Carefully, Luke touched the welt running across his cheek and forehead. “I’ll be all right.”
She snorted. “Sure you will,” she said, her voice laced with sarcasm as she went back to treating her gashes. “I forgot-you’re a hero, too.”
For a long minute Luke watched her, trying once more to understand the complexities and contradictions of this strange woman. Even from three meters away he could see that her hand was shaking as she applied the salve: with reaction, perhaps, or muscle fatigue. Almost certainly with fear-she’d escaped a bloody death by a bare handful of centimeters, and she would have to be a fool not to recognize that.
And yet, whatever she was feeling inside, she was clearly determined not to let any of it out past that rock-hard surface she’d so carefully built up around herself. As if she was afraid to let weakness of any sort show through . . .
Abruptly, as if feeling his eyes on her, Mara looked up. “I said thanks already,” she growled. “What do you want, a medal?”
Luke shook his head. “I just want to know what happened to you.”
For a moment those green eyes flashed again with the old hatred. But only for a moment. The vornskr attack, coming on top of two days of laborious travel and no sleep, had taken a severe toll on her emotional strength. The anger faded from her eyes, leaving only a tired coldness behind. “You happened to me,” she told him, her voice more fatigued than embittered. “You came out of a grubby sixth-rate farm on a tenth-rate planet, and destroyed my life.”
“How?”
Contempt briefly filled her face. “You don’t have the faintest idea who I am, do you?”
Luke shook his head. “I’m sure I’d remember you if we’d met.”
“Oh, right,” she said sardonically. “The great, omniscient Jedi. See all, hear all, know all, understand all. No, we didn’t actually meet; but I was there, if you’d bothered to notice me. I was a dancer at Jabba the Hutt’s palace the day you came for Solo.”
So that was it. She’d worked for Jabba; and when he’d killed Jabba, he’d ruined her life . . .
Luke frowned at her. No. Her slim figure, her agility and grace-those certainly could belong to a professional dancer. But her piloting skills, her expert marksmanship, her inexplicable working knowledge of lightsabers-those most certainly did not.
Mara was still waiting, daring him with her expression to figure it out. “You weren’t just a dancer, though,” he told her. “That was only a cover.”
Her lip twisted. “Very good. That vaunted Jedi insight, no doubt. Keep going; you’re doing so well. What was I really doing there?”
Luke hesitated. There were all sorts of possibilities for this one: bounty hunter, smuggler, quiet bodyguard for Jabba, spy from some rival criminal organization . . .
No. Her knowledge of lightsabers . . . and suddenly, all the pieces fell together with a rush. “You were waiting for me,” he said. “Vader knew I’d go there to try and rescue Han, and he sent you to capture me.”
“Vader?” She all but spat the name. “Don’t make me laugh. Vader was a fool, and skating on the edge of treason along with it. My master sent me to Jabba’s to kill you, not recruit you.”
Luke stared at her, an icy shiver running up his back. It couldn’t be . . . but even as he gazed into that tortured face, he knew with sudden certainty that it was. “And your master,” he said quietly, “was the Emperor.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice a snake’s hiss. “And you destroyed him.”
Luke swallowed hard, the pounding of his own heart the only sound. He hadn’t killed the Emperor-Darth Vader had done that-but Mara didn’t seem inclined to worry over such subtleties. “You’re wrong, though,” he said. “He did try to recruit me.”
“Only because I failed,” she ground out, her throat muscles tight. “And only when Vader had you standing right there in front of him. What, you don’t think he knew Vader had offered to help you overthrow him?”
Unconsciously, Luke flexed the fingers of his numbed artificial hand. Yes, Vader had indeed suggested such an alliance during their Cloud City duel. “I don’t think it was a serious offer,” he murmured.
“The Emperor did,” Mara said flatly. “He knew. And what he knew, I knew.”
Her eyes filled with distant pain. “I was his hand, Skywalker,” she said, her voice remembering. “That’s how I was known to his inner court: as the Emperor’s Hand. I served him all over the galaxy, doing jobs the Imperial Fleet and stormtroopers couldn’t handle. That was my one great talent, you see-I could hear his call from anywhere in the Empire, and report back to him the same way. I exposed traitors for him, brought down his enemies, helped him keep the kind of control over the mindless bureaucracies that he needed. I had prestige, and power, and respect.”
