"Right. Makes anyone watching think that's all there is to it. A little something Pash Cracken came up with at that fiasco off Xyquine." Han glanced at the rear display again. "I think we've got enough lead to outrun them," he said. "Let's try."
"We're not jumping to lightspeed?" Leia frowned, an old and rather painful memory floating up from the back of her mind. That mad scramble away from Hoth, with Darth Vader's whole fleet breathing down their necks and a hyperdrive that turned out to be broken . . .
Han threw her a sideways look. "Don't worry, sweetheart. The hyperdrive's working fine today."
"Let's hope so," Leia murmured.
"See, as long as they're chasing us they can't bother Filve," Han went on. "And the farther we draw them away, the longer the backup force'll have to get here from Ord Pardron."
The brilliant green flash of a near miss cut off Leia's intended response. "I think we've given them all the time we can," she told Han. Within her, she could sense the turmoil coming from her unborn twins. "Can we please get out of here?"
A second bolt spattered off the Falcon's upper deflector shield. "Yeah, I think you're right," Han agreed. "Wedge? You ready to leave this party?"
"Whenever you are, Falcon," Wedge said. "Go ahead—we'll follow when you're clear."
"Right." Reaching over, Han gripped the hyperdrive levers and pulled them gently back. Through the cockpit canopy the stars stretched themselves into starlines, and they were safe.
Leia took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Within her, she could still sense the twins' anxiety, and for a moment she turned her mind to the job of calming them down. It was a strange sensation, she'd often thought, touching minds that dealt in emotion and pure sensation instead of pictures and words. So different from the minds of Han and Luke and her other friends.
So different, too, from the distant mind that had been orchestrating that Imperial attack force.
Behind her, the door slid open and Chewbacca came into the cockpit. "Good shooting, Chewie," Han told the Wookiee as he heaved his massive bulk into the portside passenger seat beside Threepio. "You have any more trouble with the horizontal control arm?"
Chewbacca rumbled a negative. His dark eyes studying Leia's face, he growled her a question. "I'm all right," Leia assured him, blinking back sudden and inexplicable tears. "Really."
She looked at Han, to find him frowning at her, too. "You weren't worried, were you?" he asked. "It was just an Imperial task force. Nothing to get excited about."
She shook her head. "It wasn't that, Han. There was something else back there. A land of . . ." She shook her head again. "I don't know."
"Perhaps it was similar to your indisposition at Endor," Threepio offered helpfully. "You remember—when you collapsed while Chewbacca and I were repairing the—?"
Chewbacca rumbled a warning, and the droid abruptly shut up. But far too late. "No—let him talk," Han said, his sense going all protectively suspicious as he looked at Leia. "What indisposition was this?"
"There wasn't anything to it, Han," Leia assured him, reaching over to take his hand. "On our first orbit around Endor we passed through the spot where the Death Star blew up. For a few seconds I could feel something like the Emperor's presence around me. That's all."
"Oh, that's all," Han said sarcastically, throwing a brief glare back at Chewbacca. "A dead Emperor tries to make a grab for you, and you don't think it's worth mentioning?"
"Now you're being silly," Leia chided. "There was nothing to worry about—it was over quickly, and there weren't any aftereffects. Really. Anyway, what I felt back at Filve was completely different."
"Glad to hear it," Han said, not yet ready to let it go. "Did you have any of the med people check you over or anything after you got back?"
"Well, there really wasn't any time before—"
"Fine. You do it as soon as we're back."
Leia nodded with a quiet sigh. She knew that tone; and it wasn't something she could wholeheartedly argue against, anyway. "All right. If I can find time."
"You'll make time," Han countered. "Or I'll have Luke lock you in the med center when he gets back. I mean it, sweetheart."
Leia squeezed his hand, feeling a similar squeeze on her heart as she did so. Luke, off alone in Imperial territory . . . but he was all right. He had to be. "All right," she told Han. "I'll get checked out. I promise."
"Good," he said, his eyes searching her face. "So what was it you felt back at Filve?"
"I don't know." She hesitated. "Maybe it was the same thing Luke felt on the Katana. You know—when the Imperials put that landing party of clones aboard."
"Yeah," Han agreed doubtfully. "Maybe. Those Dreadnaughts were awfully far away."
"There were probably a lot more clones, though, too."
"Yeah. Maybe," Han said again. "Well . . . I suppose Chewie and me'd better get to work on that ion flux stabilizer before it quits on us completely. Can you handle things up here okay, sweetheart?"
"I'm fine," Leia assured him, just as glad to be leaving this line of conversation. "You two go ahead."
