"Relay them to him, Lieutenant," Pellaeon ordered, peering out the viewport at the new group of running lights that had appeared off to starboard and trying to suppress the growing sense of apprehension that was curling through his gut like wisps of poisoned smoke. It was all well and good for Thrawn to assemble the Empire's seasoned elite for what amounted to an extended hit-and-fade attack on Coruscant; what was not so well and good was the possibility that the raid might not stop there. C'baoth was aboard, and C'baoth's sole agenda these days seemed to be the capture of Leia Organa Solo and her twins. He'd already demonstrated his ability to take absolute control of the Chimaera and its crewers, an arrogant little stunt that had already delayed this operation by several hours. If he decided to do it again in the thick of battle off Coruscant . . .
Pellaeon grimaced, the ghostly memories of the Empire's defeat at Endor floating up before his eyes. The second Death Star had died there, along with Vader's Super Star Destroyer Executor and far too many of the best and brightest of the Empire's officer corps. If C'baoth's interference precipitated a repetition of that debacle—if the Empire lost both Grand Admiral Thrawn and his core Star Destroyer force—it might never again recover.
He was still gazing out the viewport at the gathering assault force, trying to suppress his concerns, when a rustle of uneasiness rippled across the bridge around him . . . and even without looking he knew what it meant.
C'baoth was here.
Pellaeon's command chair and its protecting ysalamir were a dozen long steps away—far too distant to reach without looking obvious about it. None of the other ysalamiri scattered around the bridge were within reach, either. It wouldn't do to go running around like a frightened field scurry in front of his crew, even if C'baoth was willing to let him.
And if the Jedi Master chose instead to paralyze him like he had the rest of the Chimaera's crew at Bilbringi . . .
A shiver ran up Pellaeon's back. He'd seen the medical reports for those who'd had to recover in sick bay, and he had no desire to go through that himself. Aside from the discomfort and emotional confusion involved, such a public humiliation would severely diminish his command authority aboard his ship.
He could only hope that he'd be able to give C'baoth what he wanted without looking weak and subservient. Turning to face the approaching Jedi Master, he wondered if playing on this same fear of humiliation had been the way the Emperor had started his own rise to power. "Master C'baoth," he nodded gravely. "What may I do for you?"
"I want a ship prepared for me at once," C'baoth said, his eyes blazing with a strange inward fire. "One with enough range to take me to Wayland."
Pellaeon blinked. "To Wayland?"
"Yes," C'baoth said, looking out the viewport. "I told you long ago that I would eventually take command there. That time has now come."
Pellaeon braced himself. "I was under the impression that you'd agreed to assist with the Coruscant attack—"
"I have changed my mind," C'baoth cut him off sharply.
Sharply, but with a strange sense of preoccupation. "Has something happened on Wayland?" Pellaeon asked.
C'baoth looked at him, and Pellaeon had the odd sense that the Jedi Master was really only noticing him for the first time. "What happens or does not happen on Wayland is no concern of yours, Imperial Captain Pellaeon," he said. "Your only concern is to prepare me a ship." He looked out the viewport again. "Or do I need to choose my own?"
A movement at the rear of the bridge caught Pellaeon's eye: Grand Admiral Thrawn, arriving from his private command room to oversee the final preparations for the Coruscant assault. As Pellaeon watched, Thrawn's glowing red eyes flicked across the scene, taking in C'baoth's presence and pausing momentarily on Pellaeon's face and posture. He turned his head and nodded, and a stormtrooper with an ysalamir nutrient frame on his back stepped to Thrawn's side. Together, they started forward.
C'baoth didn't bother to turn around. "You will prepare me a ship, Grand Admiral Thrawn," he called. "I wish to go to Wayland. Immediately."
"Indeed," Thrawn said, stepping to Pellaeon's side. The stormtrooper moved between and behind the two of them, finally bringing Pellaeon into the safety of the ysalamir's Force-empty bubble. "May I ask why?"
"My reasons are my own," C'baoth said darkly. "Do you question them?"
For a long moment Pellaeon was afraid Thrawn was going to take him up on that challenge. "Not at all," the Grand Admiral said at last. "If you wish to go to Wayland, you may of course do so. Lieutenant Tschel?"
"Sir?" the young duty officer said from the portside crew pit, stiffening to attention.
"Signal the Death's Head," Thrawn ordered. "Inform Captain Harbid that the Star Galleon Draklor is to be detached from his group and reassigned to me. Crew only; I'll supply troops and passengers."
"Yes, sir," Tschel acknowledged, and stepped over to the comm station.
"I did not ask for troops, Grand Admiral Thrawn," C'baoth said, his face alternating between petulance and suspicion. "Nor for other passengers."
