It was clearly a dismissal. "Yes, Admiral," Mara said. Stepping past him, she headed toward the door he'd indicated. For a moment she 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.
Mara keyed in the backdoor entry code, permitting herself a tight smile as she did so. Thrawn could consider her a glorified courier if he liked. But she knew better.
The code clicked, and she was in.
She called up a directory, trying to suppress the creepy awareness that she might already have brought the stormtroopers down on top of her. The backdoor code was hard wired into the system and impossible to eliminate, but if Thrawn suspected its existence, he might well have set a flag to trigger an alarm if it was ever used. And if he had, it would take far more than another show of humble loyalty to keep her out of trouble.
No stormtroopers had appeared by the time the directory came up. She keyed for the detention section and flicked her eye down the listing, wishing fleetingly that she had an R2 astromech droid like Skywalker's to help cut through all of it. Even if Thrawn had missed the backdoor code, he would certainly have alerted the deck officer to expect her. If someone in the control tower noticed she was overdue and sent someone out to look for her :
There it was: an updated prisoner list. She keyed for it, pulling up a diagram of the entire detention block while she was at it. A duty roster was next, with attention paid to the shift changes, then back to the daily orders and a listing of the Chimaera's projected course and destinations for the next six days. Thrawn had implied he would be waiting a few days before beginning a formal interrogation, letting boredom and tension and Karrde's own imagination wear down his resistance. Mara could only hope she could get back before that softening-up period was over.
A drop of sweat trickled down her spine as she cleared the display. And now came the really painful part. She'd run through the logic a dozen times while walking across the hangar bay deck, and each time had been forced to the same odious answer. Karrde would almost certainly have had a backup spotter watching the Etherway's approach, who would have had a front-row view of the stormtroopers' trap. If Mara now returned free and clear from the Chimaera, she would never be able to convince Karrde's people that she hadn't betrayed him to the Imperials. She'd be lucky, in fact, if they didn't burn her down on sight.
She couldn't rescue Karrde alone. She couldn't expect any help from his organization. Which left only one person in the galaxy she might be able to enlist. Only one person who might possibly feel he owed Karrde something.
Clenching her teeth, she keyed for the current location of a Jedi Master named Joruus C'baoth.
It seemed to take the computer an inordinate amount of time to dig out the information, and the skin on Mara's back was starting to crawl by the time the machine finally spat it out. She caught the planet's name-Jomark-and keyed off, doing what she could to bury the fact that this interaction had ever taken place. Already she'd pushed her timing way too close to the wire; and if they caught her here on a computer she shouldn't have been able to access at all, she was likely to find herself in the cell next to Karrde's.
She barely made it. She'd just finished her cleanup and started back toward the archway when a young officer and three troopers came striding through from the hangar bay, their eyes and weapons clearly ready for trouble. One of the troopers spotted her, muttered something to the officer-
"Excuse me," Mara called as all four turned to her. "Can you tell me where I can find the deck officer?"
"I'm the deck officer," the officer said, scowling at her as the group came to a halt in front of her. "You Mara Jade?"
"Yes," Mara said, putting on her best unconcernedly innocent expression. "I was told your office was over here somewhere, but I couldn't find it."
"It's on the other side of the wall," the officer growled. Brushing past her, he stepped to the terminal she'd just left. "Were you fiddling with this?" he asked, tapping a few keys.
"No," Mara assured him. "Why?"
"Never mind it's still locked down," the officer muttered under his breath. For a moment he looked around the area, as if searching for some other reason Mara might have wanted to be back here. But there was nothing; and almost reluctantly, he brought his attention back to her again. "I've got orders to give you transport down to the planet."
"I know," she nodded. "I'm ready."
The shuttle lifted and turned and headed off into the sky. Standing by the Etherway's ramp, the stink of burned paving still thick in the air, Mara watched the Imperial craft disappear over the top of the landing pit. "Aves?" she called. "Come on, Aves, you've got to be here somewhere."
