Star Wars - Thrawn Trilogy - Dark Force Rising 02 (18 page)

She focused again on Khabarakh's face; on those dark eyes, protruding jaw, and needle-sharp teeth. He was watching her, ignoring the threat of the enraged Wookiee behind him, his hand poised ready over the comm switch. A beep sounded from the board, and his hand twitched toward the switch before stopping again. The board beeped again- "I have not betrayed you, Lady Vader," Khabarakh repeated, a note of urgency in his voice. "You must believe me."

Leia braced herself. "Chewie, be quiet," she said. "Chewie? Chewie, be quiet."

The Wookiee ignored the order Finally back on his feet, he roared his war cry again and lunged for Thabaraldi's throat. The Noghri took the charge head-on this time, grabbing Chewbacca's huge wrists in his wiry hands and holding on for all he was worth.

It wasn't enough. Slowly but steadily, Khabarakh's arms were bent steadily backwards as Chewbacca forced his way forward. "Chewie, I said stop," Leia tried again. "Use your head-if he was planning a trap, don't you think he'd have timed it for when we were asleep or something?"

Chewbacca spit out a growl, his hands continuing their unwavering advance. "But if he doesn't check in, they'll know something's wrong," she countered. "That's a sure way to bring them down on us."

"The Lady Vader speaks truth," Khabarakh said, his voice taut with the strain of holding back Chewbacca's hands. "I have not betrayed you, but if I give no recognition signal you will be betrayed."

"He's right," Leia said. "If they come to investigate, we lose by default. Come on, Chewie, it's our only hope."

The Wookiee snarled again, shaking his head firmly. "Then you leave me no choice," Khabarakh said.

And without warning, the cockpit flashed with blue light, dropping Chewbacca to the floor like a huge sack of grain. "What-?" Leia gasped, dropping to her knees beside the motionless Wookiee.

"Khabakakh!"

"A stun weapon only," the Noghri said, breathing rapidly as he swiveled back to his board. "A built-in defense."

Leia twisted her head to glare at him, furious at what he'd done : a fury that faded reluctantly behind the logic of the situation. Chewbacca had been fully prepared to throttle the life out of Khabarakh; and from personal experience, she knew how hard it was to calm down an angry Wookiee, even when you were his friend to begin with.

And Khabarakh had tried talking first. "Now what?" she asked the Noghri, digging a hand through Chewbacca's thick torso hair to check his heartbeat. It was steady, which meant the stun weapon hadn't played any of its rare but potentially lethal tricks on the Wookiee's nervous system.

"Now be silent," Khabarakh said, tapping his comm switch and saying something in his own language. Another mewing Noghri voice replied, and for a few minutes they conversed together. Leia remained kneeling at Chewbacca's side, wishing she'd had time to bring Threepio up before the discussion started. It would have been nice to know what the conversation was all about.

But finally it ended, and Khabarakh signed off. "We are safe now," be said, slumping a little in his seat. "They are persuaded it was an equipment malfunction."

"Let's hope so," Leia said.

Khabarakh looked at her, a strange expression on his nightmare face. "I have not betrayed you, Lady Vader," he said quietly, his voice hard and yet oddly pleading. "You must believe me. I have promised to defend you, and I will. To my own death, if need be."

Leia stared at him : and whether through some sensitivity of the Force or merely her own long diplomatic experience, she finally understood the position Khabarakh was now in. Whatever waverings or second thoughts he might have been feeling during the voyage, the Star Destroyer's unexpected appearance bad burned those uncertainties away. Khabarakh's word of honor had been brought into question and he was now in the position of having to conclusively prove that he had not broken that word.

And he would have to go to whatever lengths such proof demanded.

Even if it killed him.

Earlier, Leia had wondered how Khabarakh could possibly understand the concept of the Wookees life debt. Perhaps the Noghri and Wookiee cultures were more alike than she'd realized.

"I believe you," she told him, climbing to her feet and sitting down in the copilot seat. Chewbacca she would have to leave where he was until he was awake enough to help her move him. "What now?"

Khabarakh turned back to his board. "Now we must make a decision," he said. "My intention had been to bring you to ground in the city of Nystao, waiting until full dark to present you to my clan dynast. But that is now impossible. Our Imperial lord has come, and is holding a convocate of the dynasts."