"I've been planning for some time to send General Covell to take command of the Mount Tantiss garrison," Thrawn said. "As well as to supplement the troops already there. This would seem as good a time as any to do so."
C'baoth looked at Pellaeon, then back at Thrawn. "All right," he said at last, apparently settling on petulance. "But it will be my ship—not Covell's. I will give the orders."
"Of course, Master C'baoth," Thrawn said soothingly. "I will so inform the general."
"All right." C'baoth's mouth worked uncertainly behind his long white beard, and for a moment Pellaeon thought he was going to lose control again. His head twitched to the side; then he was back in command of himself again. "All right," he repeated curtly. "I will be in my chambers. Call me when my ship is ready."
"As you wish," Thrawn nodded.
C'baoth threw each of them another piercing look, then turned and strode away. "Inform General Covell of this change of plans, Captain," Thrawn ordered Pellaeon, watching C'baoth make his way across the bridge. "The computer has a list of troops and crewers assigned as cloning templets; Covell's aides will arrange for them to be put aboard the Draklor. Along with a company of the general's best troops."
Pellaeon frowned at Thrawn's profile. Covell's troops—and Covell himself, for that matter—had been slated to relieve the shock forces currently working their way across Qat Chrystac. "You think Mount Tantiss is in danger?" he asked.
"Not any substantial danger, no," Thrawn said. "Still, it's possible our farseeing Jedi Master may indeed have picked up on something—unrest among the natives, perhaps. Best not to take chances."
Pellaeon looked out the viewport at the star that was Coruscant's sun. "Could it be something having to do with the Rebels?"
"Unlikely," Thrawn said. "There's no indication yet that they've even learned of Wayland's existence, let alone are planning any action against it. If and when that happens, we should have plenty of advance notice of their intentions."
"Via Delta Source."
"And via normal Intelligence channels." Thrawn smiled slightly. "It still disturbs you, doesn't it, to receive information from a source you don't understand?"
"A little, sir, yes," Pellaeon admitted.
"Consider it a cultivation of your trust," Thrawn said. "Someday I'll turn Delta Source over to you. But not yet."
"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said. He looked aft, toward where C'baoth had disappeared from the bridge. Something about this was tickling uncomfortably in the back of his memory. Something about C'baoth and Wayland . . .
"You seem disturbed, Captain," Thrawn said.
Pellaeon shook his head. "I don't like the idea of him being inside Mount Tantiss, Admiral. I don't know why. I just don't like it."
Thrawn followed his gaze. "I wouldn't worry about it," he said quietly. "Actually, this is more likely to be a solution than a problem."
Pellaeon frowned. "I don't understand."
Thrawn smiled again. "
All in good time, Captain. But now to the business at hand. Is my flagship ready?"
Pellaeon shook his thoughts away. Now, with the center of the Rebellion lying open before them, was not the time for nameless fears. "The Chimaera is fully at your command, Admiral," he gave the formal response.
"Good." Thrawn sent his gaze around the bridge, then turned again to Pellaeon. "Make certain the rest of the assault force is likewise, and inform them we'll be waiting until the Draklor has cleared the area."
He looked out the viewport. "And then," he added softly, "we'll remind the Rebellion what war is all about."
Chapter 14
They stood there silently: Mara and Luke, waiting as the dark hooded shadow moved toward them, a lightsaber glittering in its hand. Back behind the figure an old man stood, craziness in his eyes and blue lightning in his hands. The shadow stopped and raised its weapon. Luke stepped away from Mara, lifting his own lightsaber, his mind filled with horror and dread—
The alarms wailed through the suite from the corridor outside, jolting Leia awake and shattering the nightmare into fragments of vivid color.
Her first thought was that the alarm was for Luke and Mara; her second was that another Imperial commando team had gotten into the Palace. But as she came awake enough to recognize the pitch of the alarm, she realized it was even worse.
Coruscant was under attack.
Across the room, the twins began to cry. "Winter!" Leia shouted, grabbing her robe and throwing what she could in the way of mental comfort in the twins' direction.
Winter was already in the doorway, halfway into her own robe. "That's a battle alert," she called to Leia over the alarm.
"I know," Leia said, tying the robe around her. "I have to get to the war room right away."
"I understand," Winter said, peering intently at her face. "Are you all right?"
"I had a dream, that's all," Leia told her, snagging a pair of half-boots and pulling them on. Trust Winter to pick up on something like that, even in the middle of chaos. "Luke and Mara were having a battle with someone. And I don't think they were expecting to win."
"Are you sure it was just a dream?"
Leia bit at her lip as she fastened the half-boots. "I don't know," she had to admit. If it hadn't been a dream, but instead had been a Jedi vision . . . "No—it had to be a dream," she decided. "Luke would be able to tell from space if C'baoth or another Dark Jedi was there. He wouldn't risk trying to carry out the mission under those conditions."
