“Three days to what?” Luke asked.
“The edge of the forest,” she told him, gazing at him with unblinking eyes. “Civilization. Well, Hyllyard City, anyway, which is about as close as this part of the planet gets to it.”
“And how many of us will be going there?” Luke asked quietly.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she agreed, her tone icy. “Can you give me any reason why I should bother taking you along?”
“Sure.” Luke inclined his head to the side. “Artoo.”
“Don’t be absurd.” Her eyes flicked to the droid, back at Luke, “Whatever happens, the droid stays here. In pieces.”
Luke stared at her. “In pieces?”
“What, you need it spelled out?” she retorted. “The droid knows too much. We can’t leave it here for the stormtroopers to find.”
“Knows too much about what?”
“You, of course. You, Karrde, me-this whole stupid mess.” Artoo moaned softly. “He won’t tell them anything,” Luke insisted.
“Not after it’s in pieces, no,” Mara agreed.
With an effort, Luke forced himself to calm down. Logic, not fervor, was the only way to change her mind. “We need him,” he told her. “You told me yourself the forest was dangerous. Artoo has sensors that can spot predators before they get close enough to strike.”
“Maybe; maybe not,” she countered. “The vegetation here limits sensor ranges down to practically zero.”
“It’ll still be better than you or I could do,” Luke said. “And he’ll also be able to watch while we’re sleeping.”
She raised her eyebrows slightly. “We?”
“We,” Luke said. “I don’t think he’ll be willing to protect you unless I’m along.”
Mara shook her head. “No good,” she said, picking up her blaster. “I can get along without him. And I certainly don’t need you.”
Luke felt his throat tighten. “Are you sure you’re not letting your emotions get in the way of your judgment?” he asked.
He hadn’t thought her eyes could get any harder than they already were. He was wrong. “Let me tell you something, Skywalker,” she said in a voice almost too soft for him to hear. “I’ve wanted to kill you for a long time. I dreamed about your death every night for most of that first year. Dreamed it, plotted it-I must have run through a thousand scenarios, trying to find exactly the right way to do it. You can call it a cloud on my judgment if you want to; I’m used to it by now. It’s the closest thing I’ve got a permanent companion.”
Luke looked back into those eyes, shaken right down to the core of his soul. “What did I do to you?” he whispered.
“You destroyed my life,” she said bitterly. “It’s only fair that I destroy yours.”
“Will killing me bring your old life back?”
“You know better than that,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “But it’s still something I have to do. For myself, and for-” She broke off.
“What about Karrde?” Luke asked. “What about him?”
“I thought he still wanted me kept alive.”
She snorted. “We all want things we can’t have.”
But for just a second, there was something in her eyes. Something else that had flickered through the hatred . . .
But whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. “I almost wish I could drag it out a little more,” she said, glacially calm again as she lifted the blaster. “But I don’t have the time to spare.”
Luke stared at the muzzle of her blaster, his mind frantically searching for inspiration . . . “Wait a minute,” he said suddenly. “You said you needed to find out what Karrde had told the Imperials. What if I could get you a secure comm channel to him?”
The muzzle of the blaster wavered. “How?” she asked suspiciously.
Luke nodded toward her survival kit. “Does the communicator in there have enough range to reach back to the base? I mean, without satellite boosting or anything.”
She was still looking suspicious. “There’s a sonde balloon included that can take the antenna high enough to get past most of the forest damping. But it’s nondirectional, which means the Imperials and anyone else in this hemisphere will be able to listen in.”
“That’s okay,” Luke said. “I can encrypt it so that no one else will be able to get anything out of it. Or rather, Artoo can.”
Mara smiled thinly. “Wonderful. Except for one minor detail: if the encrypt is that good, how is Karrde supposed to decrypt it?”
“He won’t have to,” Luke told her. “The computer in my X-wing will do it for him.”
The thin smile vanished from Mara’s face. “You’re stalling,” she snarled. “You can’t do a counterpart encrypt between an astromech droid and a ship computer.”
“Why not? Artoo’s the only droid who’s worked with that computer in more than five years, with close to three thousand hours of flight time. He’s bound to have molded it to his own personality by now. In fact, I know he has-the ground maintenance people have to run diagnostics through him to make any sense out of them.”
