by Timothy Zahn
Luke shook his head. "I seem to be missing the joke."
"So did they," Mara said, her dark mood darkening even further. "The joke is that it apparently never occurred to any of them that Palpatine was always one step ahead of whatever was happening in his court. And if he was a step ahead, a strategist like Thrawn was at least two steps ahead."
Luke's mouth felt dry. "Are you saying that Thrawn and Palpatine had the whole thing planned out from the beginning?"
"Of course they did." Mara gestured at the holo. "Just look at all the territory he opened up. He couldn't possibly have done that by himself, with just a single Star Destroyer, Palpatine must have been feeding him men and ships all along the way."
"But that can't all be Imperial territory," Luke said. "I mean... it can't."
"Why not?" Mara countered. "Oh, I agree there probably aren't more than a few actual colonies out there. But you can bet there are Imperial garrisons scattered all over the place, plus intel centers and listening posts and probably a few full-blown shipyards. And if I know Thrawn, probably a whole network of alliances with the natives, too."
"But if that's Imperial territory, why hasn't the Empire made any use of it?" Luke argued. "I've seen the data, Marathey're down to practically nothing over there."
"It's obvious, isn't it?" she said quietly. "They're not using it because they don't know it's there."
For a long minute neither of them spoke. Luke gazed at the holo, listening to the distant hum of the spiral slideway, the terrible implications of those gently glowing lights tumbling over each other in his mind. There had to be the equivalent of two hundred fifty sectors therenearly thirty times the Empire's current size.
With thirty times the Empire's number of warships, garrisons, and shipyards? Very possibly. If all those resources were suddenly put at Bastion's disposal... "We need more information," he said, starting toward the console rings. "Let's see if there's a computer jack Artoo can plug into."
"Risky," Mara warned. "This is a command center, and command centers always have security flags set up to catch unauthorized access."
He stopped, grimacing. Unfortunately, she had a point. "All right, then," he said, turning again to face her. "What's your plan?"
"We go directly to the source." Mara took a deep breath. "I go downstairs and talk to them."
Luke felt his mouth drop open. "And you call my plans risky?"
"You have a better suggestion?"
"That's beside the point," he growled. "Anyway, if someone's going to go down there, it ought to be me."
"Not a chance," Mara said firmly. "Point one they shot at you on the way in, but they didn't shoot at me. Point two you said yourself you had the feeling they wanted to see me. Point three if the situation degenerates to the point where a rescue is called for, you and your Jedi skills are better against a crowd than mine. And point four"
With a tight smile, she unhooked her lightsaber and stepped over to him. "Point four is that they may not know the extent of my Force skills," she said, handing him the weapon. "If shove comes to shake, that may give me the edge I'd need."
Luke fingered her lightsaber, feeling the familiar coolness in his hand. His own first lightsaber, the one Obi-Wan had given him, which he had given her in turn on the palace rooftop on Coruscant. He'd been younger than she was when he'd first taken that lightsaber into danger. Younger, less experienced, and far brasher. But still...
"And the last thing I need right now is for you to start getting all overprotective," Mara added, just the hint of a warning glare in her eyes. "I've survived just fine all these years. I can take care of myself."
Luke locked eyes with her. Odd, he thought, that he'd forgotten just how brilliant a green those eyes were. Though perhaps it was just the lighting. "No way I can talk you out of it?" he asked, trying one last time.
"Not unless you can come up with a better plan," she said, pulling out her comlink and sleeve blaster. "Herethere's no point in my keeping these. They'll just take them away from me anyway. I'll keep my BlasTech; they'd be suspicious if I came in completely unarmed."
Luke took the comlink and sleeve blaster from her, his hand lingering on hers before she withdrew it, oddly unwilling to let it go. "I wish we hadn't left the other comlink with Artoo," he said. "You could have kept this one and I'd have been able to listen in on what was going on."
