Star Wars - Thrawn Trilogy - The Last Command 03

by Timothy Zahn

  Wedge felt his lip twist. Overestimating the enemy's abilities, he'd been taught a long time ago, could be just as dangerous as underestimating them. It was a lesson he would have to start remembering.

  "Interdictor gravfield is down," Bel Iblis's voice came in his ear. "All units: acknowledge and prepare to retreat on your marks."

  "Rogue Squadron: copy," Wedge said, grimacing as he turned onto their preplanned escape vector and looked back at what was left of the main battle group. There was no doubt about it: they'd been beaten, and beaten badly, and about all Bel Iblis's legendary tactical skill had been able to do had been to keep the defeat from turning into a rout.

  And the price was likely to be yet another system lost to the Empire.

  "Rogue Squadron: go."

  "Copy," Wedge sighed, and pulled back the hyperspace lever . . . and as the stars flared into starlines, a sobering thought occurred to him.

  For the foreseeable future, at least, underestimating the Empire was not likely to be all that much of a problem.

  Chapter 6

  The starlines shrank back into stars, and the Wild Karrde was back in normal space. Straight ahead was the tiny white dwarf sun of the Chazwa system, not all that distinguishable from the bright background stars around it. Nearby and a little to one side, a mostly dark circle edged by a slender lighted crescent, was the planet Chazwa itself. Scattered around it in the darkness of space the exhaust glows of perhaps fifty ships could be seen, both incoming and outgoing. Most were freighters and bulk cruisers, taking advantage of Chazwa's central transshipment location. A few were clearly Imperial warships.

  "Well, here we are," Aves said conversationally from the copilot station. "Incidentally, Karrde, I'd like to go on record as saying this is an insane idea."

  "Perhaps," Karrde conceded, shifting course toward the planet and checking his displays. Good; the rest of the group had made it in all right. "But if the Empire's clone transport route does indeed run through Orus sector, the Chazwa garrison should have records of the operation. Possibly even the origin point, if someone was careless."

  "I wasn't referring to the details of the raid," Aves said. "I meant that it was crazy for us to be getting involved in the first place. It's the New Republic's war, not ours—let them chase it down."

  "If I could trust them to do so, I would," Karrde said, peering out the starboard viewport. Another freighter seemed to be sidling slowly in the Wild Karrde's general direction. "But I'm not sure they're up to the task."

  Aves grunted. "I still don't buy Skywalker's numbers. Seems to me that if you could grow stable clones that fast, the old clonemasters would have done it."

  "Perhaps they did," Karrde pointed out. "I don't think any information on the cloning techniques of that era has survived. Everything I've ever seen has come from the much earlier prewar experiments."

  "Yeah, well . . ." Aves shook his head. "I'd still rather sit the whole thing out."

  "We may discover we don't have a choice in the matter." Karrde gestured to the freighter still moving up on them. "We seem to have a caller. Would you pull up an ID on him?"

  "Sure." Aves threw a quick look at the freighter, then turned to his board. "Not registering as any ship I've ever heard of. Wait a minute . . . yeah. Yeah, they've altered their ID—simple transponder overlay, looks like. Let's see if Ghent's magic decoder package can untangle it."

  Karrde nodded, the mention of Ghent's name sending his thoughts flicking briefly across the galaxy to Coruscant and the two associates he'd left there under New Republic care. If the timetable their medical people had given him was correct, Mara should be about recovered by now. She should be trying to get in touch with him soon, and he made a mental note to check in with the contact pipeline as soon as they were finished here.

  "Got it," Aves said triumphantly. "Well, well—I do believe it's an old friend of yours, Karrde. The Kern's Pride; the slightly less-than-honorable Samuel Tomas Gillespee, proprietor."

  "Is it, now," Karrde said, eyeing the ship pacing them a hundred meters away. "I suppose we'd better see what he wants."

  He keyed for a tight-beam transmission. "This is Talon Karrde calling the Kern's Pride," he said. "Don't just sit there, Gillespee—say hello."

  "Hello, Karrde," a familiar voice came back. "You don't mind if I figure out who I'm talking to before I say hello, do you?"

  "Not at all," Karrde assured him. "Nice little overlay on your ship ID, by the way."

  "Obviously could have been nicer," Gillespee said dryly. "We weren't even close to slicing yours yet. What are you doing here?"

  "I was about to ask you the same thing," Karrde said. "I was under the impression you'd been planning to retire."

  "I did," Gillespee said grimly. "Out of the business for good, and thanks for everything. Bought myself a big chunk of land on a nice little out-of-the-way world where I could watch the trees grow and stay out of everything that smelled like trouble. Place called Ukio—ever hear of it?"

  Beside Karrde, Aves shook his head and muttered something under his breath. "I seem to remember hearing that name recently, yes," Karrde conceded. "Were you there for the Imperial attack?"