The back of Leia's neck tingled. "Your Imperial lord is the Grand Admiral?" she asked carefully.

"Yes," Khabarakh said. "that is his flagship, the Chimaera. I remember the day that the Lord Darth Vader first brought him to us," he added, his mewing voice becoming reflective. "The Lord Vader told us that his duties against the Emperor's enemies would now be taking his full attention. That the Grand Admiral would henceforth be our lord and commander." He made a strange, almost purring sound deep in his chest. "There were many who were sad that day. The Lord Vader had been the only one save the Emperor who cared for Noghri well-being. He had given us hope and purpose."

Leia grimaced. That purpose being to go off and die as death commandos at the Emperor's whim. But she couldn't say things like that to Khabarakh. Not yet, anyway. "Yes," she murmured.

At her feet, Chewbacca twitched. "He will be fully awake soon," Khabarakh said. "I would not like to stun him again. Can you control him?"

"I think so," Leia said. They were coming in low toward the upper atmosphere now, on a course that would take them directly beneath the orbiting Star Destroyer. "I hope they don't decide to do a sensor focus on us," she murmured. "If they pick up three life-forms here, you're going to have a lot of explaining to do."

"The ship's static-damping should prevent that," Khabarakh assured her. "It is at full power."

Leia frowned. "Aren't they likely to wonder about that?"

"No. I explained it was part of the same malfunction that caused the transmitter problem."

There was a low rumble from Chewbacca, and Leia looked down to see the Wookiee's eyes glaring impotently up at her. Fully alert again, but without enough motor control yet to do anything. "We've cleared outer control," she told him. "We're heading down to-where are we going, Khabarakh?"

The Noghri took a deep breath, let it out in an odd sort of whistle. "We will go to my home, a small village near the edge of the Clean Land. I will hide you there until our lord the Grand Admiral leaves."

Leia thought about that. A small village situated off the mainstream of Noghri life ought to be safely out of the way of wandering Imperials. On the other hand, if it was anything like the small villages she'd known, her presence there would be common knowledge an hour after they put down. "Can you trust the other villagers to keep quiet?"

"Do not worry," Khabarakh said. "I will keep you safe."

But he hesitated before he said it:and as they headed into the atmosphere, Leia noted uneasily that he hadn't really answered the question.

The dynast bowed one last time and stepped back to the line of those awaiting their turn to pay homage to their leader. Thrawn, seated in the gleaming High Seat of the Common Room of Honoghr, nodded gravely to the departing clan leader and motioned to the next. The other stepped forward, moving in the formalized dance that seemed to indicate respect, and bowed his forehead to the ground before the Grand Admiral.

Standing two meters to Thrawn's right and a little behind him, Pellaeon shifted his weight imperceptibly between feet, stifled a yawn, and wondered when this ritual would be over. He'd been under the impression they'd come to Honoghr to try to inspire the commando teams, but so far the only Noghri they'd seen had been ceremonial guards and this small but excessively boring collection of clan leaders. Thrawn presumably had his reasons for wading through the ritual, but Pellaeon wished it would hurry up and be over. With a galaxy still to win back for the Empire, sitting here listening to a group of grayskinned aliens drone on about their loyalty seemed a ridiculous waste of time.

There was a touch of air on the back of his neck.

"Captain?" someone said quietly in his ear-Lieutenant Tschel, he tentatively identified the voice. "Excuse me, sir, but Grand Admiral Thrawn asked to be informed immediately if anything out of the ordinary happened."

Pellaeon nodded slightly, glad of any interruption. "What is it?"

"It doesn't seem dangerous, sir, or even very important," Tschel said. "A Noghri commando ship on its way in almost didn't give the recognition response in time."

"Equipment trouble, probably," Pellaeon said.

"That's what the pilot said," Tschel told him. "The odd thing is that he begged off putting down at the Nystao landing area. You'd think that someone with equipment problems would want his ship looked at immediately."

"A bad transmitter isn't exactly a crisis-level problem," Pellaeon grunted. But Tschel had a point; and Nystao was the only place on Honoghr with qualified spaceship repair facilities. "We have an ID on the pilot?"

"Yes, sir. His name's Khabarakh, clan Kihm'bar. I pulled up what we have on him," he added, offering Pellaeon a data pad.

