To Karrde, for the moment at least, it was home.
"You sure know how to pick 'em, Karrde," Gillespee commented, propping his feet up on the edge of the auxiliary comm desk and looking around. "How did you find this place, anyway?"
"It's all right there in the old records," Karrde told him, watching his display as the decrypt program ran its course. A star map appeared, accompanied by a very short text . . .
Gillespee nodded toward Karrde's display. "Clyngunn's report?"
"Yes," Karrde said, pulling out the data card. "Such as it is."
"Nothing, right?"
"Pretty much. No indications of clone traffic anywhere on Poderis, Chazwa, or Joiol."
Gillespee dropped his feet off the table and stood up. "Well, that's that, then," he said, stepping over to the fruit rack someone had laid out on a side table and picking himself out a driblis fruit. "Looks like whatever the Empire had going in Orus sector has dried up. If there was anything going there in the first place."
"Given the lack of a trail, I suspect the latter," Karrde agreed, choosing one of the cards that had come from his contact on Bespin and sliding it into the display. "Still, it was something we needed to know, one way or the other. Among other things, it frees us up to concentrate on other possibilities."
"Yeah," Gillespee said reluctantly as he went back to his seat. "Well . . . you know, Karrde, this whole thing has been land of strange. Smugglers, I mean, doing this kind of snoop work. Hasn't paid very much, either."
"I've already told you we'll be getting some reimbursement from the New Republic."
"Except that we don't have anything to sell them," Gillespee pointed out. "Never known anyone yet who paid for no delivery."
Karrde frowned over at him. Gillespee had produced a wicked-looking knife from somewhere and was carefully carving a slice from the driblis fruit. "This isn't about getting paid," he reminded the other. "It's about surviving against the Empire."
"Maybe for you it is," Gillespee said, studying the slice of fruit a moment before taking a bite. "You've got enough sidelines going that you can afford to lay off business for a while. But, see, the rest of us have payrolls to meet and ships to keep fueled. The money stops coming in, our employees start getting nasty."
"So you and the others want money?"
He could see Gillespee brace himself. "I want money. The others want out."
It was not, in retrospect, exactly an unexpected development. The white-hot anger toward the Empire that had been sparked by that attack at the Whistler's Whirlpool was cooling, and the habits of day-to-day business were beginning to reassert themselves. "The Empire's still dangerous," he said.
"Not to us," Gillespee said bluntly. "There hasn't been a single blip of Imperial attention directed toward us since the Whirlpool. They didn't mind us poking around Orus sector; they didn't even come down on Mazzic for that thing at the Bilbringi shipyards."
"So they're ignoring us, despite provocation to do otherwise. Does that make you feel safe?"
Carefully, Gillespee sliced himself off another piece of fruit. "I don't know," he conceded. "Half the time I think Brasck's right: that if we leave the Empire alone, it'll leave us alone. But I can't help thinking about that army of clones Thrawn chased me off Ukio with. I start thinking that maybe he's just too busy with the New Republic to bother with us right now."
Karrde shook his head. "Thrawn's never too busy to chase someone down if he wants them," he said. "If he's ignoring us, it's because he knows that's the best way to quiet any opposition. Next step will probably be to offer us transport contracts and pretend that we're all good friends again."
Gillespee looked at him sharply. "You been talking to Par'tah?"
"No. Why?"
"She told me two days ago that she's been offered a contract to bring a bunch" of sublight engines to the Imperial shipyards at Ord Trasi."
Karrde grimaced. "Has she accepted?"
"Said she was still working out the details. But you know Par'tah—she's always running right on the edge. Probably can't afford to say no."
Karrde turned back to his display, the sour taste of defeat in his mouth. "I suppose I can't really blame her," he said. "What about the others?"
Gillespee shrugged uncomfortably. "Like I said, the money keeps going out. We have to have money coming in, too."
And just like that, the reluctant coalition he'd tried to put together was falling apart. And the Empire hadn't had to fire a single shot to do it. "Then I suppose I'll just have to go it alone," he said, standing up. "Thank you for your assistance. I'm sure you'll want to be getting back to business."
"Now, don't get all huffy, Karrde," Gillespee chided him, taking one last bite of fruit and getting to his feet. "You're right, this clone stuff is serious business. If you want to hire my ships and people for your hunt, we'll be happy to help you out. We just can't afford to do it for free anymore, that's all. Just let us know." He turned toward the door—
"Just a minute," Karrde called after him. A rather audacious thought had just occurred to him. "Suppose I find a way to guarantee funding for everyone. You think the others would stay aboard, too?"
Gillespee eyed him suspiciously. "Don't con me, Karrde. You don't have that land of money lying around."