"Turn around and put your hands up," the voice came from the shadows inside the ship's hatchway. "All the way up. Ai,d don't forget I know about that little sleeve gun of yours.
"The Imperials have it now," Mara said as she turned her back to him and raised her hands. "And I'm not here for a fight. I came for help."
"You want help, go to your new friends upstairs," Aves retorted. "Or maybe they were always your friends, huh?"
He was goading her, Mara knew, pushing for a chance to vent his own anger and frustration in an argument or gun battle. "I didn't betray him, Aves," she said. "I got picked up by the Imperials and blew them a smoke ring that I thought would buy us enough time to get out. It didn't."
"I don't believe you," Aves said flatly. There was a muffled clank of boot on metal as he came cautiously down the ramp.
"No, you believe me," Mara shook her head. "You wouldn't have come here if you didn't."
She felt a breath of air on the back of her neck as
he stepped close behind her. "Don't move," he ordered. Reaching carefully to her left arm, he pulled the sleeve down to reveal the empty holster. He checked her other sleeve, then ran a hand down each side of her body. "All right, turn around," he said, stepping back again.
She did so. He was standing a meter away from her, his face tight, his blaster pointed at her stomach. "Turn the question around, Aves," she suggested. "If I betrayed Karrde to the Imperials, why would I come back here? Especially alone?"
"Maybe you needed to get something from the Etherway," he countered harshly. "Or maybe it's just a trick to try to round up the rest of us."
Mara braced herself. "If you really believe that," she said quietly, "you might as well go ahead and shoot. I can't get Karrde out of there without your help."
For a long minute Aves stood there in silence. Mara watched his face, trying to ignore the white-knuckled hand holding the blaster. "The others won't help you, you know," he said. "Half of them think you've been manipulating Karrde from the minute you joined up. Most of the rest figure you for the type who switches loyalties twice a year anyway.
Mara grimaced. "That was true once, she admitted. "Not anymore.
"You got any way to prove that?"
"Yeah-by getting Karrde out," Mara retorted. "Look, I haven't got time to talk. You going to help, or shoot?"
He hesitated for a handful of heartbeats. Then, almost reluctantly, he lowered the blaster until it was pointed at the ground. "I'm probably scribing my own death mark," he growled. "What do you need?"
"For starters, a ship," Mara said, silently letting out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Something smaller and faster than the Etherway. One of those three boosted Skipray blastboats we brought in from Vagran would do nicely. I'll also need one of those ysalamiri we've been carrying around on the Wild Karrde. Preferably on a nutrient frame that's portable."
Aves frowned. "What do you want with an ysalamir?"
"I'm going to talk to a Jedi," she said briefly. "I need a guarantee he'll listen."
Aves studied her a moment, then shrugged. "I suppose I really don't want to know. What else?"
Mara shook her head. "That's it."
His eyes narrowed. "That's it?"
"That's it. How soon can you get them to me?"
Aves pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Let's say an hour," he said. "That big swamp about fifty kilometers north of the city-you know it?"
Mara nodded. "There's a soggy sort of island near the eastern edge."
"Right. You bring the Etherway to the island and we do the switch there." He glanced up at the freighter towering over him. "If you think it's safe to move it."
"It should be for now," Mara said. "Thrawn told me he'd lifted all the search and detention orders for the rest of the group. But you'd better disappear anyway after I go. He'll have the whole Fleet screaming down your necks again if and when I get Karrde out. Better run a fine-edge scan on the Etherway before you take it anywhere, though-there has to be a homing beacon aboard for Thrawn to have gotten the jump on me the way he did." She felt her lip twitch. "And knowing Thrawn, he's probably got someone tailing me, too. I'll have to get rid of him before I leave the planet."
"I can give you a hand with that," Aves said grimly. "We're disappearing anyway, right?"
"Right." Mara paused, trying to think if there was anything else she needed to tell him. "I guess that's it. Let's get going."
"Right." Aves hesitated. "I still don't know whose side you're on, Mara. If you're on ours:good luck."
She nodded, feeling a hard lump settle into her throat. "Thanks."