"If something goes sour, you might need to whistle up the Qom Jha in a hurry," she reminded him. "Anyway, can't you follow me with the Force?"
"I can follow your presence," Luke said. "I can get your emotions and probably some images that way. But I can't get much in the way of words."
"Too bad you're not Palpatine," Mara commented, busying herself with removing her sleeve holster. "I could talk to him just fine."
Luke felt a stab of guilt and shame, her earlier indictment of his dark side dabbling flooding back. She caught the emotion, or else the expression on his face, and smiled tightly. "Hey, I was kidding," she assured him, handing him the sleeve holster. "Look, you just follow what you can. I'll give you a full report on the details when I get back."
"All right," Luke said. "Be careful, okay?"
To his surprise, she reached out and took his hand. "I'll be fine," she told him, squeezing his hand briefly before letting go. "See you."
And with that she was gone, slipping out of the command center and around the wall toward the slideway.
With a sigh, Luke stepped over to the nearby wall segment and sank down into a crouch with his back pressed against it. Closing his eyes for better concentration, he stretched out with the Force.
In times past, on Dagobah and Tierfon and other places, he'd been able to use the Force to obtain glimpses of future places and events. Now, as Mara headed down the slideway, he tried to focus that same ability onto real-time observation, hoping to be able to see what was happening to her.
It worked, too, at least after a fashion. The image he got of Mara and her surroundings was faint and foggy, heavily colored by her emotions and shifting mental state, and with the same discomfiting tendency to ripple or metamorphose that seemed to be characteristic of Jedi visions in general. But with Mara's mind there to act as anchor, he was able to quickly drag the images back to something at least vaguely understandable. It was hardly ideal, but it seemed clear that it was all he was going to get.
The slideway from this level seemed to be roughly the same size as the one they had used to get down from the roof. Mara moved to the inner section and headed down, apparently making no attempt at concealment. The lack of any sudden combat twinges in her emotions as she reached the next level implied she didn't see anyone, though he had the impression that she was still hearing distant sounds.
She made no move to get off at this level, but let the slideway carry her on down. The next level was more of the same, with no one coming near the slideway. Luke could sense a definite annoyance beginning to seep through the alertness in Mara's mind, an annoyance aimed both at the aliens' seeming disinterest in her and at their incompetence at basic internal security. She passed that level, and the next, and started down toward the next
And suddenly there was a dizzying jolt that slammed like a ground-quake through her emotions, accompanied by a brief flash of pain.
Luke stiffened, eyes jerking open as he scrambled to his feet. But even as he did so he felt a warning flicker of reassurance from her, together with understanding of what had just happened. Without warning, the slideway section she'd been riding on had suddenly reversed direction, yanking her feet out from under her and slamming her flat on her chest on the ramp.
And as the moment of dizziness from the impact faded away, her combat emotions flared to full alertness.
She was no longer alone.
Luke clenched his hands into helpless fists as he rode her emotions to try to pierce the hazy image. There were several people standing around her, of the same species as those they'd tangled with once already.
And as near as he cou
ld tell through the wavering view, one of them was calling Mara by name.
For a moment he continued to talk to her, and though Luke couldn't hear any of the words he had the impression that he was asking her to accompany them farther into the fortress. She agreed. There was a flicker of inevitability as they took her BlasTech, and then the whole group was walking away from the slideway down a corridor that Mara recognized as decorated similarly to the barracks area they'd seen farther below.
Soonall too soonthe group reached an open door. Another exchange of unheard words, a suppressed flutter of uneasiness from Mara, and she stepped alone through the door into the room beyond.
From her thoughts he could tell that there were others waiting inside for her. One of thempossibly more than onecalled out to her as she moved farther inside. Mara answered, surges and flickers of emotion marking bits of information that the vagueness of their contact prevented Luke from getting himself. She continued to walk farther into the room
And without warning, right in the middle of a step, the touch of her mind cut abruptly off, leaving Luke staring at the quiet lights of the command center. Heart pounding in his chest, he stretched out with the Force, trying to reestablish the contact. Mara? Mara!