"No. But the New Republic does. And under the current situation, I don't think they'd be averse to having a few more fighting ships on the payroll."
"Uh-uh," Gillespee shook his head firmly. "Sorry, but privateer is a little out of my line."
"Even if your duty consists entirely of collecting information?" Karrde asked. "I'm not talking about anything more than what you were just doing in Orus sector."
"Sounds like a dream assignment," Gillespee said sardonically. "Except for the tiny little problem of finding someone in the New Republic stupid enough to pay privateer rates for snoop duty."
Karrde smiled. "Actually, I wasn't planning to waste their valuable time telling them about it. Have you ever met my associate Ghent?"
For a moment Gillespee just stared at him, looking puzzled. Then, abruptly, he got it. "You wouldn't."
"Why not?" Karrde countered. "On the contrary, we'd be doing them a service. Why clutter their lives with these troublesome accounting details while they're trying to survive a war?"
"And since they'd have to pay anyway once we found the clone center for them . . ."
"Exactly," Karrde nodded. "We can consider this merely a prepayment for work about to be rendered."
"Just as well they won't know about it until it's over," Gillespee said dryly. "Question is, can Ghent pull it off?"
"Easily," Karrde assured him. "Particularly since he's inside the Imperial Palace on Coruscant at the moment. I was planning to head that way soon to pick up Mara anyway; I'll simply have him slice into some sector fleet's records and write us in."
Gillespee exhaled noisily. "It's got possibilities—I'll give it that much. Don't know if it'll be enough to get the others back on board, though."
"Then we'll just have to ask them," Karrde said, stepping back to his desk. "Invitations for, say, four days from now?"
Gillespee shrugged. "Give it a try. What have you got to lose?"
Karrde sobered. "With Grand Admiral Thrawn," he reminded the other, "that's not a question to ever ask lightly."
The evening breezes moved through the crumbling walls and stone columns of the ruined fortress, occasionally whistling softly as it found its way through a small hole or crevice. Sitting with his back to one of the pillars, Karrde sipped at his cup and watched the last sliver of the sun disappear below the horizon. On the plain below, the long shadows stretching across the scarred ground were beginning to fade as the coming darkness of night began its inexorable move across the landscape.
All in all, rather symbolic of the way this galactic war had finally caught up with Karrde himself.
He took another sip from his cup, marveling once again at this whole absurd situation. Here he was: an intelligent, calcula
ting, appropriately selfish smuggler who'd made a successful career out of keeping his distance from galactic politics. A smuggler, moreover, who'd sworn explicitly to keep his people out of this particular war. And yet, somehow, here he was, squarely in the middle of it.
And not only in the middle of it, but trying his best to drag other smugglers in after him.
He shook his head in vague annoyance. This exact same thing, he knew, had happened to Han Solo sometime around the big Yavin battle. He could remember being highly amused by Solo's gradual entanglement in the Rebel Alliance's nets of duty and responsibility. Looking at it from the inside of the net, the whole thing wasn't nearly so entertaining.
From across the battered courtyard came the faint sound of crunching gravel. Karrde turned to look at the line of stone pillars in that direction, his hand dropping to his blaster. No one else was supposed to be here at the moment. "Sturm?" he called softly. "Drang?"
The familiar cackling/purr came in response, and Karrde let out a quiet sigh of relief. "Over here," he called to the animal. "Come on—over here."
The order was unnecessary. The vornskr was already loping around the pillars toward him, its muzzle low to the ground, the stub of its truncated whip tail wagging madly behind him. Probably Drang, Karrde decided: he was the more sociable of the two, and Sturm had a tendency to dawdle over his meals.
The vornskr skidded to a halt beside him, giving another of his strange cackle/purrs—a rather mournful one this time—as he pressed his muzzle up into Karrde's outstretched palm. It was Drang, all right. "Yes, it's very quiet," Karrde told him, running his hand back up across the animal's face and around to scratch at the sensitive skin behind his ears. "But the others will be back soon. They've just gone out to check on the other ships."
Drang gave another mournful cackle/purr and dropped into a half-crouch beside Karrde's chair, staring alertly out over the empty plain below. But whatever he was looking for, he didn't find it, and after a moment he growled deep in his throat and lowered his muzzle to rest on the stone. His ears twitched once, as if straining to hear a sound that wasn't there, and then they, too, folded back down.
"It's quiet down there, too," Karrde agreed soberly, stroking the vornskr's fur. "What do you suppose happened here?"
Drang didn't answer. Karrde gazed down at the vornskr's lean, muscled back, wondering yet again about these strange predators he'd so casually—perhaps even arrogantly—decided to make pets of. Wondering if he'd have thought twice about doing so if he'd realized that he was dealing with possibly the only animals in the galaxy who hunted via the Force.
