. A quick thrust against an assailant nearly always resulted in a broken blade—along with a dead assailant, of course—and even the most painstakingly careful cutting job was as likely as not to end up ruining the tool.
Fortunately, the task facing her wasn’t going to be large enough to push the odds. With most buildings on Coruscant she would have had to cut away an entire window to get inside, but the Orowood’s designers had incorporated traditional Alderaanian swing-out panels to allow for free air flow. All she had to do was maneuver the stiletto blade between the panels and slice through the catch, and she would be in.
After, of course, finding and disabling whatever alarms the Noghri had installed.
That task turned out to be easier than she’d expected. The window carried only a single alarm, ranged to watch for incoming airspeeders. Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to the Noghri that someone might be crazy enough to rappel down from the rooftop the way she had. Though of course, to be fair, they had put a guard up there.
Two minutes later she was inside the darkened room, pulling the window closed behind her and listening hard. There were the usual soft mechanical noises of any modern dwelling, along with the muffled sounds of conversation coming from elsewhere in the apartment. The words were impossible to decipher through the closed door, but she could hear at least four distinct voices.
She stood just inside the door, frowning with sudden indecision. She’d seen Solo and Organa Solo and their droid arrive in their T-81, and had spotted Calrissian waiting for them; but who was the fourth voice? Some random friend who’d happened to drop in? Hardly. A business associate of Calrissian’s? Maybe, except that he’d been skulking alone in the shadows before the Solos arrived.
One thing was sure: given how furtive all three of them had been behaving outside, this was clearly a meeting they’d taken great pains to keep secret. A meeting she doubted any of them would appreciate being crashed by a total stranger.
Abruptly she tensed. The conversation had paused, and in its place was a new sound.
Footsteps. Heading her direction.
She was across the room in four quick strides, kneeling beside the bed by the far wall. It was a spaceship-style bed, with storage compartments filling the space beneath the mattress itself. But she hadn’t planned on hiding under it anyway. Getting a grip on the storage handles, she pulled.
There must have been a lot of junk in those drawers: even with Mistryl-honed muscles behind the tug the bed moved barely twenty-five centimeters away from the wall. But it would be enough; and at any rate, with the footsteps already paused outside her door, it would have to do. Lunging up from her kneeling position, she half dived, half rolled across the bed and slid silently down on her side into the narrow gap.
She just made it. Even as her shoulder and hip settled against the cool floor the bedroom door slid open and two sets of footsteps came inside. The glow panel blazed on, and the door closed again.
“We had an agreement, Calrissian,” an unidentified male voice said. Unidentified, yet definitely familiar. Shada searched her memory—
“Which I haven’t broken,” Calrissian said, his voice sounding a little defensive.
“Really?” the other voice asked coldly. “You’ve as good as told them there’s a secret here. Do you think either of them needs more than that to gather their little shovels together and start digging?”
—and then abruptly the memory clicked. It was the smuggler chief, Talon Karrde.
“Frankly, Karrde, I think they’ve both got more important things to worry about right now,” Calrissian said tartly. “And to be honest, I never understood why you were so obsessed about secrecy on this thing in the first place. So Jorj Car’das was once a competitor of yours—”
“Keep your voice down,” Karrde growled. “I don’t want the others hearing that name. And Car’das wasn’t a competitor. He was something else entirely.”
“Fine,” Calrissian said. “Whatever. The point is that we can’t afford the luxury of silly games anymore. Not with—”
“Silly games?” Karrde cut him off. “Calrissian, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about,” Calrissian retorted. “I’m talking about the genius who came this close to taking down the whole New Republic ten years ago. Whatever Thrawn’s got planned, he has to be counting on the Caamas issue to keep us divided.”
Shada felt her breath catch in her throat. Whatever Thrawn had planned? But Thrawn was dead.
Wasn’t he?
“Thank you for the historical review,” Karrde said. “I was there, if you’ll remember. Let’s not act like the whole New Republic’s on the edge of desperation and collapse, though, all right?”
“Are you sure we’re not?” Calrissian countered. “A
fter all this time, do you really think Thrawn would have shown himself if he wasn’t ready to pounce?”
“If he intends to pounce,” Karrde argued. “There are many other things he could be planning besides an overt attack.”