But it was no use. There was no response, no returning contact, no sense of her presence. Nothing at all.
She was gone.
CHAPTER
27
Mara took in the room in a glance as she stepped through the doorway. It was long and narrow, stretching perhaps fifty meters back from the door but no more than five meters wide. Near the far wall was a solid-looking chair, facing away from her. Five meters beyond that, right at the room's back wall, were six more of the blue-skinned aliens, all wearing the same tight-fitting burgundy patchwork-design outfits as the ones who had escorted her here from the slideway. And like her escort, each of the aliens was wearing Imperial ranking bars on their chests beneath the high-topped black collars.
But even as her glance took in those details, her main attention was caught by the man in the center of the group, seated in a duplicate of the empty chair facing him a few meters away. His hair was gray, his skin lined with age; but his eyes were alert and shrewd, and his back was straight and proud.
And he was wearing the uniform and insignia of an Imperial admiral.
"So here you are at last, Mara Jade," he said, waving her forward with a gnarled hand. "I must say, you took your time."
"Sorry to have kept you waiting," Mara countered with an edge of sarcasm as she walked toward them. She could feel Luke's concern and nervousness at the back of her mind, and tried to send him a reassurance she didn't entirely feel. These people knew who she was and presumably what she was; and yet here they were, letting her move freely toward them. It all looked far too casual, and she didn't like it one bit. "If your people hadn't been so trigger-poppy, I'd have been here a lot sooner."
The admiral bowed his head briefly. "My apologies. For whatever it's worth, it was an accident. Please, come sit down."
Mara continued forward, trying to watch all of them at once, her senses alert for trouble. If they had a trap set, it would be sprung somewhere before she got too close to them...
And without warning, right in the middle of a step, Luke's presence suddenly vanished from her mind.
Her brain froze in shock, sheer momentum keeping her feet moving. Luke? Luke! Come on, where are you?
But there was no response. No emotion, no sense of mind or thought, no sense of presence at all. Incredibly, impossibly, he was gone.
Gone.
"Come sit down," the admiral said again. "I imagine you must be quite worn out after all you've been through."
"You're too kind," Mara said, the words sounding distant and mechanical through the pounding of blood in her ears as she forced her feet to keep moving her forward. What in the worlds could possibly have happened to him?
There could only be one answer. Somehow, they'd gotten past his Jedi senses, had penetrated his Jedi powers, and had launched a sudden, undetected, and unblocked attack.
And Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, was unconscious.
Or dead.
The thought slashed into her mind, cutting through her heart like a jagged blade. Noit couldn't be. It couldn't. Not now.
The gray-haired man was still gazing at her, a thoughtful look on his face, and with an agonized effort Mara shoved the fear and pain away to the back of her mind. If Luke was merely unconscious, they could still get out of this. If he was dead, she would most likely soon be joining him. Either way, this was no time to let her emotions muddy her thinking.
She made it the rest of the way to the chair and sank carefully into it. "You don't need to look quite so worried," the admiral said soothingly. "We have no intention of harming you."
"Of course not," Mara said, hearing the bitterness in her voice. "Just like you had no intention of harming me on my last trip in here?"
The admiral's lip twitched. "As I said before, that was a regrettable accident," he said. "They were shooting at the vermin flying around near youwe've had some problems in the past with them getting inside. When you started shooting back, I'm afraid they jumped to the wrong conclusion. My deepest apologies."
"That makes me feel so much better," Mara growled. "Now what?"
The admiral seemed mildly surprised. "We talk," he said. "Why else do you think we gave you our location in the first place? We wanted you to come see us."
"Ah," Mara said. So her guess earlier had been rightthose two ships had deliberately flown off on vectors that would lead her here.
