Taking a deep breath, putting Fingal and Rebel spies and even Grand Admirals out of his mind, Staffa leaned back in his chair and began to consider how he would use the shipment that Karrde's people were even now unloading at the landing field.
Chapter 3
Slowly, as if climbing a long dark staircase, Mara Jade pulled herself out of a deep sleep. She opened her eyes, looked around the softly lit room, and wondered where in the galaxy she was.
It was a medical area—that much was obvious from the biomonitors, the folded room dividers, and the other multiposition beds scattered around the one she was lying in. But it wasn't one of Karrde's facilities, at least not one she was familiar with.
But the layout itself was all too familiar. It was a standard Imperial recovery room.
For the moment she seemed to be alone, but she knew that wouldn't last. Silently, she rolled out of bed into a crouching position on the floor, taking a quick inventory of her physical condition as she did so. No aches or pains; no dizziness or obvious injuries. Slipping into the robe and bedshoes at the end of the bed, she padded silently to the door, preparing herself mentally to silence or disable whatever was out there. She waved at the door release, and as the panel slid open she leaped through into the recovery anteroom—
And came to a sudden, slightly disoriented halt.
"Oh, hi, Mara," Ghent said distractedly, glancing up from the computer terminal he was hunched over before returning his attention to it. "How're you feeling?"
"Not too bad," Mara said, staring at the kid and sifting furiously through a set of hazy memories. Ghent—one of Karrde's employees and possibly the best slicer in the galaxy. And the fact that he was sitting at a terminal meant they weren't prisoners, unless their captor was so abysmally stupid that he didn't know better than to let a slicer get within spitting distance of a computer.
But hadn't she sent Ghent to the New Republic headquarters on Coruscant? Yes, she had. On Karrde's instructions, just before collecting some of his group together and leading them into that melee at the Katana fleet.
Where she'd run her Z-95 up against an Imperial Star Destroyer . . . and had had to eject . . . and had brilliantly arranged to fly her ejector seat straight through an ion cannon beam. Which had fried her survival equipment and set her drifting, lost forever, in interstellar space.
She looked around her. Apparently, forever hadn't lasted as long as she'd expected it to. "Where are we?" she asked, though she had a pretty good idea now what the answer would be.
She was right. "The old Imperial Palace on Coruscant," Ghent told her, frowning a little. "Medical wing. They had to do some reconstruction of your neural pathways. Don't you remember?"
"It's a little vague," Mara admitted. But as the last cobwebs cleared from her brain, the rest of it was beginning to fall into place. Her ejector seat's ruined life-support system; and a strange, light-headed vagueness as she drifted off to sleep in the darkness. She'd probably suffered oxygen deprivation before they'd been able to locate her and get her to a ship.
No. Not they: him. There was only one person who could possibly have found a single crippled ejector seat in all the emptiness and battle debris out there. Luke Skywalker, the last of the Jedi Knights.
The man she was going to kill.
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.
She took a step back to lean against the doorjamb, knees suddenly feeling weak as the Emperor's words echoed through her mind. She'd been here, on this world and in this building, when he'd died over Endor. Had watched through his mind as Luke Skywalker cut him down and brought her life crashing in ruins around her head.
"I see you're awake," a new voice said.
Mara opened her eyes. The newcomer, a middle-aged woman in a duty medic's tunic, was marching briskly across the room toward her from a far door, an Emdee droid trailing in her wake. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine," Mara said, feeling a sudden urge to lash out at the other woman. These people—these enemies of the Empire—had no right to be here in the Emperor's palace. . . .
She took a careful breath, fighting back the flash of emotion. The medic had stopped short, a professional frown on her face; Ghent, his cherished computers momentarily forgotten, had a puzzled look on his. "Sorry," she muttered. "I guess I'm still a little disoriented."
"Understandable," the medic nodded. "You've been lying in that bed for a month, after all."
Mara stared at her. "A month?"
"Well, most of a month," the medic corrected herself. "You also spent some time in a bacta tank. Don't worry—short-term memory problems are common during neural reconstructions, but they nearly always clear up after the treatment."
"I understand," Mara said mechanically. A month. She'd lost a whole month here. And in that time—
"We have a guest suite arranged for you upstairs whenever you feel ready to leave here," the medic continued. "Would you like me to see if it's ready?"
Mara focused on her. "That would be fine," she said.
The medic pulled out a comlink and thumbed it on; and as she began talking, Mara stepped past her to Ghent's side. "What's been happening with the war during the last month?" she asked him.
