Luke reached out with the Force, trying to measure the sense behind the words. But if there was deceit there, he couldn't detect it. And even if there was, he had precious little choice. "Sounds good," he said. "Any chance you could take my ship, too?"
"I doubt you could afford our shipping rates," the other told him dryly. "I'll check with the captain, but don't get your hopes up. We'd have to take it in tow, anyway-our holds are pretty full at the moment."
Luke felt his lip twitch. A fully loaded bulk freighter couldn't possibly have managed the deceleration profile Artoo had noted earlier. Either they were lying about that, or else that normal-looking drive system had undergone a complete and massive upgrading.
Which made the Wild Karrde either a smuggler, a pirate, or a disguised warship. And the New Republic had no disguised warships.
The other pilot was talking again. "If you'll hold your present position, X-wing, we'll move up close enough to throw a force cylinder out to you," she said. "Unless you'd rather suit up and spacewalk across."
"The cylinder sounds fastest," Luke said, deciding to try a light verbal probe. "I don't suppose either of us has any reason to hang around this place. How did you happen to wind up out here, anyway?"
"We can handle a limited amount of baggage," the other went on, ignoring the question. "I imagine you'll want to bring your astromech droid along, too."
So much for the light verbal probe. "Yes, I will," he told her.
"All right, then, stand by. Incidentally, the captain says the transport fee will be five thousand."
"Understood," Luke said, unstrapping his restraints. Opening the side pouches, he pulled out his gloves and helmet seal and folded them into his flight suit's chest pockets where he'd have quick access to them. A force cylinder was relatively foolproof, but accidents could always happen. Besides which, if the Wild Karrde's crew was hoping to pick themselves up a free X-wing, shutting the cylinder down halfway through the operation would be the simplest and least messy way to dispose of him.
The crew. Luke paused, straining his senses toward the ship moving steadily toward him. There was something wrong there; something he could feel but couldn't quite track down.
Artoo warbled anxiously. "No, she didn't answer the question," Luke agreed. "But I can't think of any legitimate reason for them to be out this far. Can you?"
The droid gave a soft, electronic moan. "Agreed," Luke nodded. "But refusing the offer doesn't buy us anything at all. We'll just have to stay alert."
Reaching into the other side pouch, he pulled out his blaster, checked its power level, and slid it into the holster pocket built into his flight suit. His comlink went into another pocket, though what use it would be aboard the Wild Karrde he couldn't imagine. The emergency survival pack went around his waist, awkward to fasten in the cramped quarters. And last, he pulled out his lightsaber and fastened it to his belt.
"Okay, X-wing, we've got the cylinder established," the voice came. "Whenever you're ready."
The Wild Karrde's small docking bay was directly above him, its outer door gaping invitingly. Luke checked his instruments, confirmed there was indeed a corridor of air between the two ships, and took a deep breath. "Here we go, Artoo," he said, and popped the canopy.
A puff of breeze brushed across his face as the air pressures equalized. Giving himself a careful push, he eased up and out, gripping the edge of the canopy to turn himself around. Artoo, he saw, had ejected from his socket and was drifting freely just above the X-wing, making distinctly unhappy noises about his situation. "I've got you, Artoo," Luke soothed, reaching out with the Force to pull the droid toward him. Getting his bearings one last time, he bent his knees and pushed off.
He reached the airlock at the back of the bay a half second ahead of Artoo, grabbed hold of the straps fastened to the walls, and brought both of them to a smooth halt. Someone was obviously watching; they were still moving when the outer lock door slid shut. Gravity came back, slowly enough for him to adjust his stance to it, and a moment later the inner door slid open.
There was a young man waiting for them, wearing a casual coverall of an unfamiliar cut. "Welcome aboard the Wild Karrde," he said, nodding gravely. "If you'll follow me, the captain would like to see you."
Without waiting for a reply, he turned and headed down the curving corridor. "Come on, Artoo," Luke murmured, starting after him and reaching out with the Force for a quick survey of the ship. Aside from their guide, he could sense only four others aboard, all of them in the forward sections. Behind him, in the aft sections . . .
He shook his head, trying to clear it. It didn't help: the aft sections of the ship still remained oddly dark to him. An aftereffect of the long hibernation, probably. It was for certain, though, that there were no crew members or droids back there, and that was all he needed to know for the moment.
The guide led them to a door, which slid open as he stepped to one side. "Captain Karrde will see you now," he said, waving toward the open door.
"Thank you," Luke nodded to him. With Artoo bumping against his heels, he stepped into the room.
It was an office of sorts; small, with much of its wall space taken up with what looked like highly sophisticated communications and encrypt equipment. In the center was a large desk/ console combination . . . and seated behind it, watching Luke's approach, was a slender man, thin-faced, with short dark hair and pale blue eyes.
