"And it was his knowledge of them that kept that attack from succeeding," Bel Iblis reminded the other quietly. "A number of us remember that, too."
"That assumes Thrawn actually intended to steal the ships," Drayson shot back as he stood up from the table. "Personally, I expect he was just as happy to have them put out of commission. Now if you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I have a war to run."
He left, and Lando let out a quiet sigh of defeat. "So much for that," he said, pulling his own data cards together.
"Don't let it worry you," Bel Iblis advised, getting up from his chair and stretching tiredly. "It's not you and Nomad City so much as it is me. Drayson was always one of those who considered disagreement with Mon Mothma to be one step down from Imperial collaboration. Obviously, he still does."
"I thought you and Mon Mothma had patched all that up," Lando said, getting to his feet.
"Oh, we have," Bel Iblis shrugged, circling the table and heading for the door. "More or less. She's invited me back into the New Republic, I've accepted her leadership, and officially all is well. But old memories fade slowly." His lip twisted slightly. "And I have to admit that my departure from the Alliance after Alderaan could have been handled more diplomatically. You up on the President's Guests floor?"
"Yes. You?"
"The same. Come on—I'll walk you up."
They left the conference room and headed down the arched hallway toward the turbolifts. "You think he might change his mind?" Lando asked.
"Drayson?" Bel Iblis shook his head. "Not a chance. Unless we can pry Mon Mothma out of the war room and get you a hearing, I think your only chance is to hope Ackbar gets back to Coruscant in the next couple of days. The importance of Nomad City aside, I imagine he still owes you a favor or two."
Lando thought about that rather awkward scene back when he'd first told Ackbar that he was resigning his general's commission. "Favors won't mean anything if he agrees that it might be a setup," he said instead. "Not after being burned once at Sluis Van."
"True," Bel Iblis conceded. He glanced down a cross corridor as they passed, and when he turned forward again Lando thought he could see a slight frown on his face. "All of which is unfortunately complicated by the presence of this Delta Source thing the Empire's got planted here in the Palace. Just because Thrawn doesn't have any current plans for Nkllon doesn't mean he won't think some up once he finds out what we're going to do."
"If he finds out," Lando corrected. "Delta Source isn't omniscient, you know. Han and Leia have managed to run some important missions past it."
"Proving once again the basic strength of small groups. Still, the sooner you identify this leak and put it out of commission, the better."
They passed another hallway, and again Bel Iblis glanced down it. And this time, there was no doubt about the frown. "Trouble?" Lando asked quietly.
"I'm not sure," Bel Iblis said. "Shouldn't there be occasional guards in this part of the Palace?"
Lando looked around. They were rather alone out here. "Could they all have been shifted down to the Sarkan reception for the evening?"
"They were here earlier," Bel Iblis said. "I saw at least two when I came down from my suite."
Lando looked back along the hallway, an unpleasant sensation starting to crawl along his backbone. "So what happened to them?"
"I don't know." Bel Iblis took a deep breath. "I don't suppose you're armed."
Lando shook his head. "Blaster's up in my room. I didn't think I'd need it here."
"You probably don't," Bel Iblis said, the fingertips of his right hand easing beneath his jacket as he looked around. "There's probably some simple, perfectly innocuous explanation."
"Sure," Lando said, pulling out his comlink. "Let's call in and find out what it is." He thumbed the device on—
And as quickly shut it off as a soft squeal of static erupted from the speaker. "I think the explanation just stopped being simple," he said grimly. Suddenly his hand was itching to have a blaster in it. "What now?"
"We find some way to alert Palace Security," Bel Iblis said, looking around. "All right. The turbolifts up ahead won't help us—they only serve the residential areas. But there's a stairway at the far end that leads down to Palace Central. We'll try that way."
"Sounds good," Lando nodded. "Let's swing up to my suite first and pick up my blaster."
"Good idea," Bel Iblis agreed. "We'll pass on the turbolift—stairs are over this way. Nice and quiet."
The stairs were as deserted as the corridor behind them had been. But as Bel Iblis started out of the stairway door, he suddenly held up a warning hand. Moving to his side, Lando looked out onto the floor.
Ahead, moving cautiously down the hallway away from them, was a lone figure. A slender woman with red-gold hair, a small blaster gripped ready in her hand.
Mara Jade.
There was a soft whisper of metal on cloth as Bel Iblis drew his blaster. Motioning Lando to follow, he started silently down the hallway after her.
They had nearly caught up by the time she reached the far comer. There she paused, poised to look around it—
Bel Iblis leveled his blaster. "All right, Jade," he said quietly. "Nice and easy. It's all over."