"Oh, the Empire's been making the usual trouble," Ghent said, waving toward the sky. "They've got the folks here pretty stirred up, anyway. Ackbar and Madine and the rest have been running around like crazy. Trying to push 'em back or cut 'em off—something like that."
And that was, Mara knew, about all she would get out of him on the subject of current events. Aside from a fascination with smuggler folklore, the only thing that really mattered to Ghent was slicing at computers.
She frowned, belatedly remembering why Karrde had ordered Ghent here in the first place. "Wait a minute," she said. "Ackbar's back in command? You mean you've cleared him already?"
"Sure," Ghent said. "That suspicious bank deposit thing Councilor Fey'lya made such a fuss over was a complete fraud—the guys who did that electronic break-in at the bank planted it in his account at the same time. Probably Imperial Intelligence—it had their noseprints all over the programming. Oh, sure; I proved that two days after I got here."
"I imagine they were pleased. So why are you still here?"
"Well . . ." For a moment Ghent seemed taken aback. "No one's come back to get me, for one thing." His face brightened. "Besides, there's this really neat encrypt code someone nearby is using to send information to the Empire. General Bel Iblis says the Imperials call it Delta Source, and that it's sending them stuff right out of the Palace."
"And he asked you to slice it for them," Mara nodded, feeling her lip twist. "I don't suppose he offered to pay you or anything?"
"Well . . ." Ghent shrugged. "Probably they did. I don't remember, really."
The medic replaced her comlink in her belt. "Your guide will be here momentarily," she told Mara.
"Thank you," Mara said, resisting the urge to tell the other that she probably knew the Imperial Palace better in her sleep than any guide they had could do in broad daylight. Cooperation and politeness—those were the keys to talking them out of a ship and getting her and Ghent out of this place and out of their war.
Behind the medic the door slid open, and a tall woman with pure white hair glided into the room. "Hello, Mara," she said, smiling gravely. "My name is Winter, personal aide to Princess Leia Organa Solo. I'm glad to see you on your feet again."
"I'm glad to be there," Mara said, trying to keep her voice polite. Someone else associated with Skywalker. Just what she needed. "I take it you're my guide?"
"Your guide, your assistant, and anything else you need for the next few days," Winter said. "Princess Leia asked me to look after you until she and Captain Solo return from Filve."
"I don't need an assistant, and I don't need looking after," Mara said. "All I really need is a ship."
"I've already started working on that," Winter said. "I'm hoping we'll be able to find something for you soon. In the meantime, may I show you
to your suite?"
Mara hid a grimace. The usurpers of the New Republic, graciously offering her hospitality in what had once been her own home. "That's very kind of you," she said, trying not to sound sarcastic. "You coming, Ghent?"
"You go on ahead," Ghent said absently, gazing at the computer display. "I want to sit on this run for a while."
"He'll be all right here," Winter assured her. "This way, please."
They left the anteroom, and Winter led the way toward the rear of the Palace. "Ghent has a suite right next to yours," Winter commented as they walked, "but I don't think he's been there more than twice in the past month. He set up temporary shop out there in the recovery anteroom where he could keep an eye on you."
Mara had to smile at that. Ghent, who spent roughly 90 percent of his waking hours oblivious to the outside world, was not exactly what she would go looking for in either a nurse or a bodyguard. But it was the thought that counted. "I appreciate you people taking care of me," she told Winter.
"It's the least we could do to thank you for coming to our assistance at the Katana battle."
"It was Karrde's idea," Mara said shortly. "Thank him, not me."
"We did," Winter said. "But you risked your life, too, on our behalf. We won't forget that."
Mara threw a sideways look at the white-haired woman. She had read the Emperor's files on the Rebellion's leaders, including Leia Organa, and the name Winter wasn't ringing any bells at all. "How long have you been with Organa Solo?" she asked.
"I grew up with her in the royal court of Alderaan," Winter said, a bittersweet smile touching her lips. "We were friends in childhood, and when she began her first steps into galactic politics, her father assigned me to be her aide. I've been with her ever since."
"I don't recall hearing about you during the height of the Rebellion," Mara probed gently.
"I spent most of the war moving from planet to planet working with Supply and Procurement," Winter told her. "If my colleagues could get me into a warehouse or depot on some pretext, I could draw a map for them of where the items were that they wanted. It made the subsequent raids quicker and safer."
Mara nodded as understanding came. "So you were the one called Targeter. The one with the perfect memory."
Winter's forehead creased slightly. "Yes, that was one of my code names," she said. "I had many others over the years."
"I see," Mara said. She could remember a fair number of references in pre-Yavin Intelligence reports to the mysterious Rebel named Targeter, much of the politely heated discussion centering around his or her possible identity. She wondered if the data-pushers had ever even gotten close.
