Star Wars - Thrawn Trilogy - The Last Command 03

  "Probably," Leia said. She looked down at Jacen, a strange tingling in the back of her mind. There it was again: the eerie feeling that a vital piece of information was hovering in the darkness just out of reach. Luke and Mara were involved with it, she'd already decided. Could Karrde be involved, too? "He's come to plead Mara's case . . . and I don't think he's going to be happy to find her gone. Take care of the twins, please—I have to find Ghent and get down to the war room."

  The data checklist ran to the end and stopped. "Looks okay," Ghent told Leia, peering at the display and making one final adjustment to the encrypt scheme. "You're not going to lose more than a syllable here or there, anyway. Go ahead."

  "Just be careful what you say," Bel Iblis reminded her. "There could still be probe droids out there listening in, and there's no guarantee the Imperials haven't broken Karrde's encrypt codes. Don't say anything they don't already know."

  "I understand," Leia nodded. She sat down and tapped the switch the comm officer indicated. "We're ready here, Karrde."

  "So am I," Karrde's voice came back. It sounded a bit lower in pitch than normal, but otherwise seemed to be coming through fine. "Why is Mara under arrest?"

  "There was a break-in by an Imperial commando team a few weeks ago," Leia said, choosing her words carefully. "The leader of the team implicated Mara as an accomplice."

  "That's absurd," Karrde scoffed.

  "I agree," Leia said. "But an accusation like that has to be investigated."

  "And what have your investigators discovered?"

  "What some of us already knew," Leia said. "That she was once a member of the Emperor's personal staff."

  "Is that why you're still holding her?" Karrde demanded. "For things she might or might not have done years ago?"

  "We're not worried about her past," Leia said, starting to sweat a little. She hated misleading Karrde this way, particularly after all the assistance he'd given them. But if there were probe droids listening, she needed to make it look like Mara was still under suspicion. "Certain members of the Council and high command are concerned about her current loyalties."

  "Then those members are fools," Karrde bit out. "I'd like to talk with her."

  "I'm afraid that's impossible," Leia said. "She's not being allowed access to external communications."

  There was a faint sound from the speaker; an encrypt glitch or a sigh, Leia couldn't tell which. "Tell me why I can't land," Karrde said. "I've heard the rumors. Tell me the truth."

  Leia looked up at Bel Iblis. There was a sour look on his face, but he gave a reluctant nod. "The truth is we're under siege," she told Karrde. "The Grand Admiral has placed a large number of cloaked asteroids into orbit around Coruscant. We don't know what their orbits are, or even how many of them are there. Until we find and destroy all of them the planetary shield has to stay up."

  "Indeed," Karrde murmured. "Interesting. I'd heard about the Empire's hit-and-fade, but there hasn't been anything at all about any asteroids. Most of the rumors have suggested merely that you'd suffered severe damage and were trying to cover it up."

  "That sounds like the sort of story Thrawn would circulate," Bel Iblis growled. "A little jab at our morale to keep him amused between attacks."

  "He's adept at all aspects of warfare," Karrde agreed. But to Leia's ear, there was something odd in his tone. "How many of these asteroids have you found so far? I presume you've been looking."

  "We've found and destroyed twenty-one," she told him. "That's twenty-two gone, counting the one the Imperials destroyed to keep us from capturing it. But our battle data indicates he could have launched as many as two hundred eighty-seven."

  Karrde was silent a moment. "That's still not all that many for the volume of space involved. I'd be willing to risk coming through it."

  "We're not worried about you," Bel Iblis put in. "We're thinking of what would happen to Coruscant if a forty-meter asteroid got through the shield and hit the surface."

  "I could make it in through a five-second gap," Karrde offered.

  "We're not opening one," Leia said firmly. "I'm sorry."

  There was another faint sound from the speaker. "In that case, I suppose I have no choice but to make a deal. You said earlier that you'd be willing to pay for information. Very well. I have something you need; and my price is a few minutes with Mara."

  Leia frowned up at Bel Iblis, got an equally puzzled look in return. Whatever Karrde was angling for, it wasn't obvious to him, either. What was obvious was that she couldn't very well promise to let him talk to Mara. "I can't make any promises," she told him. "Tell me what the information is, and I'll try to be fair."

  There was a moment of silence as he thought it over. "I suppose that's the best offer I'm going to get," he said at last. "All right. You can lower your shield any time now. The asteroids are all gone."

  Leia stared at the speaker. "What?"

  "You heard me," Karrde said. "They're gone. Thrawn left you twenty-two; you've destroyed twenty-two. The siege is over."

  "How do you know?" Bel Iblis asked.

  "I was at the Bilbringi shipyards shortly before the Empire's hit-and-fade attack," Karrde told him. "We observed a group of twenty-two asteroids being worked on under close security. At the time, of course, we didn't know what the Empire was doing with them."