For a second Lando was sure she was going to argue the point. She turned her head halfway, looking back over her shoulder as if targeting her opponents— "Calrissian!" she said, and there was no mistaking the relief in her voice. Or the underlying tension, either. "There are Imperials in the Palace, dressed as Security. I've just seen four of them."
"Interesting," Bel Iblis said, eyeing her closely. "Where were you going?"
"I thought it might be a good idea to find out what they were up to," she growled sarcastically. "You want to help, or not?"
Bel Iblis eased a look around the corner. "I don't see anyone. They've probably already headed down. Best guess is either the war room or the Sarkan reception."
And suddenly, the whole thing clicked together in Lando's mind. "No," he said. "They haven't gone down, they've gone up. They're after Leia's twins."
Mara swore under her breath. "You're right. Thrawn's promised them to that lunatic C'baoth. That has to be it."
"You could be right," Bel Iblis said. "Where's your room, Calrissian?"
"Two doors back," Lando told him, nodding over his shoulder.
"Get your blaster," Bel Iblis ordered, peering again around the corner. "You and Jade head down the hallway over there and find the main stairway. See if anyone's up there yet; maybe try to warn Leia and Solo. I'll go downstairs and scare up some reinforcements."
"Be careful—they may have left a rear guard on the stairway down," Mara warned.
"They'll certainly have one on the way up," Bel Iblis countered. "Watch yourselves." With one final look around the corner, he eased past and was gone.
"Wait here," Lando told Mara, starting back toward his room. "I'll be right back."
"Just hurry it up," she called after him.
"Right."
He ran to his room; and as he keyed the door open, he threw a quick look back at Mara. She was still standing there, turned halfway around the comer, an intense yet strangely empty expression on the part of her face he could see.
That face. That somehow, somewhere familiar face. Fitting into a time and place and background he could almost but not quite make out in his mind's eye.
He shook off the thought. Whoever she had been, now was definitely not the time to try and figure it out. Han, Leia, and their children were in deadly danger . . . and it was up to him and Mara to get them out of it.
Turning back to his room, he hurried inside.
Leia Organa Solo. Leia Organa Solo. Wake up. You're in danger. Wake up. Leia Organa Solo, wake up—
With a gasp, Leia snapped out of the dream, the last remnants of that insistent voice echoing through her mind as she came awake. For a handful of dream-fogged heartbeats she couldn't remember where she was, and her eyes and Jedi senses flicked tensely around th
e darkened room as she struggled for recognition. Then the last of the sleep evaporated, and she was back in her suite in the Imperial Palace. Beside her, Han grunted gently in his sleep as he rolled over; across the room, the twins were huddled together in their crib; in the next room over, Winter was also asleep, no doubt dreaming in the laser-sharp images of her perfect memory. And outside the suite—
She frowned. There was someone at the outer door. No—more than one. Five or six of them at least, standing grouped around it.
She slipped out of bed, hands automatically scooping up her blaster and lightsaber from the floor as she did so. It was probably nothing—most likely simply a group of Security guards taking a moment for idle conversation among themselves before continuing on their rounds. Though if so, they were breaking several fairly strict rules about on-duty personnel. She would have to find a diplomatic but firm way of reminding them.
Padding silently on the thick carpet, she left the bedroom and headed across the living areas toward the door, working through the Jedi sensory enhancement routine as she walked. If she could hear and identify the guards' voices from inside the suite, she could warn them individually and privately in the morning.
She never made it to the door. Halfway across the living area, she stopped short as her enhanced hearing began to pick up a faint hum coming from ahead of her. She strained her ears, trying to ignore the sudden distraction of her own heartbeat as she listened. The sound was faint but very distinctive, and she knew she'd heard it somewhere before.
And then, abruptly, she had it: the hum of an electronic lock-breaker. Someone was trying to break into their suite.
And even as she stood there, frozen with shock, the lock clicked open.
There was no time to run and nowhere to run to . . . but the designers of the Tower hadn't been blind to this sort of danger. Lifting her blaster, hoping fervently the mechanism still worked, Leia fired two quick shots into the door.
The wood was one of the hardest and strongest known in the galaxy, and her shots probably didn't gouge their way more than a quarter of the way through. But it was enough. The embedded sensors had taken note of the attack; and even as the sound of the blasts thundered in Leia's enhanced hearing, the heavy metal security door slammed down along the wooden door's inside edge.
"Leia?" Han's voice demanded from behind her, sounding distant through the ringing in her ears.