Unless, of course, he was lying after the fact to cover up his pilots' blunders. "You could have just sent me an invitation," she told him, feeling her forehead crease slightly as she stretched out toward him with the Force. Odd; for some reason, she couldn't seem to touch him. Not him, not the aliens flanking him. "Or would that have been too straightforward and easy?"
The admiral smiled knowingly. "With an open invitation I doubt you would have come alone. Something more vague seemed a better arrangement. I apologize for not having an escort waiting, by the wayyour landing caught us a bit by surprise."
"As did your arrival earlier inside the fortress," the alien standing at the admiral's right added, his voice smooth and cultured, his glowing red eyes steady on Mara. "If we'd known you were coming our people would have been much more careful with their charrics. May I ask how you managed to penetrate the fortress without being spotted?"
"We turned ourselves into vermin and flew in, of course," Mara told him. "It was faster than walking."
"Of course," the admiral said with a smile. "Or perhaps you scaled up the side of the fortress and came in through one of the cracks?"
Mara shook her head. "Sorry. Trade secret."
"Ah," the admiral said, still smiling. "It's not important; I was merely curious. The point is that you are here, Mara, just as we wished. May I call you Mara, by the way? Or would you prefer Captain Jade or some other title?"
"Call me anything you want," Mara told him. "And what should I call you? Or doesn't anyone in this place have a name?"
"All thinking beings have names, Mara," the man said. "Mine is Admiral Voss Parck. It's a pleasure to meet you at last."
"Likewise," Mara said, staring at him as a ripple of shock went through her. Voss Parck the Victory Star Destroyer captain who had found Thrawn on a deserted world and brought him to the Imperial court. And who had subsequently joined him in his shame and supposed exile from the Empire.
But the man in front of her...
"I imagine I look rather older than you might have expected," Parck said offhandedly. "Assuming you had any expectations at all, of course. I may have overly flattered myself to assume the Emperor's Hand would even remember my name, let alone my face."
"I remember both," Mara said. "You were one of the people every faction in the court used as an example of what not to do in the middle of a political fight." She glanced at the aliens.
"But then, those were the same people who also thought Palpatine sent Thrawn out here as a punishment. So what did they know?"
"And you think Mitth'raw'nuruodo's mission was otherwise?" the alien at Parck's right asked.
"I know otherwise," Mara assured him, looking him up and down. "Tell me, Admiral, does the whole race talk like Thrawn? Or is this some special cultural training you give your troops in case they're all invited out for High Day drinks?"
The alien's eyes narrowed"Calm yourself, Stent," Parck said dryly, holding up a hand. "You must understand that one of Mara Jade's most subtle weapons has always been her talent for irritating people. Irritated people don't think clearly, you see."
"Or maybe I just don't like any of you very much," Mara said, feeling a touch of annoyance at Parck's quick and casual insight. Usually her enemies didn't figure that one out nearly so quickly. The slower ones never figured it out at all. "But enough about me. Let's hear about this grand push of yours out into the Unknown Regions. You gave up a lot, after all Coruscant, the status and camaraderie of the Imperial Fleet" Deliberately, she looked at Stent. "Civilization."
Stent's eyes narrowed again, but Parck merely smiled. "You've met Thrawn," he said, his voice softening to near-reverence. "Any true warrior would have given up whatever was necessary for the chance to serve under him."
"Except those of his own people, I gather," Mara countered. "Or did I hear the story wrong of how he wound up on Coruscant?"
"No, I'm sure you heard correctly," Parck said with a shrug. "But like everything else people think they know about Thrawn, that particular story is somewhat incomplete."
"Is it, now," Mara said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs, a posture designed by its apparent helplessness to put suspicious people at ease. With the same motion she surreptitiously rocked the chair back a bit, trying to gauge its weight. Very heavy, unfortunately, which eliminated it as a grab-and-throw weapon. "I seem to have some time on my hands. Why don't you start at the beginning?"