Because the other possibility was one she'd just as soon not think about right now. The Emperor, it had long been rumored, had had the ability to use the Force to exercise direct control over his military forces. If the Jedi Master Luke had confronted on Jomark had that same ability . . .
Reaching down, she caressed her belly and focused on the pair of tiny minds within her. No, it was indeed not something she wanted to think about.
"I presume," Thrawn said in that deadly calm voice of his, "that you have some sort of explanation."
Slowly, deliberately, C'baoth lifted his head from the command room's double display circle to look at the Grand Admiral. At the Grand Admiral and, with undisguised contempt, at the ysalamir on its nutrient frame slung across Thrawn's shoulders. "Do you likewise have an explanation, Grand Admiral Thrawn?" he demanded.
"You broke off the diversionary attack on Filve," Thrawn said, ignoring C'baoth's question. "You then proceeded to send the entire task force on a dead-end chase."
"And you, Grand Admiral Thrawn, have failed to bring my Jedi to me," C'baoth countered. His voice, Pellaeon noticed uneasily, was slowly rising in both pitch and volume. "You, your tame Noghri, your entire Empire—all of you have failed."
Thrawn's glowing red eyes narrowed. "Indeed? And was it also our failure that you were unable to hold on to Luke Skywalker after we delivered him to you on Jomark?"
"You did not deliver him to me, Grand Admiral Thrawn," C'baoth insisted. "I summoned him there through the Force—"
"It was Imperial Intelligence who planted the rumor that Jorus C'baoth had returned and been seen on Jomark," Thrawn cut him off coldly. "It was Imperial Transport who brought you there, Imperial Supply who arranged and provisioned that house for you, and Imperial Engineering who built the camouflaged island landing site for your use. The Empire did its part to get Skywalker into your hands. It was you who failed to keep him there."
"No!" C'baoth snapped. "Skywalker left Jomark because Mara Jade escaped from you and twisted his mind against me. And she will pay for that. You hear me? She shall pay."
For a long moment Thrawn was silent. "You threw the entire Filve task force against the Millennium Falcon," he said at last, his voice under control again. "Did you succeed in capturing Leia Organa Solo?"
"No," C'baoth growled. "But not because she didn't want to come to me. She does. Just as Skywalker does."
Thrawn threw a glance at Pellaeon. "She wants to come to you?" he asked.
C'baoth smiled. "Very much," he said, his voice unexpectedly losing all its anger. Becoming almost dreamy . . . "She wants me to teach her children," he continued, his eyes drifting around the command room. "To instruct them in the ways of the Jedi. To create them in my own image. Because I am the master. The only one there is."
He looked back at Thrawn. "You must bring her to me, Grand Admiral Thrawn," he said, his manner somewhere halfway between solemn and p
leading. "We must free her from her entrapment among those who fear her powers. They'll destroy her if we don't."
"Of course we must," Thrawn said soothingly. "But you must leave that task to me. All I need is a little more time."
C'baoth frowned with thought, his hand slipping up beneath his beard to finger the medallion hanging on its neck chain, and Pellaeon felt a shiver run up his back. No matter how many times he saw it happen, he would never get used to these sudden dips into the slippery twilight of clone madness. It had, he knew, been a universal problem with the early cloning experiments: a permanent mental and emotional instability, inversely scaled to the length of the duplicate's growth cycle. Few of the scientific papers on the subject had survived the Clone Wars era, but Pellaeon had come across one that had suggested that no clone grown to maturity in less than a year would be stable enough to survive outside of a totally controlled environment.
Given the destruction they'd unleashed on the galaxy, Pellaeon had always assumed that the clonemasters had eventually found at least a partial solution to the problem. Whether they had recognized the underlying cause of the madness was another question entirely.
It could very well be that Thrawn was the first to truly understand it.
"Very well, Grand Admiral Thrawn," C'baoth said abruptly. "You may have one final chance. But I warn you: it will be your last. After that, I will take the matter into my own hands." Beneath the bushy eyebrows his eyes flashed. "And I warn you further: if you cannot accomplish even so small a task, perhaps I will deem you unworthy to lead the military forces of my Empire."
Thrawn's eyes glittered, but he merely inclined his head slightly. "I accept your challenge, Master C'baoth."
"Good." Deliberately, C'baoth resettled himself into his seat and closed his eyes. "You may leave me now, Grand Admiral Thrawn. I wish to meditate, and to plan for the future of my Jedi."
For a moment Thrawn stood silently, his glowing red eyes gazing unblinkingly at C'baoth. Then he shifted his gaze to Pellaeon. "You'll accompany me to the bridge, Captain," he said. "I want you to oversee the defense arrangements for the Ukio system."
"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, glad of any excuse to get away from C'baoth.