They'd reached the set of turbolifts at the rear of the Imperial Palace now, one of the major renovations the Emperor had made in the deliberately antiquated design of the building when he'd taken it over. The turbolifts saved a lot of walking up and down the sweeping staircases in the more public parts of the building . . . as well as masking certain other improvements the Emperor had made in the Palace. "So what's the problem with getting me a ship?" Mara asked as Winter tapped the call plate.
"The problem is the Empire," Winter said. "They've launched a massive attack against us, and it's tied up basically everything we have available, from light freighter on up."
Mara frowned. Massive attacks against superior forces didn't sound like Grand Admiral Thrawn at all. "It's that bad?"
"It's bad enough," Winter said. "I don't know if you knew it, but they beat us to the Katana fleet. They'd already moved nearly a hundred and eighty of the Dreadnaughts by the time we arrived. Combined with their new bottomless source of crewers and soldiers, the balance of power has been badly shifted."
Mara nodded, a sour taste in her mouth. Put that way, it did sound like Thrawn. "Which means I nearly got myself killed for nothing."
Winter smiled tightly. "If it helps, so did a lot of other people."
The turbolift car arrived. They stepped inside, and Winter keyed for the Palace's residential areas. "Ghent mentioned that the Empire was making trouble," Mara commented as the car began moving upward. "I should have realized that anything that could penetrate that fog he walks around in had to be serious."
" 'Serious' is an understatement," Winter said grimly. "In the past five days we've effectively lost control of four sectors, and thirteen more are on the edge. The biggest loss was the food production facilities at Ukio. Somehow, they managed to take it with its defenses intact."
Mara felt her lip twist. "Someone asleep at the board?"
"Not according to the preliminary reports." Winter hesitated. "There are rumors that the Imperials used a new superweapon that was able to fire straight through the Ukians' planetary shield. We're still trying to check that out."
Mara swallowed, visions of the old Death Star spec sheets floating up from her memory. A weapon like that in the hands of a strategist like Grand Admiral Thrawn . . .
She shook the thought away. This wasn't her war. Karrde had promised they would stay neutral in this thing. "I suppose I'd better get in touch with Karrde, then," she said. "See if he can send someone to pick us up."
"It would probably be faster than waiting for one of our ships to be free," Winter agreed. "He left a data card with the name of a contact you can send a message through. He said you'd know which encrypt code to use."
The turbolift let them out on the President's Guests floor, one of the few sections of the Palace that the Emperor had left strictly alone during his reign. With its old-fashioned hinge doors and hand-carved exotic wood furnishings, walking around the floor was like stepping a thousand years into the past. The Emperor had generally reserved the suites here for those emissaries who had fond feelings for such bygone days, or for those who could be impressed by his carefully manufactured continuity with that era. "Captain Karrde left some of your clothes and personal effects for you after the Katana battle," Winter said, unlocking one of the carved doors and pushing it open. "If he missed anything, let me know and I can probably supply it. Here's the data card I mentioned," she added, pulling it from her tunic.
"Thank you," Mara said, inhaling deeply as she took the card. This particular suite was done largely in Fijisi wood from Cardooine; and as the delicate scent rose around her, her thoughts flashed back to the glittering days of grand Imperial power and majesty. . . .
"Can I get you anything else?"
The memory faded. Winter was standing before her . . . and the glory days of the Empire were gone. "No, I'm fine," she said.
Winter nodded. "If you want anything, just call the duty officer," she said, gesturing to the desk. "I'll be available later; right now, there's a Council meeting I need to sit in on."
"Go ahead," Mara said. "And thank you."
Winter smiled and left. Mara took another deep breath of Fijisi wood, and with an effort pushed the last of the lingering memories away. She was here, and it was now; and as the Emperor's instructors had so often drummed into her, the first item of business was to fit into her surroundings. And that meant not looking like an escapee from the medical wing.
Karrde had left a good assortment of clothing for her: a semiformal gown, two outfits of a nondescript type that she could wear on the streets of a hundred worlds without looking out of place, and four of the no-nonsense tunic/jumpsuit outfits that she usually wore aboard ship. Choosing one of the latter, she got dressed, then began sorting through the other things Karrde had left. With any luck—and maybe a little foresight on Karrde's part—
There it was: the forearm holster for her tiny blaster. The blaster itself was missing, of course—the captain of the Adamant had taken it away from her, and the Imperials weren't likely to return it anytime soon. Looking for a duplicate in the New Republic's arsenals would probably be a waste of effort, as well, though she was tempted to ask Winter for one just to see the reaction.