Surreptitiously, Pellaeon took it, wondering what he should do now. Thrawn had indeed left instructions that he was to be notified of any unusual activity anywhere in the system. But to interrupt the ceremony for something so trivial didn't seem like a good idea.

As usual, Thrawn was one step ahead of him. Lifting a hand, he stopped the Noghri clan dynast's presentation and turned his glowing red eyes on Pellaeon. "You have something to report, Captain?"

"A small anomaly only, sir," Pellaeon told him, steeling himself and stepping to the Grand Admiral's side. "An incoming commando ship was slow to transmit its recognition signal, and then declined to put down at the Nystao landing area. Probably just an equipment problem."

"Probably," Thrawn agreed. "Was the ship scanned for evidence of malfunction?"

"Ah :" Pellaeon checked the data pad. "The scan was inconclusive," he told the other. "The ship's static-damping was strong enough to block-"

"The incoming ship was static-damped?" Thrawn interrupted, looking sharply up at Pellaeon.

"Yes, sir.

Wordlessly, Thrawn held up a hand. Pellaeon gave him the data pad, and for a moment the Grand Admiral frowned down at it, skimming the report. "Khabarakh; clan Kihm'bar," he murmured to himself.

"Interesting." He looked up at Pellaeon again. "Where did the ship go?"

Pellaeon looked in turn at Tschel. "According to the last report, it was headed south," the lieutenant said. "It might still be in range of our tractor beams, sir.

Pellaeon turned back to Thrawn. "Shall we try to stop it, Admiral?" 

????? with Thrawn looked down at the data pad, his face tight concentration. "No," he said at last. "Let it land, but track it. And order a tech team from the Chimaera to meet us at the ship's final destination." His eyes searched the line of Noghri dynasts, came to rest on one of them. "Dynast Ir'khaim, clan Kihm'bar, step forward."

The Noghri did so. "What is your wish, my lord?" he mewed.

"One of your people has come home," Thrawn said. "We go to his village to welcome him."

Ir'khaim bowed. "At my lord's request."

Thrawn stood up. "Order the shuttle to be prepared, Captain," he told Pellaeon. "We leave at once.

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, nodding the order on to Lieutenant Thchel. "Wouldn't it be easier, sir. to have the ship and pilot brought here to us?"

"Easier, perhaps," Thrawn acknowledged, "but possibly not as illuminating. You obviously didn't recognize the pilot's name; but Khabarakh, clan Kihm'bar, was once part of commando team twenty-two.

Does that jog any memories?"

Pellaeon felt his stomach tighten. "That was the team that went after Leia Organa Solo on Kashyyyk."

"And of which team only Khabarakh still survives," Thrawn nodded. "I think it might be instructive to hear from him the details of that failed mission. And to find out why it's taken him this long to return home."

Thrawn's eyes glittered. "And to find out," he added quietly, "just why he's trying so hard to avoid us."

It was full dark by the time Khabarakh brought the ship to ground in his village, a tight-grouped cluster of huts with brightly lit windows. "Do ships land here often?" Leia asked as Khabarakh pointed the ship toward a shadowy structure standing apart near the center of the village. In the glare of the landing lights the shadow became a large cylindrical building with a flat cone-shaped roof, the circular wall composed of massive vertical wooden pillars alternating with a lighter, shimmery wood. Just beneath the eaves she caught a glint of a metal band encircling the entire building.

"It is not common," Khabarakh said, cutting the repulsorlifts and running the ship's systems down to standby. "Neither is it unheard of."

In other words, it was probably going to attract a fair amount of attention. Chewbacca, who had recovered enough for Leia to help into one of the cockpit passenger seats, was obviously thinking along the same lines. "The villagers are all close family of the clan Kihm'bar," Khabarakh said in answer to the Wookiee's slightly slurred question. "They will accept my promise of protection as their own. Come."

Leia unstrapped and stood up, suppressing a grimace as she did so. But they were here now, and she could only hope that Khabarakh's confidence was more than just the unfounded idealism of youth.

She helped Chewbacca unstrap and together they followed the Noghri back toward the main hatchway, collecting Threepio from her cabin on the way. "I must go first," Khabarakh said as they reached the exit. "By custom, I must approach alone to the dukha of the clan Kihm'bar upon arrival. By law, I am required to announce out-clan visitors to the head of my family."