  "Did you make any records while you were there?" Bel Iblis asked.

  "I have the Wild Karrde's sensor data," he said. "If you're ready, I'll drop it to you."

  "Go ahead."

  The data-feed light went on, and Leia looked up at the master visual display. It was the inside of the Bilbringi shipyards, all right—she recognized it from New Republic surveillance flights. And there in the center, surrounded by support craft and maintenance-suited workers—

  "He's right," Bel Iblis murmured. "Twenty-two of them."

  "That doesn't prove there aren't any more, sir," the officer at the sensor console pointed out. "They could have put together another group at Ord Trasi or Yaga Minor."

  "No," Bel Iblis shook his head. "Aside from the logistics problems involved, I can't imagine Thrawn spreading his cloaking technology around more than he has to. The last thing he can afford would be for us to get our hands on a working model."

  "Or even a systems readout," Karrde agreed. "If you found a weakness, one of his chief advantages over you would be gone. All right: I've delivered on my end of the deal. How about yours?"

  Leia looked at Bel Iblis helplessly. "Why do you want to talk with her?" the general asked.

  "If it matters, one of the hardest parts of being locked up is the feeling that you've been deserted," Karrde said coolly. "I imagine Mara's feeling that—I know I did when I was Thrawn's unwilling guest aboard the Chimaera. I want to let her know—in person—that she hasn't been forgotten."

  "Leia?" Bel Iblis murmured. "What do we do?"

  Leia stared at the general, hearing his words but not really registering them. There it was, right in front of her: the key she'd been searching for. Karrde's imprisonment aboard the Chimaera . . .

  "Leia?" Bel Iblis repeated, frowning.

  "I heard you," she said, the words sounding distant and mechanical in her ears. "Let him land."

  Bel Iblis threw a glance at the deck officer. "Perhaps we should—"

  "I said let him land," Leia snapped with more fire than she'd intended. Suddenly, all the pieces had fallen into place . . . and the picture they formed was one of potential disaster. "I'll take responsibility."

  For a moment, Bel Iblis studied her face. "Karrde, this is Bel Iblis," he said slowly. "We'll give you your five-second opening. Stand by for landing instructions."

  "Thank you," Karrde said. "I'll talk to you soon."

  Bel Iblis gestured to the deck officer, who nodded and got busy. "All right, Leia," he said, turning back to her. "What's going on?"

  Leia took a deep breath. "It's the cloning, Garm. I know how Thrawn's growing them so fast."

  The whole war room had go
ne dead quiet. "Tell me," Bel Iblis said.

  "It's the Force," she told him. It was so obvious—so utterly obvious—and yet she'd missed it completely. "Don't you see? When you make an exact duplicate of a sentient being, there's a natural resonance or something set up through the Force between that duplicate and the original. That's what warps the mind of a clone that's been grown too fast—there's not enough time for the mind to adapt to the pressure on it. It can't adjust; so it breaks."

  "All right," Bel Iblis said dubiously. "How is Thrawn getting around the problem?"

  "It's very simple," Leia said, a shiver running through her. "He's using ysalamiri to block the Force away from the cloning tanks."

  Bel Iblis's face went rigid. Across the silent war room, someone swore softly. "It was Karrde's rescue from the Chimaera that was the key," Leia went on. "Mara told me that the Empire had taken five or six thousand ysalamiri out of the forests on Myrkr. But they weren't loading them onto their warships, because when she and Luke went after Karrde Luke had no problem using the Force."

  "Because the ysalamiri were on Wayland," Bel Iblis nodded. He looked sharply at Leia, the texture of his sense abruptly changing. "Which means that when the team gets to the mountain—"

  "Luke will be helpless," Leia nodded, her throat tight. "And he won't even suspect it until it's too late."

  She shivered again, the dream she'd had the night of the Imperial attack suddenly coming back to her. Luke and Mara, facing a crazed Jedi and another unknown threat. She'd soothed herself at the time with the knowledge that Luke would be able to sense C'baoth's presence on Wayland and take steps to avoid him. But with the ysalamiri there, he might walk right into the other's hands.

  No. Would walk into C'baoth's hands. Somehow, at this instant, she knew that he would. What she'd seen that night hadn't been a dream, but a Jedi vision.

  "I'll talk to Mon Mothma," Bel Iblis was saying, his face grim. "Even with Bilbringi, maybe we can shake some ships loose to go to their assistance."