Two hours later she was strapped into the Skipray's cockpit, a strange and unpleasant sense of d?j? vu burning through her as she drove toward deep space. It had been in a ship just like this one that she'd screamed off into the sky over the Myrkr forest a few weeks ago, in hot pursuit of an escaped prisoner. Now, like a twisted repeat of history, she once again found herself chasing after Luke Skywalker.
Only this time, she wasn't trying to kill or capture him. This time, she was going to plead for his help.
Chapter 20
The last pair of villagers detached themselves from the group standing at the back wall and made their way to ward the raised judgment seat. C'baoth stood there, watching them come; and then, as Luke had known he would, the Jedi Master stood up. "Jedi Skywalker," he said, gesturing Luke to the seat. "The final case of the evening is yours."
"Yes, Master C'baoth," Luke said, bracing himself as he stepped over and gingerly sat down. It was, to his mind, a thoroughly uncomfortable chair: too warm, too large, and far too ornate. Even more than the rest of C'baoth's home, it had an alien smell to it, and a strangely disturbing aura that Luke could only assume was a lingering aftereffect of the hours the Jedi Master had spent in it judging his people.
Now it was Luke's turn to do so.
Taking a deep breath, trying to push back the fatigue that had become a permanent part of him, he nodded at the two villagers. "I'm ready," he said. "Please begin."
It was a relatively simple case, as such things went. The first villager's livestock had gotten through the second's fence and had stripped half a dozen of his fruit bushes before they'd been discovered and driven back. The animals' owner was willing to pay compensation for the ruined bushes, but the second was insisting that he also rebuild the fence. The first countered that a properly built fence wouldn't have failed in the first place and that, furthermore, his livestock had suffered injuries from the sharp edges as they went through. Luke sat quietly and let them talk, waiting until the arguments and counterarguments finally ended.
"All right," he said. "In the matter of the fruit bushes themselves, my judgment is that you"-he nodded to the first villager-"will pay for the replacement of those damaged beyond repair, plus an additional payment to compensate for the fruit eaten or destroyed by your livestock. The latter amount will be determined by the village council."
Beside him C'baoth stirred, and Luke winced at the disapproval he could sense from the Jedi Master. For a second he floundered, wondering if he should back up and try a different solution. But changing his mind so abruptly didn't sound like a good thing to do. And anyway, he really didn't have any better ideas.
So what was he doing here?
He looked around the room, fighting against a sudden flush of nervousness. They were all looking at him: C'baoth, the two supplicants, the rest of the villagers who'd come tonight for Jedi judgment. All of them expecting him to make the right decision.
"As to the fence, I'll examine it tomorrow morning," he continued. "I want to see how badly it was damaged before I make my decision.
The two men bowed and backed away. "I therefore declare this session to be closed," C'baoth called. His voice echoed grandly, despite the relatively small size of the room. An interesting effect, and Luke found himself wondering if it was a trick of the room's acoustics or yet another Jedi technique that Master Yoda had never taught him. Though why he would ever need such a technique he couldn't imagine.
The last of the villagers filed out of the room. C'baoth cleared his throat; reflexively, Luke braced himself. "I sometimes wonder, Jedi Skywalker," the old man said gravely, "whether or not you have really been listening to me these past few days.
"I'm sorry, Master C'baoth," Luke said, an all too familiar lump sticking in his throat. No matter how hard he tried, it seemed, he was never quite able to measure up to C'baoth's expectations.
"Sorry?" C'baoth's eyebrows rose sardonically. "Sorry? Jedi Skywalker, you had it all right there in your hands. You should have cut off their prattle far sooner than you did-your time is too valuable to waste with petty recriminations. You should have made the decision yourself on the amount of compensation, but instead gave it over to that absurd excuse of a village council. And as to the fence-" He shook his head in mild disgust. "There was absolutely no reason for you to postpone judgment on that. Everything you needed to know about the damage was right there
in their minds. It should have been no trouble, even for you, to have pulled that from them."