"Good evening," he said in a cool, carefully modulated voice. "I'm Talon Karrde." His eyes flicked up and down Luke, as if measuring him. "And you, I presume, are Commander Luke Skywalker."
Luke stared at him. How in the worlds . . . ? "Private citizen Skywalker," he said, striving to keep his own voice calm. "I resigned my Alliance commission nearly four years ago."
An almost-smile twitched the corners of Karrde's mouth. "I stand corrected. I must say, you've certainly found a good place to get away from it all."
The question was unstated, but no less obvious for that. "I had some help choosing it," Luke told him. "A small run-in with an Imperial Star Destroyer about half a light-year away."
"Ah," Karrde said, without any surprise that Luke could see or sense. "Yes, the Empire is still quite active in this part of the galaxy. Growing more so, too, particularly of late." He cocked his head slightly to the side, his eyes never leaving Luke's face. "Though I presume you've already noticed that. Incidentally, it looks like we'll be able to take your ship in tow, after all. I'm having the cables rigged now."
"Thank you," Luke said, feeling the skin on the back of his neck start to tingle. Whether a pirate or a smuggler, Karrde should certainly have reacted more strongly to the news that there was a Star Destroyer in the area. Unless, of course, he already had an understanding with the Imperials . . . "Allow me to thank you for the rescue, as well," he continued. "Artoo and I are lucky you happened along."
"And Artoo is-? Oh, of course-your astromech droid." The blue eyes flicked down briefly. "You must be a formidable warrior indeed, Skywalker-escaping from an Imperial Star Destroyer is no mean trick. Though I imagine a man like yourself is accustomed to giving the Imperials trouble."
"I don't see much front-line action anymore," Luke told him. "You haven't told me how you came to be out here, Captain. Or, for that matter, how you knew who I was."
Another almost-smile. "With a lightsaber attached to your belt?" he asked wryly. "Come now. You were either Luke Skywalker, Jedi, or else someone with a taste for antiques and an insufferably high opinion of his swordsmanship." Again, the blue eyes flicked up and down Luke. "You're not really what I expected, somehow. Though I suppose that's not all that surprising-the vast majority of Jedi lore has been so twisted by myth and ignorance that to get a clear picture is almost impossible."
The warning bell in the back of Luke's mind began to ring louder. "You almost sound as if you were expecting to find me here," he said, easing his body into a combat stance and letting his senses reach out. All five of the crewers were still more or less where they'd been a few
minutes earlier, farther up toward the forward part of the ship. None except Karrde himself was close enough to pose any kind of immediate threat.
"As a matter of fact, we were," Karrde agreed calmly. "Though I can't actually take any of the credit for that. It was one of my associates, Mara Jade, who led us here." His head inclined slightly to his right. "She's on the bridge at the moment."
He paused, obviously waiting. It could be a setup, Luke knew; but the suggestion that someone might actually have been able to sense his presence from light-years away was too intriguing to pass up. Keeping his overall awareness clear, Luke narrowed a portion of his mind to the Wild Karrde's bridge. At the helm was the young woman he'd spoken to earlier from the X-wing. Beside her, an older man was busy running a calculation through the nav computer. And sitting behind them-
The jolt of that mind shot through him like an electric current. "Yes, that's her," Karrde confirmed, almost offhandedly. "She hides it quite well, actually-though not, I suppose, from a Jedi. It took me several months of careful observation to establish that it was you, and you personally, for whom she had these feelings."
It took Luke another second to find his voice. Never before, not even from the Emperor, had he ever felt such a black and bitter hatred. "I've never met her before," he managed.
"No?" Karrde shrugged. "A pity. I was rather hoping you'd be able to tell me why she feels this way. Ah, well." He got to his feet. "I suppose, then, there's nothing more for us to talk about for the moment . . . and let me say in advance that I'm very sorry it has to be this way."
Reflexively, Luke's hand darted for his lightsaber. He'd barely begun the movement when the shock of a stun weapon coursed through him from behind.
There were Jedi methods for fighting off unconsciousness. But they all took at least a split second of preparation-a split second that Luke did not have. Dimly, he felt himself falling; heard Artoo's frantic trilling in the distance; and wondered with his last conscious thought how in the worlds Karrde had done this to him.
Chapter 19
He awoke slowly, in stages, aware of nothing but the twin facts that, one, he was lying flat on his back and, two, he felt terrible.
Slowly, gradually, the haze began to coalesce into more localized sensations. The air around him was warm but damp, a light and shifting breeze carrying several unfamiliar odors along with it. The surface beneath him had the soft/firm feel of a bed; the general sense of his skin and mouth implied he'd been asleep for probably several days.
