“Come on, Mara,” he said, slipping off his restraints. “You know how to handle a quad laser battery?”
“No, I need her here,” Karrde said. He had the Falcon skimming the underside of the Star Destroyer now, heading for the ship’s portside edge. “You go ahead. And take the dorsal gun bay—I think I can arrange for them to concentrate their attack from that direction.” Luke had no idea how he was going to accomplish that, but there was no time to discuss it. Already the Falcon was starting to jolt with laser hits, and from experience he knew there was only so much the ship’s deflector shields could handle. Leaving the cockpit, he hurried to the gun well ladder, leaping halfway up, then climbing the rest of the way. He strapped in, fired up the quads.… and as he looked around he discovered what Karrde had had in mind. The Falcon had curved up past the portside edge of the Chimaera, swung aft along the upper surface, and was now driving hard for deep space on a vector directly above the exhaust from the Star Destroyer’s massive sublight drive nozzles. Skimming rather too close to it, in Luke’s opinion; but it was for sure that no TIE fighters would be coming at them from underneath for a while.
The intercom pinged in his ear. “Skywalker?” Karrde’s voice came. “They’re almost here. You ready?”
“I’m ready,” Luke assured him. Fingers resting lightly on the firing controls, he focused his mind and let the Force flow into him.
The battle was furious but short, in some ways reminding Luke of the Falcon’s escape from the Death Star so long ago. Back then, Leia had recognized that they’d gotten away too easily; and as the TIE fighters swarmed and fired and exploded around him, Luke wondered uneasily whether or not the Imperials might have something equally devious in mind this time, too.
And then the sky flared with starlines and went mottled, and they were free.
Luke took a deep breath as he cut power to the quads. “Good flying,” he said into the intercom.
“Thank you,” Karrde’s dry voice came back. “We seem to be more or less clear, though we took some damage around the starboard power converter pack. Mara’s gone to check it out.”
“We can manage without it,” Luke said. “Han’s got the whole ship so cross-wired that it’ll fly with half the systems out. Where are we headed?”
“Coruscant,” Karrde said. “To drop you off, and also to follow through on the promise I made to you earlier.”
Luke had to search his memory. “You mean that bit about the New Republic standing to gain from your rescue?”
“That’s the one,” Karrde assured him. “As I recall Solo’s sales pitch to me back on Myrkr, your people are in need of transport ships. Correct?”
“Badly in need of them,” Luke agreed. “You have some stashed away?”
“Not exactly stashed away, but it won’t be too hard to put my hands on them. What do you think the New Republic would say to approximately two hundred pre-Clone Wars vintage Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers?”
Luke felt his mouth fall open. Growing up on Tatooine had been a sheltered experience, but it hadn’t been that sheltered. “You don’t mean … the Dark Force?”
“Come on down and we’ll discuss it,” Karrde said. “Oh, and I wouldn’t mention it to Mara just yet.”
“I’ll be right there.” Turning off the intercom, Luke hung the headset back on its hook and climbed onto the ladder … and for once, he didn’t even notice the discontinuity as the gravity field changed direction partway down the ladder.
The Millennium Falcon shot away from the Chimaera, outmaneuvering and outgunning its pursuing TIE fighters and driving hard for deep space. Pellaeon sat at his station, hands curled into fists, watching the drama in helpless silence. Helpless, because with the main computer still only partially operational, the Chimaera’s sophisticated weapons and tractor beam systems were useless against a ship that small, that fast, and that distant. Silent, because the disaster was far beyond the scope of any of his repertoire of curses.
The ship flickered and was gone … and Pellaeon prepared himself for the worst.
The worst didn’t come. “Recall the TIE fighters to their stations, Captain,” Thrawn said, his voice showing no sign of strain or anger. “Secure from intruder alert, and have Systems Control continue bringing the main computer back on line. Oh, and the supply unloading can be resumed.”
