The freighter shot skyward like a scalded mynock, leaving the pursuing Skiprays flatfooted in its wake. The official-sounding orders to halt that had been blaring from the board turned into a surprised yelp as Luke reached over and shut the comm off. "Artoo? You all right back there?"
The droid chirped an affirmative, and a question scrolled across Luke's computer screen. "They were clones, all right," he confirmed grimly, an uncomfortable shiver running through him. The strange aura that seemed to surround the Empire's new duplicate humans was twice as eerie up close. "I'll tell you something else, too," he added to Artoo. "The Imperials knew it was me they were chasing. Those stormtroopers were carrying ysalamiri on their backs."
Artoo whistled thoughtfully, gave a questioning gurgle. "Right—that whole Delta Source thing," Luke agreed, reading the droid's comment. "Leia told me that if we couldn't get the leak closed fast, she was going to recommend we move operations out of the Imperial Palace. Maybe even off Coruscant entirely."
Though if Delta Source was a human or alien spy instead of some impossibly undetectable listening system in the Palace itself, moving anywhere would just be so much wasted effort. From Artoo's rather pointed silence, Luke guessed the droid was thinking that, too.
The distant horizon, barely visible as dark planet against dark but starlit sky, was starting to show a visible curvature now. "Better start calculating our jump to lightspeed, Artoo," he called over his shoulder. "We're probably going to have to get out of here in a hurry."
He got a confirming beep from the droid's position and turned his attention back to the horizon ahead. A whole fleet of Star Destroyers, he knew, could be lurking below that horizon, out of range of his instruments, waiting for him to get too far from any possible cover to launch their attack.
Out of range of his instruments, but perhaps not out of range of Jedi senses. Closing his eyes to slits, flooding his mind with calmness, he stretched out through the Force—
He got it an instant before Artoo's startled warning shrill shattered the air. An Imperial Star Destroyer all right; but not cutting across his path as Luke had expected. Instead, it was coming up from behind, in an atmosphere-top forced orbit that had allowed it to build up speed without sacrificing the advantages of planetary cover.
"Hang on!" Luke shouted, throwing emergency power to the drive. But it was a futile gesture, and both he and the Imperials knew it. The Star Destroyer was coming up fast, its tractor beams already activated and tracking him. Within a handful of seconds, they were going to get him.
Or at least, they were going to get the freighter . . .
Luke hit his strap release, opening a disguised panel as he did so and touching the three switches hidden there. The first switch keyed in the limited autopilot; the second unlocked the aft proton torpedo launcher and started it firing blindly back toward the Star Destroyer.
The third activated the freighter's self-destruct.
His X-wing was wedged nose forward in the cargo area behind the cockpit alcove, looking for all the world like some strange metallic animal peering out of its burrow. Luke leaped to the open canopy, coming within an ace of cracking his head on the freighter's low ceiling in the process. Artoo, already snugged into the X-wing's droid socket, was jabbering softly to himself as he ran the starfighter's systems from standby to full ready. Even as Luke strapped in and pulled on his flight helmet, the droid signaled they were clear to fly.
"Okay," Luke told him, resting his left hand on the special switch that had been added to his control board. "If this is going to work, we're going to have to time it just right. Be ready."
Again he closed his eyes, letting the Force flow through his senses. Once before, on his first attempt to locate the Jedi Master C'baoth, he'd tangled like this with the Imperials—an X-wing against an Imperial Star Destroyer. That, too, had been a deliberate ambush, though he hadn't realized it until C'baoth's unholy alliance with the Empire had been laid bare. In that battle, skill and luck and the Force had saved him.
This time, if the specialists back at Coruscant had done their job right, the luck was already built in.
With his mind deeply into the Force, he sensed the locking of the tractor beam a half second before it actually occurred. His hand jabbed the switch; and even as the freighter jerked in the tractor beam's powerful grip, the front end blew apart into a cloud of metallic shards. An instant later, kicked forward by a deck-mounted blast-booster, the X-wing shot through the glittering debris. For a long, heart-stopping moment it seemed as though the tractor beam was going to be able to maintain its hold despite the obscuring particle fog. Then, all at once, the grip slackened and was gone.
"We're free!" Luke shouted back at Artoo, rolling the X-wing over and driving hard for deep space. "I'm going evasive—hang on."
He rolled the X-wing again, and as he did so a pair of brilliant green flashes shot past the transparisteel canopy. With their tractor beams outdistanced, the Imperials had apparently decided to settle for shooting him out of the sky. Another barrage of green flame scorched past, and there was a yelp from Artoo as something burned through the deflectors to slap against the X-wing's underside. Reaching out again to the Force, Luke let it guide his hands on the controls—
And then, almost without warning, it was time. Reaching to the hyperdrive lever, Luke pulled it back.