"I hope not," Winter said. But she didn't sound all that confident about it.
"Don't worry about it," Leia assured her. "It was probably just a bad dream sparked by the alarms going off." And fueled by a guilty conscience, she added silently, for letting Han and Luke talk her into letting them go to Wayland in the first place. "Take care of the twins, will you?"
"We'll watch them," Winter said.
We? Leia glanced around, frowning, and for the first time spotted Mobvekhar and the other two Noghri who'd taken up positions in the shadows around the crib. They hadn't been there when she went to bed, she knew, which meant they must have slipped in from the suite's main living area sometime in the minute or so since the alarm had gone off. Without her noticing.
"You may go without fear, Lady Vader," Mobvekhar said solemnly. "Your heirs will come to no harm."
"I know," Leia said, and meant it. She picked up her comlink from her nightstand, considered calling for information, but slipped it into the side pocket of her robe instead. The last thing the war room staff needed right now was to have to spend time explaining the situation to a civilian. She'd know soon enough what was happening. "I'll be back when I can," she told Winter. Grabbing her lightsaber, she left the suite.
The hallway outside was filled with beings of all sorts, some of them hurrying along on business, the rest milling around in confusion or demanding information from the security guards standing duty. Leia maneuvered her way past the guards and through the clumps of anxious discussion, joining a handful of sleep-tousled military aides hurrying toward the turbolifts. A full car was just preparing to leave as she arrived; two of the occupants, obviously recognizing Councilor Organa Solo, promptly gave up their places. The door slid shut behind her, barely missing a chattering pair of brown-robed Jawas who brazenly pushed their way aboard at the last instant, and they headed down.
The entire lower floor of the Palace was given over to military operations, starting with the support service offices on the periphery, moving inward to the offices of Ackbar and Drayson and other duty commanders, and on to the more vital and sensitive areas in the center. Leia cleared herself through at the duty station, passed between a towering pair of Wookiee guards, and stepped through the blast doors into the war room.
Bare minutes after the alarm had sounded, the place was already a scene of marginally controlled chaos as freshly awakened senior officers and aides hurried to battle positions. A single glance at the master tactical display showed that all the furor was fully justified: eight Imperial Interdictor Cruisers had appeared in a loose grouping around the one-one-six vector in Sector Four, their hyperdrive-dampening gravetic cones blocking all entry or exit from the region immediately around Coruscant. Even as she watched, a new group of ships flicked into the center of the cluster: two more Interdictors, plus an escort of eight Katana-fleet Dreadnaughts.
"What's going on?" an unfamiliar voice said at Leia's shoulder.
She turned. A young man—a kid, really—was standing there, scratching at a mop of tangled hair and frowning up at the tactical. For a moment she didn't recognize him; then her memory clicked. Ghent, the slicer Karrde had lent them to help crack the bank break-in code that the Imperials had framed Admiral Ackbar with. She'd forgotten he was still here. "It's an Imperial attack," she said.
"Oh," he said. "Can they do that?"
"We're at war," she reminded him patiently. "In war you can do just about anything the other side can't stop you from doing. How did you get in here, anyway?"
"Oh, I cut myself an entry code a while back," he said, waving a vague hand, his eyes still on the tactical. "Haven't had much to do lately. Can't you stop them?"
"We're certainly going to try," Leia said grimly, looking around the room. Across by the command console she spotted General Rieekan. "Stay out of the way and don't touch anything."
She'd gotten two steps toward Rieekan when her brain suddenly caught up with her. Ghent, who'd cut himself a top-level access code because he didn't have anything better to do . . .
She spun around, took two steps back, and grabbed Ghent's arm. "On second thought, come with me," she said, steering him through the chaos to a door marked crypt opening off the side of the war room. She keyed in her security code, and the door slid open.
It was a good-sized room, crowded to the gills with computers, decrypt techs, and interface droids. "Who's in charge here?" Leia called as a couple of heads swung her direction.
"I am," a middle-aged man wearing a colonel's insignia said, taking a step back from one of the consoles into about the only bit of empty space in the room.
"I'm Councilor Organa Solo," Leia identified herself. "This is Ghent, an expert slicer. Can you use him?"
"I don't know," the colonel said, throwing the kid a speculative look. "Ever tackled an Imperial battle encrypt code, Ghent?"
"Nope," Ghent said. "Never seen one. I've sliced a couple of their regular military encrypts, though."
"Which ones?"
Ghent's eyes went a little foggy. "Well, there was one called a Lepido program. Oh, and there was something called the ILKO encrypt back when I was twelve. That was a tough one—took me almost two months to slice."