For a long moment the two men again locked eyes. Then, with an obvious effort, Thrawn regained his composure. "Of course, Master C'baoth," he said. "Forgive me."
C'baoth nodded. "Better. Much better." He looked past Thrawn, dismissed the guard with a nod. "Come," he said, looking back at the Grand Admiral. "We will talk."
"You will now tell me," C'baoth said, gesturing them to low cushions, "how it was you defeated my attack."
"Let me first explain our offer," Thrawn said, throwing a casual glance around the room before easing carefully down on one of the cushions. Probably, Pellaeon thought, the Grand Admiral was examining the bits of artwork scattered around. "I believe you'll find it-"
"You will now tell me how it was you defeated my attack," C'baoth repeated.
A slight grimace, quickly suppressed, touched Thrawn's lips. "It's quite simple, actually." He looked up at the ysalamir wrapped around his shoulders, reaching a finger over to gently stroke its long neck. "These creatures you see on our backs are called ysalamiri. They're sessile tree-dwelling creatures from a distant, third-rate planet, and they have an interesting and possibly unique ability-they push back the Force."
C'baoth frowned. "What do you mean, push it back?"
"They push its presence out away from themselves," Thrawn explained. "Much the same way a bubble is created by air pushing outward against water. A single ysalamir can occasionally create a bubble as large as ten meters across; a whole group of them reinforcing one another can create much larger ones."
"I've never heard of such a thing," C'baoth said, staring at Thrawn's ysalamir with an almost childlike intensity. "How could such a creature have come about?"
"I really don't know," Thrawn conceded. "I assume the talent has some survival value, but what that would be I can't imagine." He cocked an eyebrow. "Not that it matters. For the moment, the ability itself is sufficient for my purpose."
C'baoth's face darkened. "That purpose being to defeat my power?"
Thrawn shrugged. "We were expecting to find the Emperor's Guardian here. I needed to make certain he would allow us to identify ourselves and explain our mission." He reached up again to stroke the ysalamir's neck. "Though as it happens, protecting us from the Guardian was really only an extra bonus. I have something far more interesting in mind for our little pets."
"That being . . . ?"
Thrawn smiled. "All in good time, Master C'baoth. And only after we've had a chance to examine the Emperor's storehouse in Mount Tantiss."
C'baoth's lip twisted. "So the mountain is all you really want."
"I need the mountain, certainly," Thrawn acknowledged. "Or rather, what I hope to find within it."
"And that is . . . ?"
Thrawn studied him for a moment. "There were rumors, just before the Battle of Endor, that the Emperor's researchers had finally developed a genuinely practical cloaking shield. I want it. Also," he added, almost as an afterthought, "another small-almost trivial-bit of technology."
"And you think to find one of these cloaking shields in the mountain?"
"I expect to find either a working model or at least a complete set of schematics," Thrawn said. "One of the Emperor's purposes in setting up this storehouse was to make sure that interesting and potentially useful technology didn't get lost."
"That, and collecting endless mementos of his glorious conquests." C'baoth snorted. "There are rooms and rooms of that sort of cackling self-congratulation."
Pellaeon sat up a bit straighter. "You've been inside the mountain?" he asked. Somehow, he'd expected the storehouse to be sealed with all sorts of locks and barriers.
C'baoth sent him a scornfully patient look. "Of course I've been inside. I killed the Guardian, remember?" He looked back at Thrawn. "So. You want the Emperor's little toys; and now you know you can just walk into the mountain, with or without my help. Why are you still sitting here?"
"Because the mountain is only part of what I need," Thrawn told him. "I also require the partnership of a Jedi Master like yourself."
C'baoth settled back into his cushion, a cynical smile showing through his beard. "Ah, we finally get down to it. This, I take it, is where you offer me all the power even a Jedi Master could desire?"
Thrawn smiled back. "It is indeed. Tell me, Master C'baoth: are you familiar with the Imperial Fleet's disastrous defeat at the Battle of Endor five years ago?"
"I've heard rumors. One of the offworlders who came here spoke about it." C'baoth's gaze drifted to the window, to the palace/crypt visible across the square. "Though only briefly."
Pellaeon swallowed. Thrawn himself didn't seem to notice the implication. "Then you must have wondered how a few dozen Rebel ships could possibly rout an Imperial force that outgunned it by at least ten to one."
"I didn't spend much time with such wonderings," C'baoth said dryly. "I assumed that the Rebels were simply better warriors."
"In a sense, that's true," Thrawn agreed. "The Rebels did indeed fight better, but not because of any special abilities or training. They fought better than the Fleet because the Emperor was dead."
He turned to look at Pellaeon. "You were there, Captain-you must have noticed it. The sudden loss of coordination between crew members and ships; the loss of efficiency and discipline. The loss, in short, of that elusive quality we call fighting spirit."