It was a preposterous conclusion, on the face of it. Force sensitivity itself wasn't unheard of, certainly—the Gotal had a fairly useless form of it, and there were persistent rumors about the Duinuogwuin as well, to name just two. But all those who had such sensitivity were sentient creatures, with the high levels of intelligence and self-awareness that that implied. For nonsentient animals to use the Force this way was something new.
But it was a conclusion that the events of the past few months had forced him to. There had been his pets' unexpected reaction to Luke Skywalker at Karrde's Myrkr base. There'd been the similar and, again, previously unseen reaction to Mara aboard the Wild Karrde, just before the hunch she'd had that had saved them from that Imperial Interdictor Cruiser. There'd been the far more vicious reaction of the wild vornskrs toward both Mara and Skywalker during their three-day trek through the Myrkr forests.
Skywalker was a Jedi. Mara had shown some decidedly Jedi-like talents. And perhaps even more telling, the existence of the bizarre Force-empty bubbles created by Myrkr's ysalamiri could finally be explained if they were simply a form of defense or camouflage against predators.
Abruptly Drang's head snapped up, his ears stiffening as he twisted halfway around. Karrde strained his ears . . . and a few seconds later he heard the faint sounds of the returning shuttle. "It's all right," he assured the vornskr. "It's just Chin and the others, back from the ship."
Drang held the pose a moment longer. Then, as if deciding to take Karrde's word for it, he turned and laid his head back down again. Looking out over a plain that, if Karrde's suspicion was right, was more silent even for him than it was for Karrde. "Don't worry," he soothed the animal, scratching again behind his ears. "We'll be out of here soon. And I promise that the next place we go will have plenty of other life around for you to listen to."
The vornskr's ears twitched, but that might have been just the scratching. Taking one last look at the fading colors of sunset, Karrde stood up, resettling his gun belt across his hips. There was no particular reason to go in yet, of course. The invitations had been written, encrypted, and transmitted, and for now there was nothing to do except wait for the replies. But suddenly it felt lonely out here. Much lonelier that it had a few minutes ago. "Come on, Drang," he said, reaching down for one last pat. "Time to go in."
The shuttle settled to the floor of the Chimaera's hangar bay, release valves hissing over the heads of the stormtroopers moving purposefully into escort position around the lowering ramp. Pellaeon stayed where he was beside Thrawn, grimacing at the smell of the skid gases and wishing he knew what in the Empire the Grand Admiral was up to this time.
Whatever it was, he had a bad feeling that he wasn't going to like it. Thrawn could talk all he liked about how predictable these smugglers were; and maybe to him they were. But Pellaeon had had his own share of dealings with this sort of fringe scum, and he'd never yet seen a deal that hadn't gone sour one way or the other.
And none of those deals had started from the sheer audacity of an attack on an Imperial shipyard.
The ramp finished its descent and locked in place. The stormtrooper commander peered up into the shuttle and nodded . . . and, flanked by two black-clad fleet troopers, the prisoner descended to the deck.
"Ah—Captain Mazzic," Thrawn said smoothly as the stormtroopers fell into escort positions around him. "Welcome to the Chimaera. I apologize for this rather theatrical summons and any problems it may have created in your business scheduling. But there are certain matters that cannot be discussed other than face-to-face."
"You're very funny," Mazzic snarled. A marked contrast, Pellaeon thought, to the suave, sophisticated ladies' man that had been profiled in Intelligence's files. But then, the knowledge that one was facing an Imperial interrogation was enough to strip the civilized polish from any man. "How did you find me?"
"Come now, Captain," Thrawn admonished him calmly. "Did you seriously think you could hide from me if I wanted you found?"
"Karrde managed it," Mazzic shot back. Trying hard to put up a good front; but the manacled hands were working nervously at each other. "You still haven't got him, have you?"
"Karrde's time will come," Thrawn told him, his voice still calm but noticeably cooler. "But we're not talking about Karrde. We're talking about you."
"Yes, and I'm sure you're looking forward to it," Mazzic growled, waving his manacled hands. "Let's get it over with."
Thrawn's eyebrows lifted slightly. "You misunderstand, Captain. You're not here for punishment. You're here because I wanted to clear the air between us."
Mazzic paused in midbluster. "What are you talking about?" he asked suspiciously.
"I'm talking about the recent incident at the Bilbringi shipyards," Thrawn said. "No, don't deny it—I know it was you and Ellor who destroyed that unfinished Star Destroyer. And normally the Empire would exact an extremely high price for such an act. However, under these particular circumstances, I'm prepared to let it go."