With a flicker of pseudomotion, the X-wing vanished into the safety of hyperspace, the Chimera's turbolaser batteries still firing uselessly for a second at where it had been. The batteries fell silent; and Pellaeon let out a long breath, afraid to look over at Thrawn's command station. It was the second time Skywalker had escaped from this kind of trap . . . and the last time he'd done so, a man had died for that failure.
The rest of the bridge crew hadn't forgotten that, either. In the brittle silence the faint rustling of cloth against seat material was clearly audible as Thrawn stood up. "Well," the Grand Admiral said, his voice strangely calm. "One must give the Rebels full credit for ingenuity. I've seen that trick worked before, but not nearly so effectively."
"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, trying without success to hide the strain in his voice.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Thrawn looking at him. "At ease, Captain," the Grand Admiral said soothingly. "Skywalker would have made an interesting package to present to Master C'baoth, but his escape is hardly cause for major concern. The primary objective of this exercise was to convince the Rebellion that they'd discovered the clone conduit. That objective has been achieved."
The tightness in Pellaeon's chest began to dissipate. If the Grand Admiral wasn't angry about it . . .
"That does not mean, however," Thrawn went on, "that the actions of the Chimaera's crew should be ignored. Come with me, Captain."
Pellaeon got to his feet, the tightness returning. "Yes, sir."
Thrawn led the way to the aft stairway and descended to the starboard crew pit. He walked past the crewers at their consoles, past the officers standing stiffly behind them, and came to a halt at the control station for the starboard tractor beams. "Your name," he said quietly to the young man standing at rigid attention there.
"Ensign Mithel," the other said, his face pale but composed. The expression of a man facing his death.
"Tell me what happened, Ensign."
Mithel swallowed. "Sir, I had just established a positive lock on the freighter when it broke up into a cluster of trac-reflective particles. The targeting system tried to lock on all of them at once and went into a loop snarl."
"And what did you do?"
"I—sir, I knew that if I waited for the particles to dissipate normally, the target starfighter would be out of range. So I tried to dissipate them myself by shifting the tractor beam into sheer-plane mode."
"It didn't work."
A quiet sigh slipped through Mithel's lips. "No, sir. The target-lock system couldn't handle it. It froze up completely."
"Yes." Thrawn cocked his head slightly. "You've had a few moments no
w to consider your actions, Ensign. Can you think of anything you should have done instead?"
The young man's lip twitched. "No, sir. I'm sorry, but I can't. I don't remember anything in the manual that covers this kind of situation."
Thrawn nodded. "Correct," he agreed. "There isn't anything. Several methods have been suggested over the past few decades for counteracting the covert shroud gambit, none of which has ever been made practical. Yours was one of the more innovative attempts, particularly given how little time you had to come up with it. The fact that it failed does not in any way diminish that."
A look of cautious disbelief was starting to edge into Mithel's face. "Sir?"
"The Empire needs quick and creative minds, Ensign," Thrawn said. "You're hereby promoted to lieutenant . . . and your first assignment is to find a way to break a covert shroud. After their success here, the Rebellion may try the gambit again."
"Yes, sir," Mithel breathed, the color starting to come back into his face. "I—thank you, sir."
"Congratulations, Lieutenant Mithel." Thrawn nodded to him, then turned to Pellaeon. "The bridge is yours, Captain. Resume our scheduled flight. I'll be in my command room if you require me."
"Yes, sir," Pellaeon managed.
And stood there beside the newly minted lieutenant, feeling the stunned awe pervading the bridge as he watched Thrawn leave. Yesterday, the Chimaera's crew had trusted and respected the Grand Admiral. After today, they would be ready to die for him.
And for the first time in five years, Pellaeon finally knew in the deepest level of his being that the old Empire was gone. The new Empire, with Grand Admiral Thrawn at its head, had been born.
The X-wing hung suspended in the blackness of space, light-years away from any solid mass larger than a grain of dust. It was, Luke thought, almost like a replay of that other battle with a Star Destroyer, the one that had left him stranded in deep space and had ultimately led him to Talon Karrde and Mara Jade and the planet Myrkr.
Fortunately, appearance was the only thing they had in common. Mostly.
From the droid socket behind him came a nervous warble. "Come on, Artoo, relax," Luke soothed him. "It's not that bad. We couldn't have made it anywhere near Coruscant without refueling anyway. We'll just have to do it a little sooner, that's all."
The response was a sort of indignant grunt. "I am taking you seriously, Artoo," Luke said patiently, keying the listing on his nav display over to the droid. "Look—here are all the places we can get to with half our primary power cells blown out. See?"
