Heir To The Empire (21 page)

With an effort, Han turned from the viewport to face him. There was nothing to see out there, anyway-the Lady Luck was long gone. “You know, that’s almost exactly the same thing you said back on Boordii,” he reminded Lando sourly. “That botched dolfrimia run-remember? You said, ‘It’ll be fine; don’t worry about it.’ ”

Lando chuckled. “Yes, but this time I mean it.”

“That’s nice to know. So, what do you have planned for entertainment?”

“Well, the first thing we ought to do is have Threepio send off a message to Coruscant,” Lando said. “Give the impression that Leia’s aboard to any Imperials who might be listening. After that, we could move a couple of systems over and send another message. And after that-” he threw Han a sideways glance “-I thought we might like to do a little sightseeing.”

“Sightseeing?” Han echoed suspiciously. Lando was practically glowing with innocence, a look he almost never used except when he was trying to sucker someone into something. “You mean as in flying all over the galaxy looking for replacement mole miners?”

“Han!” Lando protested, looking hurt now. “Are you suggesting I’d stoop so low as to try and con you into helping me run my business?”

“Forgive me,” Han said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. “I forgot-you’re respectable now. So what sights are we going to see?”

“Well . . .” Casually, Lando leaned back and laced his fingers together behind his head. “You mentioned earlier that you hadn’t been able to get in touch with Talon Karrde. I thought we might take another crack at it.”

Han frowned at him. “You serious?”

“Why not? You want cargo ships, and you want a good slicer. Karrde can supply both.”

“I don’t need a slicer anymore,” Han said. “Leia’s as safe now as she’s ever likely to be. Remember?”

“Sure-until someone leaks the news that she’s there,” Lando countered. “I don’t think the Wookiees would, but there are non-Wookiee traders flying in and out of Kashyyyk all the time. All it takes is one person spotting her, and you’ll be right back where you were when you first got here.” He cocked an eyebrow. “And Karrde might also have something on this mysterious Imperial commander who’s been running you in circles lately.”

The commander who was almost certainly also the man behind the attacks on Leia . . . “You know how to make contact with Karrde?”

“Not directly, but I know how to get to his people. And I thought that as long as we had Threepio and his umpteen million languages aboard anyway, we’d just go ahead and cut a new contact path.”

“That’ll take time.”

“Not as much as you might think,” Lando assured him. “Besides, a new path will cover our trail better-yours and mine both.”

Han grimaced, but Lando was right. And with Leia safely hidden away, at least for now, they could afford to play it cautious. “All right,” he said. “Assuming we don’t wind up playing tag with a Star Destroyer or two.”

“Right,” Lando agreed soberly. “The last thing we want is to draw the Imperials onto Karrde’s tail. We’ve got enough enemies out there as it is.” He tapped the ship’s intercom switch. “Threepio? You there?”

“Of course,” Leia’s voice returned.

“Come on up here,” Lando told the droid. “Time for your debut performance.”

The command room was filled with sculptures instead of pictures this time: over a hundred of them, lining the walls in holographic niches as well as scattered around the floor on ornate pedestals. The variety, as Pellaeon had come to expect, was astonishing, ranging from human-style chunks of simple stone and wood to others that were more like tethered living creatures than works of art. Each was illuminated by a hazy globe of light, giving sharp contrast to the darkness of the spaces between them. “Admiral?” Pellaeon called uncertainly, trying to see around the artwork and through the gloom.

“Come in, Captain,” Thrawn’s coolly modulated voice beckoned. Over at the command chair, just above the hazy white of the Grand Admiral’s uniform, two glowing red slits appeared. “You have something?”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon told him, walking to the console ring and handing a data card over it. “One of our probes in the outer Athega system has picked up Skywalker. And his companions.”

“And his companions,” Thrawn echoed thoughtfully. He took the data card, inserted it, and for a minute watched the replay in silence. “Interesting,” he murmured. “Interesting, indeed. What’s that third ship-the one maneuvering to link with the Millennium Falcon’s dorsal hatch?”

“We’ve tentatively identified it as the Lady Luck,” Pellaeon said. “Administrator Lando Calrissian’s personal ship. One of the other probes copied a transmission stating that Calrissian was leaving Nkllon on a purchasing trip.”

“Do we know that Calrissian did, in fact, board the ship at Nkllon?”