“Oh, that’s comforting,” Calrissian growled. “And all the more reason to get the Caamas issue resolved as quickly as possible. If there’s even half a chance Car’das can help, someone has to go see him.”
“And you’re suggesting I should be that someone?”
“You’re the one who knew him,” Calrissian pointed out.
“That may not be an asset,” Karrde said. “In fact, it could be quite the opposite.”
There was the soft sound of a slightly exasperated sigh. “Look, Karrde, I don’t know what went on between you and Car’das. What I do know is that we’re facing Grand Admiral Thrawn here. And not just us—you’re facing him, too. Don’t forget he specifically said he’d be coming after you.”
“Scare words,” Karrde murmured.
“I don’t remember Thrawn ever relying on scare words the last time,” Calrissian said. “Everything he said was backed up with action. But since you’ve brought up the subject of scare words, what are you so afraid of, anyway?”
There was the sound of footsteps moving toward the window. “You never met Car’das, Lando,” Karrde said quietly. “If you had, you’d understand. In his own way he was more ruthless even than Jabba the Hutt.”
“Yet you asked Mara and me to go hunt him down.”
“I didn’t ask you to do anything at all,” Karrde said. “If you’ll recall, I tried to get you to sell me that beckon call outright.”
“You also tried to tell me it was just some useless curiosity from pre-Clone Wars days,” Calrissian reminded him dryly. “You knew perfectly well I wouldn’t fall for a story like that. Anyway, that’s beside the point. We tracked him down, and made it back just fine.”
“You only tracked him as far as a likely system,” Karrde said. “You’re asking me to walk into whatever fortress he’s set up there and go face-to-face with him.”
“If Thrawn isn’t stopped, he’ll be the one who eventually comes knocking at Car’das’s retirement home,” Calrissian said. “If Car’das has any brains, he’ll thank you for the warning.”
“Car’das never thanked anyone for anything in his life,” Karrde said bluntly. “And he most certainly hasn’t retired, either. He’ll be scheming or plotting something—that’s the nature of the man. And he will not want to be found. Particularly not by me.”
Calrissian hissed between his teeth. “Fine,” he bit out. “You want to go bury yourself in a hole and wait for Thrawn to come dig you out, you go right ahead. Give me a copy of Mara’s route to the Exocron system and I’ll go find him myself.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Karrde said. “You and the Lady Luck wouldn’t last two days alone in the Kathol Outback.”
“Who says I’ll be going alone?” Calrissian countered. “I thought I’d ask General Bel Iblis and the Peregrine along.”
“That would be the absolute worst thing you could do,” Karrde said, an edge of exasperation starting to color his tone. “You bring a capital warship into the Exocron system and Car’das will either go completely underground or blow it out of the sky. You don’t know him the way I do.”
“No,” Calrissian agreed quietly. “I don’t.”
There was a long silence. A long, waiting silence. “You should never have given up on your con man origins, Calrissian,” Karrde said at last. “You’re far too good at it. All right. I’ll go.”
“Thanks,” Calrissian said. “You won’t regret this.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Karrde warned, his usual easy humor back in his voice. “I suppose we should go break the news to the others.”
The door whispered open and the glow panels shut off; and as the room went dark again, Shada heaved herself up out of her hiding place. Rolling back across the bed and onto her feet, she crossed the room and slipped out just before the door closed again.
The two men, Calrissian in the lead, were heading down the hallway toward the edge of what looked like an Alderaanian-style conversation circle, both of them completely oblivious to her presence behind them. Moving up, she fell into silent step behind Karrde.
“Okay, I give up,” Han said, a puzzled look on his face. “What was that all about?”
Leia shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted, replaying the last exchange between Lando and Karrde in her mind as she gazed at the hallway where the two of them had disappeared toward the boys’ bedroom. “Some kind of secret they don’t want us to know about.”
“Yeah, I figured that much,” Han said. “What I meant was what’s the secret?”
Leia threw him one of her vast repertoire of patient looks, an inventory created by a lifetime of diplomatic service and honed to a fine art by ten years of dealing with three boisterous children. “You know I can’t just go in and dig things out of their minds,” she reminded him. “It’s not even ethical with enemies, let alone friends.”
