Star Wars - Thrawn Trilogy - Dark Force Rising 02 (39 page)

"Skywalker?" she called, blinking at the purple haze floating in front of her eyes and wrinkling her nose at the tingling smell of ozone. "Where are you?"

"Over here by C'baoth," Skywalker's voice said. "He's still alive."

"We can fix that," Mara growled. Carefully picking her way across the steaming ruts the X-wing's laser cannon had gouged in the ground, she headed over.

C'baoth was lying on his back, unconscious but breathing evenly, with Skywalker kneeling over him. "Not even singed," she murmured. "Impressive."

"Artoo wasn't shooting to kill," Skywalker said, his fingertips moving gently across the old man's face. "It was probably the sonic shock that got him."

"That, or getting knocked off his feet by the shock wave," Mara agreed, lining her blaster up on the still figure. "Get out of the way. I'll finish it."

Skywalker looked up at her. "We're not going to kill him," he said. "Not like this."

"Would you rather wait until he's conscious again and can fight back?" she retorted.

"There's no need to kill him at all," Skywalker insisted. "We can be off Jomark long before he wakes up."

"You don't leave an enemy at your back," she told him stiffly. "Not if you like living.

"He doesn't have to be an enemy, Mara," Skywalker said with that irritating earnestness of his. "He's ill. Maybe he can be cured."

Mara felt her lip twist. "You didn't hear the way he was talking before you showed up," she said. "He's insane, all right; but that's not all he is anymore. He's a lot stronger, and a whole lot more dangerous." She hesitated. "He sounded just like the Emperor and Vader used to."

A muscle in Skywalker's cheek twitched. "Vader was deep in the dark side, too," he told her. "He was able to break that hold and come back. Maybe C'baoth can do the same.

"I wouldn't bet on it," Mara said. But she holstered her blaster. They didn't have time to debate the issue; and as long as she needed Skywalker's help, he had effective veto on decisions like this. "Just remember, it's your back that'll get the knife if you're wrong."

"I know." He looked down at C'baoth once more, then back up at her. "You said Karrde was in trouble."

"Yes," Mara nodded, glad to change the subject.

Skywalker's mention of the Emperor and Vader had reminded her all too clearly of that recurring dream. "The Grand Admiral's taken him. I need your help to get him out."

She braced herself for the inevitable argument and bargaining; but to her surprise, he simply nodded and stood up. "Okay," he said. "Let's go."

With one last mournful electronic wail Artoo signed off and with the usual flicker of pseudomotion, the X-wing was gone. "Well, he's not happy about it," Luke said, shutting down the Skipray's transmitter. "But I think I've persuaded him to go straight home."

"You'd better be more than just thinking you've persuaded him," Mara warned from the pilot's chair, her eyes on the nav computer display. "Sneaking into an Imperial supply depot is going to be hard enough without a New Republic X-wing in tow.

"Right," Luke said, throwing a sideways look at her and wondering if getting into the Skipray with her had been one of the smarter things he'd done lately. Mara had put the ysalamir away in the rear of the ship, and he could feel her hatred of him simmering beneath her consciousness like a half-burned fire. It evoked unpleasant memories of the Emperor, the man who'd been Mara's teacher and Luke briefly wondered if this could be some sort of overly elaborate trick to lure him to his death.

But her hatred seemed to be under control, and there was no deceit in her that he could detect.

But then, he hadn't seen C'baoth's deceit either, until it was almost too late.

Luke shifted in his chair, his face warming with embarrassment at how easily he'd been taken in by C'baoth's act. But it hadn't all been an act, he reminded himself. The Jedi Master's emotional instabilities were genuine-that much he was convinced of. And even if those instabilities didn't extend as far as the insanity that Mara had alluded to, they certainly extended far enough for C'baoth to qualas ill.

And if what she'd said about C'baoth working with the Empire was also true :

Luke shivered. I will teach her such power as you can't imagine, C'baoth had said about Leia. The words had been different from those Vader had spoken to Luke on Endor, but the dark sense behind them had been identical. Whatever C'baoth had once been, there was no doubt in Luke's mind that he was now moving along the path of the dark side.

And yet, Luke had been able to help Vader win his way back from that same path. Was it conceit to think he could do the same for C'baoth?

He shook the thought away. However C'baoth's destiny might yet be entwined with his, such encounters were too far in the future to begin planning for them. For now, he needed to concentrate on the immediate task at hand, and to leave the future to the guidance of the Force. "How did the Grand Admiral find Karrde?" he asked Mara.

Her lips compressed momentarily, and Luke caught a flash of self-reproach. "They put a homing beacon aboard my ship," she said. "I led them right to his hideout."

Luke nodded, thinking back to the rescue of Leia and that harrowing escape from the first Death Star aboard the Falcon. "They pulled that same trick on us, too," he said. "That's how they found the Yavin base."

"Considering what it cost them, I don't think you've got any complaints coming," Mara said sarcastically.

"I don't imagine the Emperor was pleased," Luke murmured.