It took another minute for the implications of that to percolate through the mental fog filling his brain. More than an hour or two was well beyond the safe capabilities of any stun weapon he'd ever heard of. Clearly, after being shot, he'd been drugged.
Inwardly, he smiled. Karrde was probably expecting him to be incapacitated for a while longer; and Karrde was in for a surprise. Forcing his mind into focus, he ran through the Jedi technique for detoxifying poisons and then waited for the haze to clear.
It took him some time to realize that nothing was, in fact, happening.
Somewhere in there he fell asleep again; and when he next awoke, his mind had cleared completely. Blinking against the sunlight streaming across his face, he opened his eyes and lifted his head.
He was lying on a bed, still in his flight suit, in a small but comfortably furnished room. Directly across from him was an open window, the source of the aroma-laden breezes he'd already noted. Through the window, too, he could see the edge of a forest fifty meters or so away, above which a yellowish-orange sun hovered-rising or setting, he didn't know which. The furnishings of the room itself didn't look much like those of a prison cell-
"Finally awake, are you?" a woman's voice said from the side.
Startled, Luke twisted his head toward the voice. His first, instantaneous thought was that he had somehow missed sensing whoever was over there; his second, following on the heels of the first, was that that was clearly ridiculous and that the voice must be coming instead from an intercom or comlink.
He finished his turn, to discover that the first thought had indeed been correct.
She was sitting in a high-backed chair, her arms draped loosely over the arms in a posture that seemed strangely familiar: a slender woman about Luke's own age, with brilliant red-gold hair and equally brilliant green eyes. Her legs were casually crossed; a compact but wicked-looking blaster lay on her lap.
A genuine, living human being . . . and yet, impossibly, he couldn't sense her.
The confusion must have shown in his face. "That's right," she said, favoring him with a smile. Not a friendly or even a polite smile, but one that seemed to be made up of equal parts bitterness and malicious amusement. "Welcome back to the world of mere mortals."
-and with a surge of adrenaline, Luke realized that the strange mental veiling wasn't limited to just her. He couldn't sense anything. Not people, not droids, not even the forest beyond his window.
It was like suddenly going blind.
"Don't like it, do you?" the woman mocked. "It's not easy to suddenly lose everything that once made you special, is it?"
Slowly, carefully, Luke eased his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, giving his body plenty of time to get used to moving again. The woman watched him, her right hand dropping to her lap to rest on top of the blaster. "If the purpose of all this activity is to impress me with your remarkable powers of recuperation," she offered, "you don't need to bother."
"Nothing so devious," Luke advised, breathing hard and trying not to wheeze. "The purpose of all this activity is to get me back on my feet." He looked her hard in the eye, wondering if she would flinch away from his gaze. She didn't even twitch. "Don't tell me; let me guess. You're Mara Jade."
"That doesn't impress me, either," she said coldly. "Karrde already told me he'd mentioned my name to you."
Luke nodded. "He also told me that you were the one who found my X-wing. Thank you."
Her eyes flashed. "Save your gratitude," she bit out. "As far as I'm concerned, the only question left is whether we turn you over to the Imperials or kill you ourselves."
Abruptly she stood up, the blaster ready in her hand. "On your feet. Karrde wants to see you."
Carefully, Luke stood up, and as he did so, he noticed for the first time that Mara had attached his lightsaber to her own belt. Was she, then, a Jedi herself? Powerful enough, perhaps, to smother Luke's abilities? "I can't say that either of those options sounds appealing," he commented.
"There's one other one." She took half a step forward, moving close enough that he could have reached out and touched her. Lifting the blaster, she pointed it directly at his face. "You try to escape . . . and I kill you right here and now."
For a long moment they stood there, frozen. The bitter hatred was blazing again in those eyes . . . but even as Luke gazed back at her, he saw something else along with the anger. Something that looked like a deep and lingering pain.
He stood quietly, not moving; and almost reluctantly, she lowered the weapon. "Move. Karrde's waiting."
Luke's room was at the end of a long hallway with identical doors spaced at regular intervals along its length. A barracks of sorts, he decided, as they left it and started across a grassy clearing toward a large, high-roofed building. Several other structures clustered around the latter, including another barracks building, a handful that looked like storehouses, and one that was clearly a servicing hangar. Grouped around the hangar on both sides were over a dozen starships, including at least two bulk cruisers like the Wild Karrde and several smaller craft, some of them hidden a ways back into the forest that pressed closely in on the compound from all sides. Tucked away behind one of the bulk cruisers, he could just see the nose of his X-wing. For a moment he considered asking Mara what had happened to Artoo, decided he'd do better to save the question for Karrde.
They reached the large central building and Mara reached past Luke to slap the sensor plate beside the door. "He's in the greatroom," Mara said as
the panel slid open in response. "Straight ahead."