“You Jedi are no fun sometimes,” Han said. His tone was bantering, but she could tell from his eyes and mood that he was still uneasy about the situation.
“We’re not in the business to have fun,” she pointed out.
“You couldn’t just sort of, oh, stretch out and get a feel for what they’re talking about in there?”
Leia smiled wryly. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she admonished him.
He pulled out one of his own repertoire of innocent looks. “Do what?”
“Suggest that I do something unethical right when I’m trying to persuade myself that it wouldn’t hurt anyone,” she told him. “That’s very disconcerting.”
“ ’Specially coming from a guy who isn’t supposed to have near as good a conscience as you do?” he suggested blandly.
Leia rolled her eyes. “I swear, Han, I think you can read my mind better without Jedi senses than I can read yours with them.”
He waved a hand. “Professional secret. One of the things you learn as a scoundrel.”
“Of course,” Leia said, looking in the direction of the hallway again. “I wonder how unethical it would be to send Threepio in to take notes for them—”
“Lady Vader,” a gravelly voice cut in.
Leia jumped; as usual, she hadn’t heard or sensed the Noghri’s approach. “What is it, Gharakh?”
“Perhaps trouble,” Gharakh growled. “The sentry on the rooftop is not responding to his comlink.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Leia saw Han roll slightly in his chair to loosen his blaster in its holster. “You’ve sent a team to check on him?”
“They are on the way,” the Noghri said. “But until we know otherwise, we must assume an intruder is attempting to break in. Where are the others?”
“Down the hall,” Leia said. Even as she pointed, she felt the subtle change in air pressure as the distant bedroom door slid open. “That should be them now,” she added as the sound of approaching footsteps confirmed it.
“I would ask that you stay in this room for the present,” Gharakh said. As he spoke, Lando appeared around the corner, followed by Karrde—“If there is an intruder, we will need to seek him out.”
—followed by a tall, slender woman dressed in a dark gray combat jumpsuit.
“Don’t bother,” the woman said quietly. “I’m here.”
CHAPTER
22
Their reactions, as reactions went, were quick and efficient. At the same time, Shada had to admit, they were oddly comic to watch.
The shock of the unexpected voice behind him sent Calrissian jumping half a meter into the air, his gunhand getting momentarily tangled in his cloak before he could haul his blaster free. The Noghri’s blaster, unsurprisingly, was already out and trained on her, with Solo’s not very far behind. Karrde didn’t jump nearly as far as Calrissian had; but instead of going for a weapon himself, he me
rely took a long step to the side to give Solo and the Noghri a clear field of fire. A smart move, but no more than Shada would have expected from someone of his reputation.
Councilor Organa Solo, in contrast to the others, didn’t move at all.
Shada didn’t move, either. She stood where she was, hands hanging empty at her sides, wondering distantly if the vaunted and probably overrated Noghri combat reflexes would make it more or less likely the guard would overreact to her unexpected appearance by gunning her down.
She almost hoped he would. In many ways, it would be the simplest way to end things.
But the Noghri didn’t fire. Neither did Solo nor Calrissian; and with a vague sort of half regret Shada knew she wasn’t going to get to go out the easy way.
It was Organa Solo who broke the brittle silence. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice as serene as her face.
“My name is Shada D’ukal,” Shada said. “I’m not here to hurt any of you.”
Organa Solo nodded. “I know.”
Solo threw her a quick sideways glance. “You do?”
“My danger sense would have reacted otherwise,” Organa Solo told him. “Long before she arrived in this room.”
“What did you do to the guard on the roof?” the Noghri snarled.
“I taught him not to be carelessly compassionate,” Shada said. “He’s not hurt, except possibly his pride.”
There was a quiet mewing of alien language from a comlink attached to the Noghri’s collar. “Gharakh?” Organa Solo murmured.
“He is unhurt,” the Noghri said. His blaster was still aimed at Shada, but his eyes seemed fractionally less baleful. “They are freeing him from his restraints.”
There was a whisper of movement from the corridor behind Shada. She started to turn her head—
“Stand where you are,” a Noghri voice ordered from behind her. “Lift your arms.”
Shada did as instructed, holding her arms out to the sides as alien hands flitted across her body, wondering where this other group had been hiding. To have sneaked up behind her in what had seemed to be a dead-end corridor—