"No, he wasn't," Mara said, her voice dark with memories of her own. "Vader nearly died for that blunder." Deliberately, she looked over at Luke's hands. "That was when he lost his right hand, in fact."

Luke flexed the fingers of his artificial right hand, feeling a ghostly echo of the searing pain that had lanced through it as Vader's lightsaber had sliced through skin and muscle and bone. A fragment of an old Tatooine aphortsm flickered through his mind: something about the passing of evil from one generation to the next "What's the plan?" he asked.

Mara took a deep breath, and Luke could sense the emotional effort as she put the past aside. "Karrde's being held aboard the Grand Admiral's flagship, the Chimaera," she told him. "According to their flight schedule, they're going to be taking on supplies in the Wistril system four days from now. If we push it, we should be able to get there a few hours ahead of them. We'll ditch the Skipray, take charge of one of the supply shuttles, and just go on up with the rest of the flight pattern."

Luke thought it over. It sounded tricky, but not ridiculously so. "What happens after we're aboard?"

"Standard Imperial procedure is to keep all the shuttle crews locked aboard their ships while the Chimaera's crewers handle the unloading," Mara said. "Or at least that was standard procedure five years ago. Means we'll need some kind of diversion to get out of the shuttle."

"Sounds risky," Luke shook his head. "We don't want to draw attention to ourselves."

"You got any better ideas?"

Luke shrugged. "Not yet," he said. "But we've got four days to think about it. We'll come up with something."

"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."

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-

And whipped the edge of her hand hard into the side of the first gunner's neck.

The man's head snapped sideways and he toppled to the floor without a sound. The second gunner had just enough time to gurgle something unintelligible before Mara sent him to join his friend.

"Come on, let's get out of here," she snapped, feeling along the line where the door fitted into the car's cylindrical wall. "Locked solid. Come on, Skywalker, get busy here."

Luke ignited his lightsaber. "How much time have we got?" he asked as he carved a narrow exit through part of the door.

"Not much," Mara said grimly. "Turbolift cars have sensors that keep track of the number of people inside. It'll give us maybe another minute to do our ID checks before reporting us to the system computer. I need to get to a terminal before the flag transfers from there to the main computer and brings the storm troopers down on top of us."

Luke finished the cut and closed down the lightsaber as Mara and Karrde lifted the section down and out of the way. Beyond was the tunnel wall, not quite in line with the hole. "Good," Mara said, easing through the gap. "We were starting to rotate when the system froze down. There's room here to get into the tunnel."

The others followed. The turbolift tunnel was roughly rectangular in cross-section, with gleaming guide rails along the walls, ceiling, and floor. Luke could feel the tingle of electric fields as he passed close beside the rails, and he made a mental note not to touch them. "Where are we going?" he whispered down the tunnel toward Mara.

"Right here," she whispered back, stopping at a red rimmed plate set in the wall between the guide rails. "Access tunnel-should lead back to a service droid storage room and computer terminal."

The lightsaber made quick work of the access panel's safety interlock. Mara darted through the opening, blaster in hand, and disappeared down the dark tunnel beyond. Luke and Karrde followed past a double row of deactivated maintenance droids, each with a bewildering array of tools fanned out from their limbs as if for inspection. Beyond the droids the tunnel widened into a small room where, as predicted, a terminal sat nestled amid the tubes and cables. Mara was already hunched over it; but as Luke stepped into the room he caught the sudden shock in her sense. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"They've shut down the main computer," she said, a stunned expression on her face. "Not just bypassed or put it on standby. Shut it down."

"The Grand Admiral must have figured out you can get into it," Karrde said, coming up behind Luke. "We'd better get moving. Do you have any idea where we are?"

"I think we're somewhere above the aft hangar bays," Mara said. "Those service techs got off just forward of the central crew section, and we hadn't gone very far down yet."

"Above the hangar bays," Karrde repeated thoughtfully. "Near the vehicle deep storage area, in other words?"

Mara frowned at him. "Are you suggesting we grab a ship from up there?"

"Why not?" Karrde countered. "They'll probably be expecting us to go directly to one of the hangar bays. They might not be watching for us to come in via vehicle lift from deep storage."

"And if they are, it'll leave us trapped like clipped mynocks when the stormtroopers come to get us," Mara retorted. "Trying to shoot our way out of deep storage-"

"Hold it," Luke cut her off, Jedi combat senses tingling a warning. "Someone's coming."

Mara muttered a curse and dropped down behind the computer terminal, blaster trained on the door. Karrde, still weaponless, faded back into the partial cover of the service tunnel and the maintenance droids lined up there. Luke flattened himself against the wall beside the door, lightsaber held ready but not ignited. He let the Force flow through him as he poised for action, listening to the dark, purposeful senses of the troopers coming up to the door and recognizing to his regret that no subtle mind touches would accomplish anything here. Gripping his lightsaber tightly, he waited :

Abruptly, with only a flicker of warning, the door slid open and two stormtroopers were in the room, blaster rifles at the ready. Luke raised his lightsaber, thumb on the activation switch-