“I thought standard procedure was to wipe and reload droid memories every six months to keep that from happening.”
“I like Artoo the way he is,” Luke said. “And he and the X-wing work better together this way.”
“How much better?”
Luke searched his memory. Maintenance had run that test just a few months ago. “I don’t remember the exact number. It was something like thirty percent faster than a baseline astromech/X-wing interface. Maybe thirty-five.”
Mara was staring hard at Artoo. “That’s counterpart-level speed, all right,” she agreed reluctantly. “The Imperials could still crack it, though.”
“Eventually. But it would take some specialized equipment to do it. And you said yourself we’d be out of here in three days.”
For a long minute she stared at him, her jaw tight with clenched teeth, her face a mirror of fiercely battling emotions. Bitterness, hatred, desire for survival . . . and something else. Something that Luke could almost believe might be a touch of loyalty. “Your ship’s sitting all alone out in the forest,” she growled at last. “How are you going to get the message back to Karrde?”
“Someone’s bound to check on the ship eventually,” he pointed out. “All we have to do is dump the message into storage and leave some kind of signal flashing that it’s there. You have people who know how to pull a dump, don’t you?”
“Any idiot knows how to pull a dump.” Mara glared at him. “Funny, isn’t it, how this scheme just happens to require that I keep both of you alive a while longer.”
Luke remained silent, meeting that bitter gaze without flinching . . . and then, abruptly, Mara’s internal battle seemed to end. “What about the droid?” she demanded. “It’ll take forever to get it across this terrain.”
“Artoo’s made it through forests before. However . . .” Luke looked around, spotted a tree with two low branches just the right size. “I should be able to rig up a dragging frame to carry him on-a travois, or something like that.” He started to get up. “If you’ll give me my lightsaber for a minute I can cut a couple of those branches off.”
“Sit down,” she ordered, standing up. “I’ll do it.”
Well, it had been worth a try. “Those two,” he told her, pointing. “Be careful-lightsabers are tricky to handle.”
“Your concern for my welfare is touching,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm. She drew the lightsaber and stepped over to the indicated tree, keeping an eye on Luke the whole time. She raised the weapon, ignited it-
And in a handful of quick, sure swipes trimmed, shortened, and cut the branches from the tree.
She closed down the weapon and returned it to her belt in a single smooth motion. “Help yourself,” she said, moving away.
“Right,” Luke said mechanically, his mind tingling with astonishment as he stumbled over to collect the branches. The way she’d done that . . . “You’ve used a lightsaber before.”
She gazed at him coldly. “Just so you know I can handle it. In case you should feel tempted to try and make a grab for my blaster.” She glanced upward at the darkening sky. “Come on-get busy with that travois. We’ll need to find some kind of clearing to put the sonde balloon up, and I want to get that done before nightfall.”
**]
“I must apologize for chasing you out like that,” Karrde said as he walked Han toward the central building. “Particularly in the middle of a meal. Not exactly the sort of hospitality we strive for here.”
“No problem,” Han told him, eyeing him as best he could in the gathering dusk. The light from the building ahead was casting a faint glow on Karrde’s face; with luck, it would be enough to read the other’s expression by. “What was that all about, anyway?”
“Nothing serious,” Karrde assured him easily. “Some people with whom I’ve had business dealings wanted to come and look the place over.”
“Ah,” Han said. “So you’re working directly for the Empire now?”
Karrde’s expression cracked, just a little. Han expected him to make some sort of reflexive denial; instead, he stopped and turned to look at Lando and Ghent, walking behind them. “Ghent?” he asked mildly.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the kid said, sounding miserable. “They insisted on coming out to see what was happening.”
“I see.” Karrde looked back at Han, his face calm again. “No harm done, probably. Not the wisest of risks to take, though.”
“I’m used to taking risks,” Han told him. “You haven’t answered my question.”
Karrde resumed walking. “If I’m not interested in working for the Republic, I’m certainly not interested in working for the Empire. The Imperials have been coming here for the past few weeks to collect ysalamiri-sessile creatures, like the ones hanging onto the tree in the greatroom. I offered my assistance in helping them safely remove the ysalamiri from their trees.”