"There was some confusion, yes," Pellaeon said stiffly. He was starting to see where Thrawn was going with this, and he didn't like it a bit. "But nothing that can't be explained by the normal stresses of battle."
One blue-black eyebrow went up, just slightly. "Really? The loss of the Executor-the sudden, last-minute TIE fighter incompetence that brought about the destruction of the Death Star itself-the loss of six other Star Destroyers in engagements that none of them should have had trouble with? All of that nothing but normal battle stress?"
"The Emperor was not directing the battle," Pellaeon snapped with a fire that startled him. "Not in any way. I was there, Admiral-I know."
"Yes, Captain, you were there," Thrawn said, his voice abruptly hard. "And it's time you gave up your blindfold and faced the truth, no matter how bitter you find it. You had no real fighting spirit of your own anymore-none of you in the Imperial Fleet did. It was the Emperor's will that drove you; the Emperor's mind that provided you with strength and resolve and efficiency. You were as dependent on that presence as if you were all borg-implanted into a combat computer."
"That's not true," Pellaeon shot back, stomach twisting painfully within him. "It can't be. We fought on after his death."
"Yes," Thrawn said, his voice quiet and contemptuous. "You fought on. Like cadets."
C'baoth snorted. "So is this what you want me for, Grand Admiral Thrawn?" he asked scornfully. "To turn your ships into puppets for you?"
"Not at all, Master C'baoth," Thrawn told him, his voice perfectly calm again. "My analogy with combat borg implants was a carefully considered one. The Emperor's fatal error was in seeking to control the entire Imperial Fleet personally, as completely and constantly as possible. That, over the long run, is what did the damage. My wish is merely to have you enhance the coordination between ships and task forces-and then only at critical times and in carefully selected combat situations."
C'baoth threw a look at Pellaeon. "To what end?" he rumbled.
"To the end we've already discussed," Thrawn said. "Power."
"What sort of power?"
For the first time since landing, Thrawn seemed taken aback. "The conquering of worlds, of course. The final defeat of the Rebellion. The reestablishment of the glory that was once the Empire's New Order."
C'baoth shook his head. "You don't understand power, Grand Admiral Thrawn. Conquering worlds you'll never even visit again isn't power. Neither is destroying ships and people and rebellions you haven't looked at face-to-face." He waved his hands in a sweeping gesture around him, his eyes glittering with an eerie fire. "This, Grand Admiral Thrawn, is power. This city-this planet-these people. E
very human, Psadan, and Myneyrsh who live here are mine. Mine." His gaze drifted to the window again. "I teach them. I command them. I punish them. Their lives, and their deaths, are in my hand."
"Which is precisely what I offer you," Thrawn said. "Millions of lives-billions, if you wish. All those lives to do with as you please."
"It isn't the same," C'baoth said, a note of paternal patience in his voice. "I have no desire to hold distant power over faceless lives."
"You could have just a single city to rule, then," Thrawn persisted. "As large or as small as you wish."
"I rule a city now."
Thrawn's eyes narrowed. "I need your assistance, Master C'baoth. Name your price."
C'baoth smiled. "My price? The price for my service?" Abruptly, the smile vanished. "I'm a Jedi Master, Grand Admiral Thrawn," he said, his voice simmering with menace. "Not a mercenary for hire like your Noghri."
He threw a contemptuous look at Rukh, sitting silently off to one side. "Oh, yes, Noghri-I know what you and your people are. The Emperor's private Death Commandos; killing and dying at the whim of ambitious men like Darth Vader and the Grand Admiral here."
"Lord Vader served the Emperor and the Empire," Rukh grated, his dark eyes staring unblinkingly at C'baoth. "As do we."
"Perhaps." C'baoth turned back to Thrawn. "I have all I want or need, Grand Admiral Thrawn. You will leave Wayland now."
Thrawn didn't move. "I need your assistance, Master C'baoth," he repeated quietly. "And I will have it."
"Or you'll do what?" C'baoth sneered. "Have your Noghri try to kill me? It would almost be amusing to watch." He looked at Pellaeon. "Or perhaps you'll have your brave Star Destroyer captain try to level my city from orbit. Except that you can't risk damaging the mountain, can you?"
"My gunners could destroy this city without even singeing the grass on Mount Tantiss," Pellaeon retorted. "If you need a demonstration-"
"Peace, Captain," Thrawn cut him off calmly. "So it's the personal, face-to-face sort of power you prefer, Master C'baoth? Yes, I can certainly understand that. Not that there can be much challenge left in it-not anymore. Of course," he added reflectively, glancing out the window, "that may be the whole idea. I expect that even Jedi Masters eventually get too old to be interested in anything except to sit out in the sun."
C'baoth's forehead darkened. "Have a care, Grand Admiral Thrawn," he warned. "Or perhaps I'll seek challenge in your destruction."