Slowly, her eyes came back from the past. “And you took it all away from me. If only for that, you deserve to die.”
“What went wrong?” Luke forced himself to ask.
Her lip twisted. “Jabba wouldn’t let me go with the execution party. That was it-pure and simple. I tried begging, cajoling, bargaining-I couldn’t change his mind.”
“No,” Luke said soberly. “Jabba was highly resistant to the mind-controlling aspects of the Force.”
But if she had been on the Sail Barge . . .
Luke shivered, seeing in his mind’s eye that terrifying vision in the dark cave on Dagobah. The mysterious silhouetted woman standing there on the Sail Barge’s upper deck, laughing at him as she held his captured lightsaber high.
The first time, years ago, the cave had spun him an image of a possible future. This time, he knew now, it had shown him a possible past. “You would have succeeded,” he said quietly.
Mara looked sharply at him. “I’m not asking for understanding or sympathy,” she bit out. “You wanted to know. Fine; now you know.”
He let her tend her wounds in silence for a moment. “So why are you here?” he asked. “Why not with the Empire?”
“What Empire?” she countered. “It’s dying-you know that as well as I do.”
“But while it’s still there-”
She cut him off with a withering glare. “Who would I go to?” she demanded. “They didn’t know me-none of them did. Not as the Emperor’s Hand, anyway. I was a shadow, working outside the normal lines of command and protocol. There were no records kept of my activities. Those few I was formally introduced to thought of me as court-hanging froth, a minor bit of mobile decoration kept around the palace to amuse the Emperor.”
Her eyes went distant again with memory. “There was nowhere for me to go after Endor,” she said bitterly. “No contacts, no resources-I didn’t even have a real identity anymore. I was on my own.”
“And so you linked up with Karrde.”
“Eventually. First I spent four and a half years sloshing around the rotten underfringes of the galaxy, doing whatever I could.” Her eyes were steady on him, with a trace of hatred fire back in them. “I worked hard to get where I am, Skywalker. You’re not going to ruin it for me. Not this time.”
“I don’t want to ruin anything for you,” Luke told her evenly. “All I want is to get back to the New Republic.”
“And I want the old Empire back,” she retorted. “We don’t always get what we want, do we?”
Luke shook his head. “No. We don’t.”
For a moment she glared at him. Then, abruptly, she scooped up a tube of salve and tossed it at him. “Here-get that welt fixed up. And get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.”
The battered A-Class bulk freighter drifted off the Chimera’s starboard side: a giant space-going box with a hyperdrive attached, its faded plating glistening dully in the glare of the Star Destroyer’s floodlights. Sitting at his command station, Thrawn studied the sensor data and nodded. “It looks good, Captain,” he said to Pellaeon. “Exactly the way it should. You may proceed with the test when ready.”
“It’ll be a few more minutes yet, sir,” Pellaeon told him, studying the readouts on his console. “The technicians are still having some problems getting the cloaking shield tuned.”
He held his breath, half afraid of a verbal explosion. The untested cloaking shield and the specially modified freighter it was mounted to had cost hideous amounts of money-money the Empire really didn’t have to spare. For the technology to now suddenly come up finicky, particularly with the whole of the Sluis Van operation hanging squarely in the balance . . .
But the Grand Admiral merely nodded. “There’s time,” he said calmly. “What word from Myrkr?”
“The last regular report came in two hours ago,” Pellaeon told him. “Still negative.”
Thrawn nodded again. “And the latest count from Sluis Van?”
“Uh . . .” Pellaeon checked the appropriate file. “A hundred twelve transient warships in all. Sixty-five being used as cargo carriers, the others on escort duty.”
“Sixty-five,” Thrawn repeated with obvious satisfaction. “Excellent. It means we get to pick and choose.”
Pellaeon stirred uncomfortably. “Yes, sir.”
Thrawn turned away from his contemplation of the freighter to look at Pellaeon. “You have a concern, Captain?”
Pellaeon nodded at the ship. “I don’t like sending them into enemy territory without any communications.”
“We don’t have much choice in the matter,” Thrawn reminded him dryly. “That’s how a cloaking shield works-nothing gets out, nothing gets in.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Assuming, of course, that it works at all,” he added pointedly.
“Yes, sir. But . . .”
“But what, Captain?”
Pellaeon braced himself and took the plunge. “It seems to me, Admiral, that this is the sort of operation we ought to use C’baoth on.”