  "I was there for the attack, the surrender, and all the occupation I could stomach," Gillespee growled. "Matter of fact, I had about as good a front-row seat to the bombardment as you could get. It was pretty spectacular, I'll tell you that."

  "It could be profitable as well," Karrde said, thinking hard. As far as he knew, the New Republic still didn't have a handle on what exactly the Empire had done at Ukio. Hard data on the attack could be invaluable to their tactical people. As well as commanding a hefty fee for both witness and finder. "I don't suppose you took any readings during the attack."

  "I've got a little from the bombardment part of it," Gillespee said. "The data card from my macrobinoculars. Why?"

  "There's a good chance I can find you a buyer for it," Karrde told him. "It might compensate somewhat for your lost property."

  "I doubt your buyer's got that much to spend," Gillespee sniffed. "You wouldn't have believed it, Karrde—you really wouldn't. I mean, we're not talking Svivren here, but even Ukio should have taken them a little longer to overrun."

  "The Empire's had a lot of practice overrunning worlds," Karrde reminded him. "You're lucky you made it out at all."

  "You got that one right," Gillespee agreed. "Faughn and Rappapor popped me about half a jump ahead of the stormtroopers. And half a jump behind the workers they sent to turn my land into a crop farm. I'm telling you, that new clone system they've got going is really creepy."

  Karrde threw a look at Aves. "How so?"

  "What do you mean, how so?" Gillespee retorted. "I don't happen to think people ought to come off an assembly line, thanks. And if they did, I sure as mynocks wouldn't put the Empire in charge of the factory. You should have seen the guys they had manning the roadblocks—put a shiver right straight through you."

  "I don't doubt it," Karrde said. "What are your plans after leaving Chazwa?"

  "I don't hardly have any plans before I get there," Gillespee countered sourly. "I was hoping to get in touch with Brasck's old contact man here, see if they'd be interested in taking us on. Why, you got something better?"

  "Possibly. We can start by sending that macrobinocular data card on to my buyer, drawing payment for you against a credit line I have set up with him. After that, I have another project in mind which you might find both interesting—"

  "We got company," Aves cut him off. "Two Imperial ships, heading this way. Looks like Lancer-class Frigates."

  "Uh-oh," Gillespee muttered. "Maybe we didn't get off Ukio as clean as I thought."

  "I think it more likely that we're their target," Karrde said, feeling his lip twist as he keyed an evasion course into the helm. "It's been nice talking to you, Gillespee. If you want to continue the conversation, meet me in eight days at the Trogan system—you know the place."

  "I can make it if you can," Gillespee counte
red. "If you can't, don't make it too easy for them."

  Karrde broke the contact. "Hardly," he murmured. "All right; here we go. Nice and easy . . ."

  He eased the Wild Karrde into a shallow portside drop, trying to make it look as if they were planning to cut past the planet itself and pick up a new hyperspace vector. "Do I alert the others?" Aves asked.

  "Not yet," Karrde said, giving his displays a quick look and setting the nav computer to work calculating their jump to lightspeed. "I'd rather abort the mission and try again later than tangle with a pair of Lancers who were serious about fighting."

  "Yeah," Aves said slowly. "Karrde . . . they're not changing course."

  Karrde looked up. Aves was right: neither Lancer had so much as twitched. They were still heading on their original vector.

  Straight for the Kern's Pride.

  He looked at Aves, to find the other looking back at him. "What do we do?" Aves asked.

  Karrde looked back at the Imperial ships. The Wild Karrde was a long way from being helpless in a fight, and his people were some of the best. But with weaponry that had been designed to take out enemy starfighters, two Lancers would be better than an even match for the group he'd brought to Chazwa.

  As he watched, the Kern's Pride suddenly made its move. Rolling into a sort of mutated drop-kick Koiogran maneuver, it took off at high speed at a sharp angle from its original course. The Lancers, not fooled a bit by the ploy, were right behind it.

  Which left the Wild Karrde completely in the clear. They could continue on to Chazwa, hit the garrison records, and be out before the Lancers could make it back. Fast, clean, and certainly preferable as far as the New Republic was concerned.

  But Gillespee was an old acquaintance . . . and on Karrde's scale, a fellow smuggler placed higher than any interstellar government he didn't belong to. "Apparently, Gillespee didn't get off Ukio as cleanly as he thought," he commented, bringing the Wild Karrde around and keying for intercom. "Lachton, Chin, Corvis—fire up the turbolasers. We're going in."

  "What about the other ships?" Aves asked as he activated the deflector shields and punched up a tactical display.

  "Let's get the Lancers' attention first," Karrde said. The three men at the turbolasers signaled ready; taking a deep breath, he threw power to the drive.