For a moment he paused, feeling a frown cross his face as he looked down at C'baoth. Had there been something he had wanted to bring to Thrawn's attention? He was almost certain there was. Something having to do with C'baoth, and clones, and the Mount Tantiss project . . .
But the thought wouldn't come, and with a mental shrug, he pushed the question aside. It would surely come to him in time.
Stepping around the display ring, he followed his commander from the room.
Chapter 2
It was called the Calius saj Leeloo, the City of Glowing Crystal of Berchest, and it had been one of the most spectacular wonders of the galaxy since the earliest days of the Old Republic. The entire city was nothing more or less than a single gigantic crystal, created over the eons by saltile spray from the dark red-orange waters of the Leefari Sea that roiled up against the low bluff upon which it rested. The original city had been painstakingly sculpted from the crystal over decades by local Berchestian artisans, whose descendants continued to guide and nurture its slow growth.
At the height of the Old Republic Calius had been a major tourist attraction, its populace making a comfortable living from the millions of beings who flocked to the stunning beauty of the city and its surroundings. But the chaos of the Clone Wars and the subsequent rise of the Empire had taken a severe toll on such idle amusements, and Calius had been forced to turn to other means for its support.
Fortunately, the tourist trade had left a legacy of well-established trade routes between Berchest and most of the galaxy's major systems. The obvious solution was for the Berchestians to promote Calius as a trade center; and while the city was hardly to the level yet of Svivren or Ketaris, they had achieved a modest degree of success.
The only problem was that it was a trade center on the Imperial side of the line.
A squad of stormtroopers strode down the crowded street, their white armor taking on a colored tinge from the angular red-orange buildings around them. Taking a long step out of their way, Luke Skywalker pulled his hood a bit closer around his face. He could sense no particular alertness from the squad, but this deep into Imperial space there was no reason to take chances. The stormtroopers strode past without so much as a glance in his direction, and with a quiet sigh of relief Luke returned his attention to his contemplation of the city. Between the stormtroopers, the Imperial fleet crewers on layover between flights, and the smugglers poking around hoping to pick up jobs, the darkly businesslike sense of the city was in strange and pointed contrast to its serene beauty.
And somewhere in all that serene beauty was something far more dangerous than mere Imperial stormtroopers.
A group of clones.
Or so New Republic Intelligence thought. Painstakingly sifting through thousands of intercepted Imperial communiques, they'd tentatively pinpointed Calius and the Berchest system as one of the transfer points in the new flood of human duplicates beginning to man the ships and troop carriers of Grand Admiral Thrawn's war machine.
That flood had to be stopped, and quickly. Which meant finding the location of the cloning tanks and destroying them. Which first meant backtracking the traffic pattern from a known transfer point. Which first meant confirming that clones were indeed coming through Calius.
A group of men dressed in the dulbands and robes of Svivreni traders came around a corner two blocks ahead, and as he had so many times in the past two days, Luke reached out toward them with the Force. One quick check was all it took: the traders did not have the strange aura he'd detected in the boarding party of clones that had attacked them aboard the Katana.
But even as he withdrew his consciousness, something else caught Luke's attention. Something he had almost missed amid the torrent of human and alien thoughts and sensations that swirled together around him like bits of colored glass in a sandstorm. A coolly calculating mind, one which Luke felt certain he'd encountered before but couldn't quite identify through the haze of mental noise between them.
And the owner of that mind was, in turn, fully aware of Luke's presence in Calius. And was watching him.
Luke grimaced. Alone in enemy territory, with his transport two kilometers away at the Calius landing field and his only weapon a lightsaber that would identify him the minute he drew it from his tunic, he was not exactly holding the high ground here.
But he had the Force . . . and he knew his follower was there. All in all, it gave him fair odds.
A couple of meters to his left was the entrance to the long arched tunnel of a pedestrian bridgeway. Turning down it, Luke stepped up his pace, trying to remember from his study of the city maps exactly where this particular bridge went. Across the city's icy river, he decided, and up toward the taller and higher-class regions overlooking the sea itself. Behind him, he sensed his pursuer follow him into the bridgeway; and as Luke put distance between himself and the mental din of the crowded market regions behind him, he was finally able to identify the man.
It was not as bad as he'd feared. But potentially at least, it was bad enough. With a sigh, Luke stopped and waited. The bridgeway, with its gentle curve hiding both ends from view, was as good a place as any for a confrontation.
His pursuer came to the last part of the curve. Then, as if anticipating that his quarry would be waiting there, he stopped just out of sight. Luke extended his senses, caught the sound of a blaster being drawn— "It's all right," he called softly. "We're alone. Come on out."
There was a brief hesitation, and Luke caught the momentary flicker of surprise; and then, Talon Karrde stepped into sight.