“Ah . . . no, sir, not for certain. We can try to get that information, though.”

“Unnecessary,” Thrawn said. “Our enemies are clearly past the stage of such childish tricks.” Thrawn pointed to the display, where the Millennium Falcon and the Lady Luck were now joined together. “Observe, Captain, their strategy. Captain Solo and his wife and probably the Wookiee Chewbacca board their ship on Nkllon, while Calrissian similarly boards his. They fly to the outer Athega system . . . and there they make a switch.”

Pellaeon frowned. “But we’ve-”

“Shh,” Thrawn cut him off sharply, holding up a finger for silence, his eyes on the display. Pellaeon watched, too, as absolutely nothing happened. After a few minutes the two ships separated, maneuvering carefully away from each other.

“Excellent,” Thrawn said, freezing the frame. “Four minutes fifty-three seconds. They’re in a hurry, of course, locked together so vulnerably. Which means . . .” His forehead furrowed in concentration, then cleared. “Three people,” he said, a touch of satisfaction in his voice. “Three people transferred, in one direction or the other, between those two ships.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon nodded, wondering how in the Empire the Grand Admiral had figured that one out. “At any rate, we know that Leia Organa Solo remained aboard the Millennium Falcon.”

“Do we?” Thrawn asked, lazily polite. “Do we indeed?”

“I believe we do, sir, yes,” Pellaeon said, quietly insistent. The Grand Admiral hadn’t seen the entire playback, after all. “Right after the Lady Luck and Skywalker’s X-wing left, we intercepted a transmission from her that definitely originated from the Millennium Falcon.”

Thrawn shook his head. “A recording,” he said, his voice leaving no room for argument. “No; they’re cleverer than that. A voiceprint-doctored droid, then-probably Skywalker’s 3PO protocol droid. Leia Organa Solo, you see, was one of the two people who left with the Lady Luck.”

Pellaeon looked at the display. “I don’t understand.”

“Consider the possibilities,” Thrawn said, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingertips in front of him. “Three people start out aboard the Millennium Falcon, one aboard the Lady Luck. Three people then transfer. But neither Solo nor Calrissian is the type to turn his ship over to the dubious command of a computer or droid. So each ship must end up with at least one person aboard. You follow so far?”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said. “That doesn’t tell us who is where, though.”

“Patience, Captain,” Thrawn interrupted him. “Patience. As you say, the question now is that of the final makeup of the crews. Fortunately, once we know there were three transfers, there are only two possible combinations. Either Solo and Organa Solo are together aboard the Lady Luck, or else Organa Solo and the Wookiee are there.”

“Unless one of the transfers was a droid,” Pellaeon pointed out.

“Unlikely,” Thrawn shook his head. “Historically, Solo has never liked droids, nor allowed them to travel aboard his ship except under highly unusual circumstances. Skywalker’s droid and its astromech counterpart appear to be the sole exceptions; and thanks to your transmission data, we already know that that droid has remained on the Millennium Falcon.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, not entirely convinced but knowing better than to argue the point. “Shall I put out an alert on the Lady Luck, then?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Thrawn said, and this time the satisfaction came through clearly. “I know exactly where Leia Organa Solo is going.”

Pellaeon stared at him. “You’re not serious. Sir.”

“Perfectly serious, Captain,” Thrawn said evenly. “Consider. Solo and Organa Solo have nothing to gain by simply transferring together to the Lady Luck-the Millennium Falcon is faster and far better defended. This exercise only makes sense if Organa Solo and the Wookiee are together.” Thrawn smiled up at Pellaeon. “And given that, there is only one logical place for them to go.”

Pellaeon looked at the display, feeling slightly sandbagged. But the Grand Admiral’s logic tracked clean. “Kashyyyk?”

“Kashyyyk,” Thrawn confirmed. “They know they can’t evade our Noghri forever, and so they’ve decided to surround her with Wookiees. For all the good it will do them.”

Pellaeon felt his lip twitch. He’d been aboard one of the ships that had been sent to Kashyyyk to capture Wookiees for the Empire’s slave trade. “It may not be as easy as it sounds, Admiral,” he cautioned. “Kashyyyk’s ecology can best be described as a layered deathtrap. And the Wookiees themselves are extremely capable fighters.”

“So are the Noghri,” Thrawn countered coldly. “Now. What of Skywalker?”

