Eli felt his throat tighten. Thrawn wouldn’t do something that coldhearted. Surely he wouldn’t.
“Well, I for one can’t see the logic in this one,” Yularen said darkly. “But I suppose that’s his business, not mine. All I’m saying is that you should keep an eye on things. Nightswan…I’ve had the feeling ever since that first tibanna gas encounter that the man’s gotten under Thrawn’s skin. Deeper, probably, than the admiral would ever admit. With him orchestrating this whole thing, I’m not at all sure how clearly Thrawn’s thinking.”
“He’s thinking just fine,” Eli said firmly. “And whatever he does, it’ll be for the good of the Empire.”
“I hope so,” Yularen said. “Keep an eye on him anyway.” With a final, lingering look behind them, Yularen headed into the tunnel.
Leaving Eli alone in the passageway. With new and disturbing thoughts.
He waited until the corvette was safely on its way. Then, fingering Yularen’s data card, he headed for the bridge.
He would watch Thrawn, all right. He would watch everyone.
Because Nightswan was somewhere in the area, with some plan of action already in place.
And as Thrawn himself had pointed out, the man was quite persuasive.
Each person has goals. Some of those goals are open, visible to all who care to observe. Others are more private, shared only with one’s closest friends or associates.
Some are dark secrets that one hopes will never see the light of day.
But eventually, inevitably, those deepest goals must be made manifest if they are to be reached. They must be opened for someone to hear, or see, or offer assistance.
Everyone who brings those goals into the light must be prepared for either acceptance or rejection. And he must be ready to bear the consequences.
All of them.
—
Back aboard the Chimaera, Thrawn had said that Paeragosto City wasn’t yet a full military zone.
If it wasn’t, Arihnda had no interest in tackling the real thing.
The first gauntlet was at the spaceport, where everyone leaving the transport had to show ID and answer some questions on their purpose for visiting Batonn in general and Paeragosto City in particular. After that was the Batonn Defense Force soldiers and navy troopers who’d set up a roadblock on the main road leading from the city to the Creekpath mining complex. It didn’t look like they’d set up a full cordon yet, but Arihnda guessed it was just a matter of time and numbers. And finally there was a checkpoint just under the edge of Creekpath’s shield, this one guarded by what appeared to be a mixed group of insurgents, malcontents, excitement seekers, and flat-out paid-for mercenaries and would-be mercenaries.
But the IDs that Yularen had given them—partial real name and fake planetary address for Arihnda, fake everything for Gudry—did the trick, bolstered by some amazingly good patter from Agent Gudry. Arihnda had expected to have to carry that load. Clearly, Yularen hadn’t been overstating Gudry’s abilities.
“You did very well, Governor,” Gudry murmured as they headed for a line of four-seater personal transports just inside the last checkpoint. “Better than I expected.”
“I’m glad I met with your approval,” Arihnda murmured back. “We’ll start with my parents’ house, then head into the mine area for a look around.”
“We only needed your parents to get in,” Gudry said. “We’re in.”
“We’re only in past the barricade,” Arihnda pointed out. “Not into the mine complex itself.”
“Not a problem,” Gudry said. “Anyway, I want to see what’s going on before it gets dark.”
Arihnda closed her fingers around his upper arm. “One: Don’t be an idiot,” she said, lowering her voice. “My father’s a foreman, and my mother’s an administrator. Having a familiar face along will get us past checkpoints or security patrols a lot easier than ISB bluster talk. Two: A mining facility is as bright at night as it is in the daytime. It’s just the shadows that move to different places. And three: Since by-the-book Imperials like to attack enemy positions in the dark, sundown will draw the insurgents’ attention outward. Night is exactly what we want.”
Gudry was silent another couple of steps. “Fine,” he growled. “We’ll do it your way. For now.”
“We’ll do it my way,” Arihnda agreed. “For always.”
Her first fear was that her parents might have been shifted to a different work schedule. That would have entailed hunting them down or risking a comm call. To her relief, her mother answered the door on the second ring. “Yes?” she said cautiously. She looked back and forth between them, her eyes settling on Gudry. “What can I do for you?”
“You could start with a hug,” Arihnda suggested.
Elainye jerked, her gaze snapping back to Arihnda. There was a split second of confusion, and then her eyes widened. “Arihnda!” she gasped, stepping forward and wrapping her arms around her daughter. “I had no idea you were coming. What have you done to your hair?”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, Mother,” Arihnda said, giving Gudry a triumphant smirk over her mother’s shoulder. Gudry had argued that the long blond wig over Arihnda’s short black hair and the darkening lenses over her blue eyes wouldn’t fool anyone. Obviously, Arihnda had been right. “I heard about the trouble here and wanted to make sure you and Father were all right.”
“We’re fine,” Elainye said into Arihnda’s shoulder. “Though that could change at any moment.” She pulled back and held out a hand to Gudry. “I’m Elainye Pryce.”
“Mattai Daw, ma’am,” he said. “Arihnda’s told me so much about you that I feel I already know you.”
Arihnda felt her lip curl. In fact, everything Gudry knew about her parents had been relayed in brief snatches of conversation aboard the transport, dialogue that had consumed maybe fifteen minutes of their time together. The rest of the voyage from Dennogra had been spent in silence as Gudry buried himself in schematics, maps, and the latest ISB dispatches. “We need to talk, Mother,” she said. “Is Father in?”
“Yes, of course. Come in, come in.”
A minute and another round of hugs later, the four of them were seated together in the living room. “So what’s going on out there?” Talmoor asked. “Did you come here to talk to the governor about fixing this mess?”
“Unfortunately, Governor Restos doesn’t listen much to anyone,” Arihnda said, running a critical eye over her father. He’d aged considerably in the weeks since their last holocall, with his face more lined, his eyes more careworn, and his posture slumping. “In fact, I’m here very unofficially, which is why the hair and the eye lenses. Aside from making sure you two were safe, we need your help. A friend of Mattai’s may be inside the mine area, and we need your help to find him and get him out.”
“Oh, he’s in there, all right,” Gudry said with just the right mix of concern and embarrassment. “He’s just the type to jump into something like this without thinking. I need to find him and get him out before the whole thing goes up.”
“Let’s hold on just a minute here,” Talmoor said. “First of all, there’s no one in the mine who isn’t there of his or her own free will. They’re fighting for people’s rights against a repressive and dangerous government.”
Arihnda felt a knot form in her stomach. Thrawn had wondered which side her parents would be on in the standoff. At the time, Arihnda had reflexively defended their loyalty. To hear her father talking like this—“I think you may be painting with too wide a brush,” she put in. “The Empire is quite multifaceted.”
“Maybe on Coruscant it is,” Elainye said. “Maybe on Lothal. Not on Batonn. Here, the governor and his friends are—well, I’ll just say it. They’re corrupt, Arihnda. Utterly corrupt. And the galaxy needs to hear about it.”