“Lying dead in space.”
Karrde shook his head. “Actually, they weren’t, which was what threw me for those first few days. From all appearances, the ships seemed to be fully functional, with both interior and running lights showing and even a standby sensor scan in operation. Naturally, we assumed it was part of the group we’d just tangled with, and the captain made an emergency jump to lightspeed to get us out of there.”
“Not a good idea,” Mara murmured.
“It seemed the lesser of two evils at the time,” Karrde said grimly. “As it turned out, we came close to being fatally wrong on that account. The ship hit the mass shadow of a large comet on the way out, blowing the main hyperdrive and nearly wrecking the rest of the ship on the spot. Five of our crew were killed in the collision, and another three died of injuries before we could limp back to civilization on the backup hyperdrive.”
There was a moment of silence. “How many of you were left?” Mara asked at last.
Karrde focused on her, his usual sardonic smile back on his face. “Or in other words, who else might know about the fleet?”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“There were six of us left. As I said, though, I don’t think any of the others realized what it was we’d found. It was only when I went back to the sensor records and discovered that there were considerably more than just the two Dreadnaughts in the area that I began to have my own suspicions.”
“And the records themselves?”
“I erased them. After memorizing the coordinates, of course.”
Mara nodded. “You said this was fifteen years ago?”
“That’s right,” Karrde nodded back. “I’ve thought about going back and doing something with the ships, but I never had the time to do it properly. Unloading two hundred Dreadnaughts on the open market isn’t something you rush into without a good deal of prior preparation. Even if you have markets for all of them, which has always been problematic.”
“Until now.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting I sell them to the Empire?”
“They’re in the market for capital ships,” she reminded him. “And they’re offering value plus twenty percent.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I thought you didn’t much care for the Empire.”
“I don’t,” she retorted. “What’s the other option—give them to the New Republic?”
He held her gaze. “That might be more profitable in the long run.”
Mara’s left hand curled into a tight fist, her stomach churning with mixed feelings. To let the Dreadnaughts fall into the hands of the New Republic, successor to the Rebel Alliance that had destroyed her life, was a hateful thought. But on the other hand, the Empire without the Emperor was only a pale shadow of its former self, hardly even worthy of the name anymore. It would be pearls before swine to give the Dark Force to them.
Or would it? With a Grand Admiral in charge of the Imperial Fleet again, perhaps there was now a chance for the Empire to regain some of its old glory. And if there was … “What are you going to do?” she asked Karrde.
“At the moment, nothing,” Karrde said. “It’s the same problem we faced with Skywalker, after all: the Empire will be swifter to exact vengeance if we go against them, but the New Republic looks more likely to win in the end. Giving Thrawn the Katana fleet would only delay the inevitable. The most prudent course right now is to stay neutral.”
“Except that giving Thrawn the Dreadnaughts might get him off our exhaust trail,” Mara pointed out. “That would be worth the trade right there.”
Karrde smiled faintly. “Oh, come now, Mara. The Grand Admiral may be a tactical genius, but he’s hardly omniscient. He can’t possibly have any idea where we are. And he certainly has more important things to do than spend his resources chasing us down.”
“I’m sure he does,” Mara agreed reluctantly. But she couldn’t help remembering how, even at the height of his power and with a thousand other concerns, the Emperor had still frequently taken the time to exact vengeance on someone who’d crossed him.
Beside her the comm board buzzed, and Mara reached over to key the channel. “Yes?”
“Lachton,” a familiar voice came from the speaker. “Is Karrde around?”
“Right here,” Karrde called, stepping to Mara’s side. “How’s the camouflage work going?”
“We’re about done,” Lachton said. “We ran short of flash-netting, though. Do we have any more?”
“There’s some at one of the dumps,” Karrde told him. “I’ll send Mara to get it; can you have someone come in to pick it up?”
“Sure, no problem. I’ll send Dankin—he hasn’t got much to do at the moment anyway.”
“All right. The netting will be ready by the time he gets here.”
Karrde gestured, and Mara keyed off the channel. “You know where the Number Three dump is?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Four twelve Wozwashi Street. Three blocks west and two north.”
“Right.” He peered out the window. “Unfortunately, it’s still too early for repulsorlift vehicles to be on the streets. You’ll have to walk.”
“That’s all right,” Mara assured him. She felt like a little exercise, anyway. “Two boxes be enough?”
“If you can handle that many,” he told her, looking her up and down as if making sure her outfit conformed to local Rishi standards of propriety. He needn’t have bothered; one of the first rules the Emperor had drummed into her so long ago was to blend in as best she could with her surroundings. “If not, Lachton can probably make do with one.”
“All right. I’ll see you later.”
Their townhouse was part of a row of similar structures abutting one of the hundreds of little market areas that dotted the whole congested valley. For a moment Mara stood in the entry alcove of their building, out of the busy flow of pedestrian traffic, and looked around her. Through the gaps between the nearest buildings she could see the more distant parts of the city-vale, most of it composed of the same cream-white stone so favored by the locals. In places, she could see all the way to the edge, a few small buildings perched precariously partway up the craggy mountains that rose sharply into the sky on all sides. Far up those mountains, she knew, lived loose avian tribes of native Rishii, who no doubt looked down in bemused disbelief at the strange creatures who had chosen the most uncomfortably hot and humid spots of their planet in which to live.
Dropping her gaze from the mountains, Mara gave the immediate area a quick scan. Across the street were more townhouses; between her and them was the usual flow of brightly clad pedestrians hurrying to and from the market area to the east. Reflexively, her eyes flicked across the townhouses, though with each window composed of mirror glass there wasn’t a lot there for her to see. Also reflexively, she glanced across each of the narrow pedestrian alleyways between the buildings.
Between two of them, back at the building’s rear where he was hardly visible, was the motionless figure of a man wearing a blue scarf and patterned green tunic.
Staring in her direction.
Mara let her gaze drift on as if she hadn’t seen him, her heart thudding suddenly in her throat. Stepping out of the alcove, she turned east toward the market and joined the flow of traffic.
She didn’t stay with it long, though. As soon as she was out of the mysterious loiterer’s line of sight, she began cutting her way across the flow, heading across the street toward the townhouse row. She reached it three buildings down from the loiterer, ducked into the alleyway, and hurried toward the rear. If he was indeed monitoring Karrde’s place, there was a good chance she could take him from behind.
She reached the rear of the buildings and circled around … only to find that her quarry had vanished.
For a moment she stood there, looking around her for any sign of the man’s whereabouts, wondering what to do now. There was none of the insistent tingling that had gotten them away from Myrkr at the last second; but as she’d told Karrde, it wasn’t a talent she could turn on and off.
She looked down at the ground where the man had been standing. There were a few faint footprints in the thin coating of dust that had collected at the corner of the townhouse, giving the impression that the man had been there long enough to shuffle his feet a few times. A half dozen steps away, right in the center of another layer of dust, was a clear footprint pointing toward the west behind the row of townhouses.
Mara looked in that direction, feeling her lip twist. A deliberate lead-on, obviously—footprints in dust never came out that clear and unsmudged unless carefully planted. And she was right. A hundred meters directly ahead, strolling casually along the rear of the buildings toward a north-south street, was the man in the blue scarf and patterned tunic. A not-very-subtle invitation to follow him.