Thrawn’s gaze hardened, just a bit. “C’baoth?”
“Yes, sir. He could give us communications with-”
“We don’t need communications, Captain,” Thrawn cut him off. “Careful timing will be adequate for our purposes.”
“I disagree, Admiral. Under normal circumstances, yes, careful timing would get them into position. But there’s no way to anticipate how long it’ll take to get clearance from Sluis Control.”
“On the contrary,” Thrawn countered coolly. “I’ve studied the Sluissi very carefully. I can anticipate exactly how long it will take them to clear the freighter.”
Pellaeon gritted his teeth. “If the controllers were all Sluissi, perhaps. But with the Rebellion funneling so much of their own material through the Sluis Van system, they’re bound to have some of their own people in Control, as well.”
“It’s of no consequence,” Thrawn told him. “The Sluissi will be in charge. Their timing will determine events.”
Pellaeon exhaled and conceded defeat. “Yes, sir,” he muttered.
Thrawn eyed him. “It’s not a question of bravado, Captain. Or of proving that the Imperial Fleet can function without him. The simple fact of the matter is that we can’t afford to use C’baoth too much or too often.”
“Because we’ll start depending on him,” Pellaeon growled. “As if we were all borg-implanted into a combat computer.”
Thrawn smiled. “That still bothers you, doesn’t it? No matter. That’s part of it, but only a very small part. What concerns me more is that we don’t give Master C’baoth too much of a taste for this kind of power.”
Pellaeon frowned at him. “He said he doesn’t want power.”
“Then he lies,” Thrawn returned coldly. “All men want power. And the more they have, the more they want.”
Pellaeon thought about that. “But if he’s a threat to us . . .” He broke off, suddenly aware of the other officers and men working all around them.
The Grand Admiral had no such reticence. “Why not dispose of him?” he finished the question. “It’s very simple. Because we’ll soon have the ability to fill his taste for power to the fullest . . . and once we’ve done so, he’ll be no more of a threat than any other tool.”
“Leia Organa Solo and her twins?”
“Exactly,” Thrawn nodded, his eyes glittering. “Once C’baoth has them in his hand, these little excursions with the Fleet will be no more to him than distracting interludes that take him away from his real work.”
Pellaeon found himself looking away from the intensity of that gaze. The theory seemed good enough; but in actual practice . . . “That assumes, of course, that the Noghri are ever able to connect with her.”
“They will.” Thrawn was quietly confident. “She and her guardians will eventually run out of tricks. Certainly long before we run out of Noghri.”
In front of Pellaeon, the display cleared. “They’re ready, sir,” he said.
Thrawn turned back to the freighter. “At your convenience, Captain.”
Pellaeon took a deep breath and tapped the comm switch. “Cloaking shield: activate.”
And outside the view window, the battered freighter-
Stayed exactly as it was.
Thrawn gazed hard at the freighter. Looked at his command displays, back at the freighter . . . and then turned to Pellaeon, a satisfied smile on his face. “Excellent, Captain. Precisely what I wanted. I congratulate you and your technicians.”
“Thank you, sir,” Pellaeon said, relaxing muscles he hadn’t realized were tense. “Then I take it the light is green?”
The Grand Admiral’s smile remained unchanged, his face hardening around it. “The light is green, Captain,” he said grimly. “Alert the task force; prepare to move to the rendezvous point.
“The Sluis Van shipyards are ours.”
Wedge Antilles looked up from the data pad with disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he told the dispatcher. “Escort duty?”
The other gave him an innocent look. “What’s the big deal?” he asked. “You guys are X-wings-you do escort all the time.”
“We escort people,” Wedge retorted. “We don’t watchdog cargo ships.”
The dispatcher’s innocent look collapsed into thinly veiled disgust, and Wedge got the sudden impression that he’d gone through this same argument a lot lately. “Look, Commander, don’t dump it on me,” he growled back. “It’s a standard Frigate escort-what’s the difference whether the Frigate’s got people or a break-down reactor aboard?”
Wedge looked back at the data pad. It was a matter of professional pride, that’s what the difference was. “Sluis Van’s a pretty long haul for X-wings,” he said instead.
“Yeah, well, the spec line says you’ll be staying aboard the Frigate until you actually hit the system,” the dispatcher said, reaching over his desk to tap the paging key on Wedge’s data pad. “You’ll just ride him in from there.”