“Yes, sir.” Pellaeon said, throwing a surreptitious frown at his superior. Had Thrawn somehow missed the significance of what had just happened out there?
The glowing red eyes glinted as Thrawn looked at him. “We’ve lost a round, Captain,” he said. “No more.”
“It seems to me, Admiral, that we’ve lost far more than that,” Pellaeon growled. “There’s no chance that Karrde won’t give the Katana fleet to the Rebellion now.”
“Ah; but he won’t simply give it to them,” Thrawn corrected, almost lazily. “Karrde’s pattern has never been to give anything away for free. He’ll attempt to bargain, or else will set conditions the Rebellion will find unsatisfactory. The negotiations will take time, particularly given the suspicious political atmosphere we’ve taken such pains to create on Coruscant. And a little time is all we need.”
Pellaeon shook his head. “You’re assuming that ship thief Ferrier will be able to find the Corellian group’s ship supplier before Karrde and the Rebellion work out their differences.”
“There’s no assumption involved,” Thrawn said softly. “Ferrier is even now on Solo’s trail and has extrapolated his destination for us … and thanks to Intelligence’s excellent work on Karrde’s background, I know exactly who the man is we’ll be meeting at the end of that trail.”
He gazed out the viewport at the returning TIE fighters. “Instruct Navigation to prepare a course for the Pantolomin system, Captain,” he said, his voice thoughtful. “Departure to be as soon as the supply shuttles have been unloaded.”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, nodding the order on to the navigator and doing a quick calculation in his head. Time for the Millennium Falcon to reach Coruscant; time for the Chimaera to reach Pantolomin …
“Yes,” Thrawn said into his thoughts. “Now it’s a race.”
CHAPTER
24
The sun had set over the brown hills of Honoghr, leaving a lingering hint of red and violet in the clouds above the horizon. Leia watched the fading color from just inside the dukha door, feeling the all-too-familiar sense of nervous dread that always came when she was about to go into danger and battle. A few more minutes and she, Chewbacca, and Threepio would be setting out for Nystao, to free Khabarakh and escape. Or to die trying.
She sighed and walked back into the dukha, wondering dimly where she’d gone wrong on this whole thing. It had seemed so reasonable to come to Honoghr—so right, somehow, to make such a bold gesture of good faith to the Noghri. Even before leaving Kashyyyk she’d been convinced that the offer hadn’t been entirely her own idea, but instead the subtle guidance of the Force.
And perhaps it had been. But not necessarily from the side of the Force she’d assumed.
A cool breeze whispered in through the doorway, and Leia shivered. The Force is strong in my family. Luke had said those words to her on the eve of the Battle of Endor. She hadn’t believed it at first, not until long afterward when his patient training had begun to bring out a hint of those abilities in her. But her father had had that same training and those same abilities … and yet had ultimately fallen to the dark side.
One of the twins kicked. She paused, reaching out to gently touch the two tiny beings within her; and as she did so, fragments of memory flooded in on her. Her mother’s face, taut and sad, lifting her from the darkness of the trunk where she’d lain hidden from prying eyes. Unfamiliar faces leaning over her, while her mother spoke to them in a tone that had frightened her and set her crying. Crying again when her mother died, holding tightly to the man she’d learned to call Father.
Pain and misery and fear … and all of it because of her true father, the man who had renounced the name Anakin Skywalker to call himself Darth Vader.
There was a faint shuffling sound from the doorway. “What is it, Threepio?” Leia asked, turning to face the droid.
“Your Highness, Chewbacca has informed me that you will be leaving here soon,” Threepio said, his prim voice a little anxious. “May I assume that I will be accompanying you?”
“Yes, of course,” Leia told him. “Whatever happens in Nystao, I don’t think you’ll want to be here for the aftermath.”
“I quite agree.” The droid hesitated, and Leia could see in his stance that his anxiety hadn’t been totally relieved. “There is, however, something that I really think you should know,” he continued. “One of the decon droids has been acting very strangely.”