“What did you get in return?”
“The privilege of watching them work,” Karrde said. “Giving me that much extra information to try to figure out what they wanted with the things.”
“And what did they want with them?”
Karrde glanced at Han. “Information costs money here, Solo. Actually, to be perfectly honest, we don’t know what they’re up to. We’re working on it, though.”
“I see. But you do know their commander personally.”
Karrde smiled faintly. “That’s information again.”
Han was starting to get sick of this. “Have it your way. What’ll this Grand Admiral’s name cost me?”
“For the moment, the name’s not for sale,” he told Han. “Perhaps we’ll talk about it later.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think there’s going to be a later,” Han growled, stopping. “If you don’t mind, we’ll just say our goodbyes here and get back to the ship.”
Karrde turned to him in mild surprise. “You’re not going to finish our dinner? You hardly had a chance to get started.”
Han looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t especially like sitting on the ground like a practice target when there are stormtroopers wandering around,” he said bluntly.
Karrde’s face hardened. “At the moment, sitting on the ground is preferable to drawing attention in the air,” he said coldly. “The Star Destroyer hasn’t left orbit yet. Lifting off now would be an open invitation for them to swat you down.”
“The Falcon’s outrun Star Destroyers before,” Han countered. But Karrde had a point . . . and the fact that he hadn’t turned the two of them over to the Imperials probably meant that he could be trusted, at least for now. Probably.
On the other hand, if they did stay . . . “But I suppose it wouldn’t hurt us to stick around a little longer,” he conceded. “All right, sure, we’ll finish dinner.”
“Good,” Karrde said. “It will just take a few minutes to get things put back together.”
“You took everything apart?” Lando asked.
“Everything that might have indicated we had guests,” Karrde said. “The Grand Admiral is highly observant, and I wouldn’t have put it past him to know exactly how many of my associates are staying here at the moment.”
“Well, while you’re getting things ready,” Han said, “I want to go back to the ship and check on a couple of things.”
Karrde’s eyes narrowed slightly. “But you will be back.”
Han gave him an innocent smile. “Trust me.”
Karrde gazed at him a moment longer, then shrugged. “Very well. Watch yourselves, though. The local predators don’t normally come this close in to our encampment, but there are exceptions.”
“We’ll be careful,” Han promised. “Come on, Lando.”
They headed back the way they’d come. “So what did we forget to do back at the Falcon?” Lando asked quietly as they reached the trees.
“Nothing,” Han murmured back. “I just thought it’d be a good time to go check out Karrde’s storage sheds. Particularly the one that was supposed to have a prisoner in it.”
They went about five meters into the forest, then changed direction to circle the compound. A quarter of the way around the circle, they found a likely looking group of small buildings.
“Look for a door with a lock,” Lando suggested as they came out among the sheds. “Either permanent or temporary.”
“Right.” Han peered through the darkness. “That one over there-the one with two doors?”
“Could be,” Lando agreed. “Let’s take a look.”
The left-most of the two doors did indeed have a lock. Or, rather, it had had a lock. “It’s been shot off,” Lando said, poking at it with a finger. “Strange.”
“Maybe the prisoner had friends,” Han suggested, glancing around. There was no one else in sight. “Let’s go inside.”
They slid the door open and went in, closing it behind them before turning on the light. The shed was less than half full, with most of the boxes piled against the right-hand wall. The exceptions to that rule . . .
Han stepped over for a closer look. “Well, well,” he murmured, gazing at the removed power outlet plate and the wires poking through the gap. “Someone’s been busy over here.”
“Someone’s been even busier over here,” Lando commented from behind him. “Come have a look.”
Lando was crouched down beside the door, peering into the inside of the door lock mechanism. Like the outside, half of its covering plate had been blasted off. “That must have been one beaut of a shot,” Han frowned, coming over.
“It wasn’t a single shot,” Lando said, shaking his head. “The stuff in between is mostly intact.” He pushed back the cover a little, poking at the electronics inside with his fingers. “Looks like our mysterious prisoner was tampering with the equipment.”