"That would hardly be a challenge for a man of your skill and power," Thrawn countered with a shrug. "But then, you probably already have other Jedi here under your command."
C'baoth frowned, obviously thrown by the sudden change in subject. "Other Jedi?" he echoed.
"Of course. Surely it's only fitting that a Jedi Master have lesser Jedi serving beneath him. Jedi whom he may teach and command and punish at will."
Something like a shadow crossed C'baoth's face. "There are no Jedi left," he murmured. "The Emperor and Vader hunted them down and destroyed them."
"Not all of them," Thrawn told him softly. "Two new Jedi have arisen in the past five years: Luke Skywalker and his sister, Leia Organa Solo."
"And what is that to me?"
"I can deliver them to you."
For a long minute C'baoth stared at him, disbelief and desire struggling for supremacy on his face. The desire won. "Both of them?"
"Both of them," Thrawn nodded. "Consider what a man of your skill could do with brand-new Jedi. Mold them, change them, re-create them in any image you chose." He cocked an eyebrow. "And with them would come a very special bonus . . . because Leia Organa Solo is pregnant. With twins."
C'baoth inhaled sharply. "Jedi twins?" he hissed.
"They have the potential, or so my sources tell me." Thrawn smiled. "Of course, what they ultimately became would be entirely up to you."
C'baoth's eyes darted to Pellaeon; back to Thrawn. Slowly, deliberately, he stood up. "Very well, Grand Admiral Thrawn," he said. "In return for the Jedi, I will assist your forces. Take me to your ship."
"In time, Master C'baoth," Thrawn said, getting to his feet himself. "First we must go into the Emperor's mountain. This bargain is dependent on whether I find what I'm looking for there."
"Of course." C'baoth's eyes flashed. "Let us both hope," he said warningly, "that you do."
It took seven hours of searching, through a mountain fortress much larger than Pellaeon had expected. But in the end, they did indeed find the treasures Thrawn had hoped for. The cloaking shield . . . and that other small, almost trivial, bit of technology.
The door to the Grand Admiral's command room slid open; settling himself, Pellaeon stepped inside. "A word with you, Admiral?"
"Certainly, Captain," Thrawn said from his seat in the center of the double display circle. "Come in. Has there been any update from the Imperial Palace?"
"No, sir, not since yesterday's," Pellaeon said as he walked to the edge of the outer circle, silently rehearsing one last time how he was going to say this. "I can request one, if you'd like."
"Probably unnecessary," Thrawn shook his head. "It looks like the details of the Bimmisaari trip have been more or less settled. All we have to do is alert one of the commando groups-Team Eight, I think-and we'll have our Jedi."
"Yes, sir." Pellaeon braced himself. "Admiral . . . I have to tell you that I'm not convinced dealing with C'baoth is a good idea. To be perfectly honest, I don't think he's entirely sane."
Thrawn cocked an eyebrow. "Of course he's not sane. But then, he's not Jorus C'baoth, either."
Pellaeon felt his mouth fall open. "What?"
"Jorus C'baoth is dead," Thrawn said. "He was one of the six Jedi Masters aboard the Old Republic's Outbound Flight project. I don't know if you were highly enough placed back then to have known about it."
"I heard rumors," Pellaeon frowned, thinking back. "Some sort of grand effort to extend the Old Republic's authority outside the galaxy, as I recall, launched just before the Clone Wars broke out. I never heard anything more about it."
"That's because there wasn't anything more to be heard," Thrawn said evenly. "It was intercepted by a task force outside Old Republic space and destroyed."
Pellaeon stared at him, a shiver running up his back. "How do you know?"
Thrawn raised his eyebrows. "Because I was the force's commander. Even at that early date the Emperor recognized that the Jedi had to be exterminated. Six Jedi Masters aboard the same ship was too good an opportunity to pass up."
Pellaeon licked his lips. "But then . . . ?"
"Who is it we've brought aboard the Chimaera?" Thrawn finished the question for him. "I should have thought that obvious. Joruus C'baoth-note the telltale mispronunciation of the name Jorus-is a clone."
Pellaeon stared at him. "A clone?"
"Certainly," Thrawn said. "Created from a tissue sample, probably sometime just before the real C'baoth's death."
"Early in the war, in other words," Pellaeon said, swallowing hard. The early clones-or at least those the fleet had faced-had been highly unstable, both mentally and emotionally. Sometimes spectacularly so . . . "And you deliberately brought this thing aboard my ship?" he demanded.
"Would you rather we have brought back a full-fledged Dark Jedi?" Thrawn asked coldly. "A second Darth Vader, perhaps, with the sort of ambitions and power that might easily lead him to take over your ship? Count your blessings, Captain."
"At least a Dark Jedi would have been predictable," Pellaeon countered.