For a moment the droid seemed to mull over the list, and Luke took the opportunity to give it another look himself. There were a lot of choices there, all right. The problem was that many of them wouldn't be especially healthy for a lone New Republic X-wing to show up at. Half were under direct Imperial control, and most of the others were either leaning that way or keeping their political options open.
Still, even on an Imperial-held world, there were sensor gaps a single starfighter could probably slip through. He could put down in some isolated place, make his way on foot to a spaceport, and buy some replacement fuel cells with the Imperial currency he still had left. Getting the cells back to the X-wing could be a bit of a problem, but nothing he and Artoo couldn't solve.
Artoo chirped a suggestion. "Kessel's a possibility," Luke agreed. "I don't know, though—last I heard Moruth Doole was still in charge there, and Han's never really trusted him. I think we'd do better with Fwillsving, or even—"
He broke off as one of the planets on the list caught his eye. A planet Leia had programmed into his onboard nav system, almost as an afterthought, before he left on this mission.
Honoghr.
"I've got a better idea, Artoo," Luke said slowly. "Let's go visit the Noghri."
There was a startled, disbelieving squawk from behind him. "Oh, come on," Luke admonished him. "Leia and Chewie went there and got back all right, didn't they? And Threepio, too," he added. "You don't want Threepio saying you were afraid to go somewhere he wasn't afraid of, would you?"
Artoo grunted again. "Doesn't matter whether or not he had a choice," Luke said firmly. "The point is that he went."
The droid gave a mournful and rather resigned gurgle. "That's the spirit," Luke encouraged him, keying the nav computer to start the calculation to Honoghr. "Leia's been wanting me to go visit them, anyway. This way we kill two dune lizards with one throw."
Artoo gave a single discomfited gurgle and fell silent and even Luke, who fully trusted Leia's judgment of the Noghri privately conceded that it was perhaps not the most comforting figure of speech he could have used.
Chapter 5
The battle data from the Woostri system scrolled to the bottom of the data pad and stopped. "I still don't believe it," Leia said, shaking her head as she laid the data pad back down on the table. "If the Empire had a superweapon that could shoot through planetary shields, they'd be using it in every system they attacked. It has to be a trick or illusion of some kind."
"I agree," Mon Mothma said quietly. "The question is, how do we convince the rest of the Council and the Assemblage of that? Not to mention the outer systems themselves?"
"We must solve the puzzle of what happened at Ukio and Woostri," Admiral Ackbar said, his voice even more gravelly than usual. "And we must solve it quickly."
Leia picked up her data pad again, throwing a quick look across the table at Ackbar as she did so. The Mon Calamari's huge eyes seemed unusually heavy-lidded, his normal salmon color noticeably faded. He was tired, desperately so . . . and with the Empire's grand offensive still rolling toward them across the galaxy, he wasn't likely to be getting much rest anytime soon.
Neither were any of the rest of them, for that matter. "We already know that Grand Admiral Thrawn has a talent for understanding the minds of his opponents," she reminded the others. "Could he have predicted how quickly both the Ukians and the Woostroids would be to surrender?"
"As opposed to, say, the Filvians?" Mon Mothma nodded slowly. "Interesting point. That might indicate the illusion is one that can't be maintained for very long."
"Or that the power requirements are exceedingly high," Ackbar added. "If the Empire has learned a method for focusing nonvisible energy against a shield, it could conceivably weaken a section long enough to fire a turbolaser blast through the opening. But such a thing would take a tremendous power output."
"And should also show up as an energy stress on the shield," Mon Mothma pointed out. "None of our information suggests that was the case."
"Our information may be wrong," Ackbar retorted. He threw a brief glare at Councilor Borsk Fey'lya. "Or it may have been manipulated by the Empire," he added pointedly. "Such things have happened before."
Leia looked at Fey'lya, too, wondering if the thinly veiled insult to his people would finally drive the Bothan out of his self-imposed silence. But Fey'lya just sat there, his eyes on the table, his cream-colored fur motionless. Not speaking, not reacting, perhaps not even thinking.
Eventually, she supposed, he would regain his verbal courage and a measure of his old political strength. But for now, with his false denunciation of Ackbar still fresh in everyone's minds, he was in the middle of his species' version of penance.
Leia's stomach tightened in frustration. Once again, the Bothans' inflexible all-or-nothing approach to politics was running squarely counter to the New Republic's best interests. A few months earlier, Fey'lya's accusations against Ackbar had wasted valuable time and energy; now, when the Council needed every bit of insight and resourcefulness it could muster—including Fey'lya's—he was playing the silent martyr.
There were days—and long, dark nights—when Leia privately despaired of ever holding the New Republic together.
"You're right, of course, Admiral," Mon Mothma said with a sigh. "We need more information. And we need it quickly."