  The Lancers' commander wasn't anyone's fool. Even as the Wild Karrde drove toward them, one of the Imperial ships broke off its pursuit of the Kern's Pride and turned to confront this new threat. "I think we've got their attention," Aves said tightly. "Can I call the others into the party yet?"

  "Go ahead," Karrde told him, keying his own comm for a tight beam to the Kern's Pride. "Gillespee, this is Karrde."

  "Yeah, I see you," Gillespee came back. "What do you think you're doing?"

  "Giving you a hand," Karrde said. Ahead, the Lancer's twenty quad laser batteries opened up, raining green flashes down on the Wild Karrde. The turbolasers fired back, their three groups of fire looking rather pathetic in comparison. "All right—we've got this one tied down. Better get out before that other one finds the range."

  "You've got him tied down?" Gillespee retorted. "Look, Karrde—"

  "I said get out," Karrde cut him off sharply. "We can't hold him forever. Don't worry about me—I'm not exactly alone out here."

  "Here they come," Aves said, and Karrde took a moment to glance into the rear display. They were coming, all right: fifteen freighters strong, all zeroing in on the suddenly outgunned Lancer.

  From the comm came an amazed whistle. "You weren't kidding, were you?" Gillespee commented.

  "No, I wasn't," Karrde said. "Now get going, will you?"

  Gillespee laughed out loud. "I'll let you in on a little secret, Karrde. I'm not alone, either."

  And suddenly, barely visible through the haze of laser fire hammering at the Wild Karrde's viewports, the exhaust glows of nearly twenty ships suddenly veered off their individual courses. Sweeping in like hungry Barabel, they converged on the second Lancer.

  "So, Karrde," Gillespee continued conversationally. "At a guess, I'd say neither of us is going to get much business done at Chazwa this time around. What say we continue this conversation somewhere else? Say, in eight days?"

  Karrde smiled. "I'll look forward to it."

  He looked back at the Lancer, and his smile faded. Standard Lancer crew was 850; and from the capable way that one was holding off the rest of the ships, he would guess they were running with full complement. How many of them, he wondered, had been freshly created at Grand Admiral Thrawn's clone factory? "By the way, Gillespee," he added, "if you happen to run into any of our colleagues on the way, you might want to invite them along. I think they'd be interested in what I have to say."

  "You got it, Karrde," Gillespee grunted. "See you in eight."

  Karrde switched off the comm. So that was it. Gillespee would broadcast the word to the other major smuggling groups; and knowing Gillespee, the open invitation would quickly transmute into something just short of a command appearance. They'd be at Trogan—all of them, or near enough.

  Now all he had to figure out was what exactly he was going to say to them.

  Grand Admiral Thrawn leaned back in his command chair. "All right, gentlemen," he said, his gaze flicking in turn to each of the fourteen men standing in a loose semicircle around his console. "Are there any questions?"

  The slightly rumpled-looking man at one end of the semicircle glanced at the others. "No questions, Admiral," he said, his precise military voice in sharp contrast to his civilian-sloppy appearance. "What's our timetable?"

  "Your freighter is being prepped now," Thrawn told him. "You'll leave as soon as it's ready. How soon do you expect to penetrate the Imperial Palace?"

  "No sooner than six days from now, sir," the rumpled man said. "I'd like to hit one or two other ports before taking the ship in to Coruscant—their security will be easier to breach if we have a legitimate data trail they can backtrack. Unless you want it done sooner, of course."

  Thrawn's glowing eyes narrowed slightly, and Pellaeon could tell what he was thinking. Mara Jade, sitting there in the middle of Rebel headquarters. Perhaps at this very moment giving them the location of the Emperor's storehouse on Wayland . . . "Timing is critical in this operation," Thrawn told the commando leader. "But speed alone is useless if you're compromised before even entering the Palace. You will be the man on the scene, Major Himron. I leave it to your judgment."

  The commando leader nodded. "Yes, sir. Thank you, Admiral. We won't fail you."

  Thrawn smiled fractionally. "I know you won't, Major. Dismissed."

  Silently, the fourteen men turned and filed out of the command room. "You seemed surprised, Captain, at some of my instructions," Thrawn commented as the door slid shut behind them.

  "Yes, sir, I was," Pellaeon admitted. "It all made sense, of course," he added hastily. "I simply hadn't thought the operation out to that end point."

  "All end points must be prepared for," Thrawn said, keying his board. The lights muted, and on the walls of the command room a sampling of holographic paintings and planics appeared. "Mriss artwork," he identified it for Pellaeon's benefit. "One of the most curious examples of omission to be found anywhere in the civilized galaxy. Until they were contacted by the Tenth Alderaanian Expedition, not a single one of the dozens of Mriss cultures had ever developed any form of three-dimensional artwork."

  "Interesting," Pellaeon said dutifully. "Some flaw in their perceptual makeup?"