Luke nodded, thinking back to Mara’s revelation to him back in the Myrkr forest. Mara Jade, the Emperor’s Hand … “Yes,” he told Karrde soberly. “She was.”
The walls reached their limit and shut down. A moment later there was a click of a relay. Luke waited until the corridor immediately outside was deserted, then opened it and stepped out. A couple of maintenance techs working at an open panel a dozen meters down the corridor threw a look of idle curiosity at the newcomers; throwing an equally unconcerned glance back their way, Luke pulled the data pad from his pocket and pretended to make an entry. Karrde played off the cue, standing beside him and spouting a stream of helpful jargon as Luke filled out his imaginary report. Letting the door slide closed, Luke stuffed the data pad back into his pocket and led the way down the corridor.
Mara was waiting at the turbolift cluster with the spare flight suit draped over her arm. “Car’s on its way,” she murmured. For a second, as her eyes met Karrde’s, her face seemed to tighten.
“He knows you didn’t betray him,” Luke told her quietly.
“I didn’t ask,” she growled. But Luke could sense some of her tension vanish. “Here,” she added, thrusting the flight suit at Karrde. “A little camouflage.”
“Thank you,” Karrde said. “Where are we going?”
“We came in on a supply shuttle,” Mara said. “We cut an exit hole in the lower hull, but we should have enough time to weld it airtight before they send us back to the surface.”
The turbolift car arrived as Karrde was adjusting the fasteners on his borrowed flight suit. Two men with a gleaming power core relay on a float table were there before them, taking up most of the room. “Where to?” one of the techs asked with the absent politeness of a man with more important things on his mind.
“Pilot ready room 33–129-T,” Mara told him, using the same tone.
The tech entered the destination on the panel and the door slid shut; and Luke took his first really relaxed breath since Mara had put the Skipray down on Wistril five hours ago. Another ten or fifteen minutes and they’d be safely back in their shuttle.
Against all odds, they’d done it.
The midpoint report from the hangar bay came in, and Pellaeon paused in his monitoring of the bridge deflector control overhaul to take a quick look at it. Excellent; the unloading was running nearly eight minutes ahead of schedule. At this rate the Chimaera would be able to make its rendezvous with the Stormhawk in plenty of time for them to set up their ambush of the Rebel convoy assembling off Corfai. He marked the report as noted and sent it back into the files; and he had turned his attention back to the deflector overhaul when he heard a quiet footstep behind him.
“Good evening, Captain,” Thrawn nodded, coming up beside Pellaeon’s chair and giving the bridge a leisurely scan.
“Admiral,” Pellaeon nodded back, swiveling to face him. “I thought you’d retired for the night, sir.”
“I’ve been in my command room,” Thrawn said, looking past Pellaeon at the displays. “I thought I’d make one last survey of ship’s status before I went to my quarters. Is that the bridge deflector overhaul?”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, wondering which species’ artwork had been favored with the Grand Admiral’s scrutiny tonight. “No problems so far. The cargo unloading down in Aft Bay Two is running ahead of schedule, too.”
“Good,” the Grand Admiral said. “Anything further from the patrol at Endor?”
“Just an addendum to that one report, sir,” Pellaeon told him. “Apparenlty, they’ve confirmed that the ship they caught coming into the system was in fact just a smuggler planning to sift again through the remains of the Imperial base there. They’re continuing to back-check the crew.”
“Remind them to make a thorough job of it before they let the ship go,” Thrawn said grimly. “Organa Solo won’t have simply abandoned the Millennium Falcon in orbit there. Sooner or later she’ll return for it … and when she does, I intend to have her.”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon nodded. The commander of the Endor patrol group, he was certain, didn’t need any reminding of that. “Speaking of the Millennium Falcon, have you decided yet whether or not to do any further scan work on it?”