“His vector away from Athega was consistent with a course toward Jomark,” Pellaeon told him. “Of course, he could easily have altered it once he was out of range of our probes.”

“He’s going there,” Thrawn said, lip twisting in a tight smile. “Our Jedi Master has said so, hasn’t he?” The Grand Admiral glanced at the chrono on his display board. “We’ll leave for Jomark immediately. How much lead time will we have?”

“A minimum of four days, assuming that Skywalker’s X-wing hasn’t been overly modified. More than that, depending on how many stopovers he has to make on the way.”

“He’ll make no stopovers,” Thrawn said. “Jedi use a hibernation state for trips of such length. For our purposes, though, four days will be quite adequate.”

He straightened in his chair and touched a switch. The command room’s lights came back up, the holographic sculptures fading away. “We’ll need two more ships,” he told Pellaeon. “An Interdictor Cruiser to bring Skywalker out of hyperspace where we want him, and some kind of freighter. An expendable one, preferably.”

Pellaeon blinked. “Expendable, sir?”

“Expendable, Captain. We’re going to set up the attack as a pure accident-an opportunity that will seem to have arisen while we were investigating a suspicious freighter for Rebellion munitions.” He cocked an eyebrow. “That way, you see, we retain the option of turning him over to C’baoth if we choose to do so, without even Skywalker realizing he was actually ambushed.”

“Understood, sir,” Pellaeon said. “With your permission, I’ll get the Chimaera underway.” He turned to go-

And paused. Halfway across the room, one of the sculptures had not disappeared with the others. Sitting all alone in its globe of light, it slowly writhed on its pedestal like a wave in some bizarre alien ocean. “Yes,” Thrawn said from behind him. “That one is indeed real.”

“It’s . . . very interesting,” Pellaeon managed. The sculpture was strangely hypnotic.

“Isn’t it?” Thrawn agreed, his voice sounding almost wistful. “It was my one failure, out on the Fringes. The one time when understanding a race’s art gave me no insight at all into its psyche. At least not at the time. Now, I believe I’m finally beginning to understand them.”

“I’m sure that will prove useful in the future,” Pellaeon offered diplomatically.

“I doubt it,” Thrawn said, in that same wistful voice. “I wound up destroying their world.”

Pellaeon swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said, starting again for the door. He winced only a little as he passed the sculpture.

There was no dreaming in the Jedi hibernation trance. No dreaming, no consciousness, virtually no awareness of the outside world. It was very much like a coma, in fact, except for one interesting anomaly: despite the absence of true consciousness, Luke’s time sense still somehow managed to function. He didn’t understand it, exactly, but it was something he’d learned to recognize and use.

It was that time sense, coupled with Artoo’s frantic gurgling in the foggy distance, that was his first hint something was wrong.

“All right, Artoo, I’m awake,” he reassured the droid as he worked his way back toward consciousness. Blinking the gummy feeling out of his eyes, he gave the instruments a quick scan. The readings confirmed what his time sense had already told him: the X-wing had come out of hyperspace nearly twenty light-years short of Jomark. The proximity indicator registered two ships practically on top of him ahead, with a third off to one side in the distance. Still blinking, he raised his head for a look.

And with a rush of adrenaline came fully awake. Directly ahead of him was what looked like a light freighter, a blazing overload in its engine section visible through crumpled and half-vaporized hull plates. Beyond it, looming like a dark cliff face, was an Imperial Star Destroyer.

Anger, fear, aggression-the dark side of the Force are they. With an effort, Luke forced down his fear. The freighter was between him and the Star Destroyer; concentrating on their larger prey, the Imperials might not even have noticed his arrival. “Let’s get out of here, Artoo,” he said, keying the controls back to manual and swinging the X-wing hard around. The etheric rudder whined in protest with the turn-

“Unidentified starfighter,” a harsh voice boomed from the speaker. “This is the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera. Transmit your identification code and state your business.”

So much for hoping he wouldn’t be noticed. In the distance now, Luke could see what it was that had yanked the X-wing out of hyperspace: the third ship was an Interdictor Cruiser, the Empire’s favorite tool for keeping opponents from jumping to lightspeed. Obviously, they’d been lying in wait for the freighter; it was just his bad luck that he’d run across the Interdictor’s projected mass shadow and been kicked out of hyperspace along with it.