"Someone's trying to break in," she said, turning and hurrying back to where he stood in the bedroom doorway, blaster ready in his hand. "I got the security door closed in time, but that won't hold them."
"Not for long," Han agreed, eyeing the door as Leia reached him. "Get in the bedroom and call Security—I'll see what I can do about slowing them down."
"All right. Be careful—they're serious about this."
The words were barely out of her mouth when the whole room seemed to shake. The intruders, abandoning subtlety, had set to work blowing the outer door to splinters.
"Yeah, I'd call that serious," Han seconded grimly. "Get Winter and Threepio and grab the twins. We got some fast planning to do."
The first sound that drifted down the delicate arch of the Tower staircase might have been a distant blaster shot—Mara couldn't tell for sure. The next one, a handful of seconds later, left no doubt.
"Uh-oh," Calrissian muttered. "That's trouble."
Another shot echoed down the staircase. "Sounds like a heavy blaster," Mara said, listening hard. "They must not have been able to get the door open quietly."
"Or else they only want the twins," Calrissian countered darkly, heaving himself away from the corner they'd paused at. "Come on."
"Hold it," Mara said, grabbing his arm with her free hand as she studied the territory in front of them. The wide arch of the first flight of stairs ended at a presentation landing with an elaborate wrought-stone balustrade. Just visible from where they stood were the openings of two narrower stairways that continued upward, double-helix fashion, from opposite ends of the landing. "That landing would be a good spot for a rear guard, and I don't feel like stopping a blaster bolt."
Calrissian muttered something impatient sounding under his breath, but he stayed put. A moment later, he was probably glad he had. "You're right—there's someone near the stairway to the left," he murmured.
"Means there'll be one on the right, too," Mara said, her eyes searching the contours and crevices of the balustrade's stonework as another blaster shot echoed down. Intelligence operatives liked lurking in shadows. . . . "And there's one on each side of the main stairway," she added. "About two meters out from the edges."
"I see them," Calrissian said. "This isn't going to be easy." He looked back over his shoulder, to where the stairway picked up again. "Come on, Bel Iblis, get up here."
"He'd better hurry," Mara seconded, peering cautiously at the four Imperials and trying to remember the details of the Tower's layout. "Organa Solo's door isn't going to last long."
"Not nearly as long as that rear guard can hold us off," Calrissian agreed, hissing softly between his teeth. "Wait a minute. Stay here—I've got an idea."
"Where are you going?" Mara demanded as he moved away from the corner.
"Main hangar," Calrissian told her, heading for the stairway behind them. "Chewie was down there earlier working on the Falcon. If he's still there, we can go up the outside of the Tower and get them out."
"How?" Mara persisted. "Those are transparisteel windows up there—you'll never blast through them without killing everyone inside."
"I won't have to," Calrissian said with a tightly sly smile. "Leia's got a lightsaber. Keep these guys busy, okay?"
He sprinted to the stairway and vanished down it. "Right," Mara growled after him, turning her attention back to the Imperials up on the stairway. Had they spotted her and Calrissian skulking around down here? Probably. In which case, that guy at the leftmost stairway was probably standing too far out of cover just to bait her.
Well, she was willing to oblige. Switching her blaster to her left hand, she braced her wrist against the corner, took careful aim. . . .
The shot from the other stairway spattered off the wall above her blaster, scattering hot splinters of stone across her hand. "Blast!" she snarled, snatching her hand back and brushing the fragments off. So they wanted to play cute, did they? Fine—she could handle cute. Getting a fresh grip on her blaster, she eased back to the corner—
It was the sudden tingle of danger in the back of her mind that saved her life. She dropped to one knee; and as she did so, a pair of blaster shots from straight ahead flashed into the stonework where her head had been. Instantly, she threw herself backward to land on her side on the floor, eyes and blaster tracking toward where the shots had come from.
There were two of them, moving quietly toward her along the corridor on the opposite side of the stairway. She got off two quick shots as she rolled over onto her stomach, both of them missing. Shifting to a two-handed grip, trying to ignore the shots that were beginning to come uncomfortably close, she lined up her blaster on the rightmost of her assailants and fired twice.
He jerked and collapsed to the floor, his blaster still firing reflexively and uselessly into the ceiling. A shot sizzled past Mara's ear as she shifted aim toward the second assailant, another came even closer as his weapon tracked toward her—
And abruptly, the air over Mara's head was filled with a blazing storm of blaster fire. The Imperial across the way went down like a stuck bantha and lay still.