Thrawn shook his head. “I doubt that would gain us anything. The scanning team would be better employed assisting with maintenance on the Chimaera’s own systems. Have the Millennium Falcon transferred up to vehicle deep storage until we can find some use for it.”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, swiveling back and logging the order. “Oh, and there was one other strange report that came in a few minutes ago. A routine patrol on the supply base perimeter came across a Skipray blastboat that had made a crash landing out there.”
“A crash landing?” Thrawn frowned.
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, calling up the report. “Its underside was in pretty bad shape, and the whole hull was scorched.”
The picture came up on Pellaeon’s display, and Thrawn leaned over his shoulder for a closer look. “Any bodies?”
“No, sir,” Pellaeon said. “The only thing aboard—and this is the strange part—was an ysalamir.”
He felt Thrawn stiffen. “Show me.”
Pellaeon keyed for the next picture, a close-up of the ysalamir on its biosupport frame. “The frame isn’t one of our designs,” he pointed out. “No telling where it came from.”
“Oh, there’s telling, all right,” Thrawn assured him. He straightened up and took a deep breath. “Sound intruder alert, Captain. We have visitors aboard.”
Pellaeon stared up at him in astonishment, fumbling fingers locating and twisting the alert key. “Visitors?” he asked as the alarms began their throaty wailing.
“Yes,” Thrawn said, his glowing red eyes glittering with a sudden fire. “Order an immediate check of Karrde’s cell. If he’s still there, he’s to be moved immediately and put under direct stormtrooper guard. I want another guard ring put around the supply shuttles and an immediate ID check begun of their crews. And then”—he paused —“have the Chimaera’s main computer shut down.”
Pellaeon’s fingers froze on his keyboard. “Shut down—?”
“Carry out your orders, Captain,” Thrawn cut him off.
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said between suddenly stiff lips. In all his years of Imperial service he had never seen a warship’s main computer deliberately shut down except in space dock. To do so was to blind and cripple the craft. With intruders aboard, perhaps fatally.
“It will hamper our efforts a bit, I agree,” Thrawn said, as if reading Pellaeon’s fears. “But it will hamper our enemies’ far more. You see, the only way for them to have known the Chimaera’s course and destination was for Mara Jade to have tapped into the computer when we brought her and Karrde aboard.”
“That’s impossible,” Pellaeon insisted, wincing as his computer-driven displays began to wink out. “Any access codes she might have known were changed years ago.”
“Unless there are codes permanently hard-wired into the system,” Thrawn said. “Set there by the Emperor for his use and that of his agents. Jade no doubt is counting on that access in her rescue attempt; therefore, we deprive her of it.”
A stormtrooper stepped up to them. “Yes, Commander?” Thrawn said.
“Comlink message from detention,” the electronically filtered voice announced. “The prisoner Talon Karrde is no longer in his cell.”
“Very well,” the Grand Admiral said darkly. “Alert all units to begin a search of the area between detention and the aft hangar bays. Karrde is to be recaptured alive—not necessarily undamaged, but alive. As to his would-be rescuers, I want them also alive if possible. If not—” He paused. “If not, I’ll understand.”
CHAPTER
23
The wail of the alarm sounded over the overhead speaker; and a few seconds later the turbolift car came to an abrupt halt. “Blast,” one of the two gunners who had replaced the service techs in the car muttered, digging a small ID card from the slot behind his belt buckle. “Don’t they ever get tired of running drills up there on the bridge?”
“Talk like that might get you a face-to-face with a stormtrooper squad,” the second warned, throwing a sideways glance at Luke and the others. Stepping past the first gunner, he slid his ID card into a slot on the control board and tapped in a confirmation code. “It was a lot worse before the Grand Admiral took over. Anyway, what do you want ’em to do, announce snap drills in advance?”
“The whole thing’s burnin’ useless, if you ask me,” the first growled, clearing his ID the same way. “Who they expect’s gonna come aboard, anyway? Some burnin’ pirate gang or something?”
Luke glanced questioningly at Karrde, wondering what they should do. But Mara was already moving toward the two gunners, the ID from her borrowed flight suit in hand. She stepped between them, reached the ID toward the slot—