  Turning, he headed quickly toward the exit and the turbolifts beyond it. For a moment Leia watched him, listening as the war room broke its self-imposed trance and came slowly back to life. He'd try, she knew; but she also knew that he would fail. Mon Mothma, Commander Sesfan, and Bel Iblis himself had already said it: there simply weren't enough resources available to hit both Wayland and the Bilbringi shipyards at the same time. And she knew all too well that not everyone on the Council would believe that the threat of cloaked asteroids had ended. At least, not enough to call off the Bilbringi attack.

  Which meant there was exactly one person left who could go to the aid of her husband and brother.

  Taking a deep breath, Leia headed off after Bel Iblis. There was a great deal she had to do before Karrde arrived.

  There were three of them waiting when Karrde emerged from the ship, skulking beneath the canopy overhanging the pad accessway tunnel. Karrde spotted them from the top of the Wild Karrde's entrance ramp, and despite the shadows had two of them identified before he was halfway down. Leia Organa Solo was there, with Ghent fidgeting behind her. The third figure, standing behind both of the others, was short and wore the coarse brown robe of a Jawa. What a desert scavenger was doing there Karrde couldn't guess . . . but as the group stepped out of the shadows toward him and he got his first good look at Organa Solo's face, it became clear that he was about to find out. "Good morning, Councilor," he greeted her, inclining his head slightly. "Good to see you, Ghent. I trust you've been making yourself useful?"

  "I suppose so," Ghent said, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. Far too nervously, even for him. "They say so, anyway."

  "Good." Karrde shifted his attention to the third of the party. "And your friend is . . . ?"

  "I am Mobvekhar clan Hakh'khar," a gravelly voice mewed.

  Karrde resisted the urge to take a half-step backward. Whatever it was hiding under that robe, it most certainly wasn't a Jawa. "He's my bodyguard," Organa Solo said.

  "Ah." With an effort, Karrde pulled his eyes away from whatever it was that was being concealed by the dark hood. "Well," he said, waving a hand toward the accessway. "Shall we go?"

  Organa Solo shook her head. "Mara's not here."

  Karrde threw a look at Ghent, who was looking even more uncomfortable. "You told me she was."

  "I only agreed with you that she'd been arrested," Organa Solo said. "I couldn't say anything more then—there may have been Imperial probe droids listening in."

  With an effort, Karrde fought down his annoyance. They were all on the same side here, after all. "Where is she?"

  "On a planet called Wayland," Organa Solo said. "Along with Luke and Han and some others."

  Wayland? Karrde couldn't recall ever hearing of that world before. "And what's on Wayland that they find so interesting?" he asked.

  "Grand Admiral Thrawn's cloning facility."

  Karrde stared at her. "You found it?"

  "We didn't," Organa Solo said. "Mara did."

  Karrde nodded mechanically. So they'd found the cloning facility on their own. All that work he'd put in organizing the other smuggler groups: gone like dumped Kessel spice. The work, the risk, not to mention the money he'd planned to pay them with. "You're certain the cloning facility is there?"

  "We'll find out soon enough," Organa Solo said, gesturing to the ship behind him. "I need you to take me there. Right away."

  "Why?"

  "Because the expeditions in danger," Organa Solo said. "They may not know it yet, but they are. And if they're still on the timetable we were sent, we have a chance of getting to them before it's too late."

  "She told me all about it on the way up here," Ghent added hesitantly. "I think we ought to . . ."

  He trailed off as Karrde sent a look his way. "I sympathize with your people, Councilor," he said. "But there are other matters that also need my attention."

  "Then you abandon Mara," Organa Solo reminded him.

  "I have no particular feelings for Mara," Karrde countered. "She's a member of my organization; nothing more."

  "Isn't that enough?"

  For a moment Karrde gazed at her. She held his gaze evenly, calling his bluff . . . and in her eyes, he could see that she knew perfectly well that it was a bluff. He couldn't simply walk away and abandon Mara to her death, any more than he could abandon Aves or Dankin or Chin. Not if there was anything he could do to prevent it. "It's not that easy," he said quietly "I have responsibilities to the rest of my people, as well. At the moment they're preparing to launch a raid with the hope of obtaining a crystal gravfield trap to sell you."

  A flicker of surprise flashed across Organa Solo's face. "A crystal gravfield trap—?"

  "It's not the one you're trying for," Karrde assured her. "But we've scheduled it for the same time, hoping your attack will distract the enemy. I need to be there."

  "I see," Organa Solo murmured, apparently deciding to pass over the question of how Karrde could have known about the Tangrene raid. "Will the Wild Karrde make all that much difference in that raid?"

  Karrde looked at Ghent. It wouldn't make any difference at all, not with Mazzic and Ellor and the others reinforcing the impressive group Aves had already pulled together. The problem was that if they left now—and the way Organa Solo was talking, she meant for him to turn around and head straight back into space—there wouldn't be any chance of turning Ghent loose on the New Republic's computer system and rerouting the funds he needed to pay the other groups.