Star Wars - Thrawn Trilogy - Dark Force Rising 02

by Timothy Zahn

  "I know," Leia said, searching the sky for the shuttles' running lights and trying to remember everything she could about life-form identification algorithms. Heart rate was one of the parameters, she knew, as were ambient atmosphere, respiratory byproducts, and molecule-chain EM polarization effects. But the chief long-range parameter was- "We need a heat source," she told Khabarakh. "As big a one as possible."

  "The bake house," the Noghri said, pointing to a windowless building three down from where they stood. At its back was a squat chimney from which wisps of smoke could be seen curling upward in the backwash of light from the surrounding structures.

  "Sounds like our best chance," Leia agreed. "Khabarakh, you hide Threepio Chewie, come with me."

  The Noghri were waiting for them as they stepped from the shuttle: three females standing side by side, with two children acting as honor wardens by the doors of the clan dukha building. Thrawn glanced at the group, threw an evaluating sweep around the area, and then turned to Pellaeon. "Wait here until the tech team arrives, Captain," he ordered Pellaeon quietly. "Get them started on a check of the communications and countermeasures equipment in the ship over there. Then join me inside."

  "Yes, sir."

  Thrawn turned to Ir'kbaim. "Dynast," he invited, gesturing at the waiting Noghri. The dynast bowed and strode toward them. Thrawn threw a glance at Rukh, who'd taken Ir'khaim's former position at the Grand Admiral's side, and together they followed. There was the usual welcoming ritual, and then the females led the way into the dukha.

  The shuttle from the Chimaera was only a couple of minutes behind them. Pellaeon briefed the tech team and got them busy, then crossed to the dukha and went in.

  He'd expected that the maitrakh would have managed to round up perhaps a handful of her people for this impromptu late-evening visit by their glorious lord and master. To his surprise, he found that the old girl had in fact turned out half the village. There was a double row of them, children as well as adults, lining the dukha walls from the huge genealogy wall chart back to the double doors and around again to the meditation booth opposite the chart. Thrawn was seated in the clan High Seat two thirds of the way to the back of the room with Ir'khaim standing again at his side. The three females who'd met the shuttle stood facing them with a second tier of elders another pace back. Standing with the females, his steelgray skin a marked contrast to their older, darker gray, was a young Noghri male.

  Pellaeon had, apparently, missed nothing more important than a smattering of the nonsense ritual the Noghri never seemed to get enough of. As he moved past the silent lines of aliens to stand at Thrawn's other side, the young male stepped forward and knelt before the High Seat. "I greet you, my lord," he mewed gravely, spreading his arms out to his sides. "You honor my family and the clan Kihm'bar with your presence here."

  "You may rise," Thrawn told him. "You are Khabarakh, clan Kihm'bar?"

  "I am, my lord."

  "You were once a member of the Imperial Noghri commando team twenty-two," Thrawn said. "A team that ceased to exist on the planet Kashyyyk. Tell me what happened."

  Khabarakh might have twitched. Pellaeon couldn't tell for sure. "I filed a report, my lord, immediately upon leaving that world."

  "Yes, I read the report," Thrawn told him coolly. "Read it very carefully, and noted the questions it left unanswered. Such as how and why you survived when all others in your team were killed. And how it was you were able to escape when the entire planet had been alerted to your presence. And why you did not return immediately to either Honoghr or one of our other bases after your failure."

  This time there was definitely a twitch. Possibly a reaction to the word failure. "I was left unconscious by the Wookiees during the first attack," Khabarakh said. "I awakened alone and made my way back to the ship. Once there, I deduced what had happened to the rest of the team from official information sources. I suspect they simply were unprepared for the speed and stealth of my ship when I made my escape. As to my whereabouts afterward, my lord-" He hesitated. "I transmitted my report, and then left for a time to be alone."

  "Why?"

  "To think, my lord, and to meditate."

  "Wouldn't Honoghr have been a more suitable place for such meditation?" Thrawn asked, waving a hand around the dukha.

  "I had much to think about. My lord."

  For a moment Thrawn eyed him thoughtfully. "You were slow to respond when the request for a recognition signal came from the surface," he said. "You then refused to land at the Nystao port facilities."

  "I did not refuse, my lord. I was never ordered to land there."

  "The distinction is noted," Thrawn said dryly. "Tell me why you chose to come here instead."

  "I wished to speak with my maitrakh To discuss my meditations with her, and to ask forgiveness for my : failure."

  "And have you done so?" Thrawn asked, turning to face the maitrakh.

  "We have begun," she said in atrociously mangled Basic. "We have not finished."

  At the back of the room, the dukha doors swung open and one of the tech team stepped inside. "You have a report, Ensign?" Thrawn called to him.

  "Yes, Admiral," the other said, crossing the room and stepping somewhat gingerly around the assembled group of Noghri elders. "We've finished our preliminary set of comm and countermeasures tests, sir, as per orders."

  Thrawn shifted his gaze to Khabarakh. "And?"

  "We think we've located the malfunction, sir. The main transmitter coil seems to have overloaded and backfired into a dump capacitor, damaging several nearby circuits. The compensator computer rebuilt the pathway, but the bypass was close enough to one of the static-damping command lines for the resulting inductance surge to trigger it."

  "An interesting set of coincidences," Thrawn said, his glowing eyes still on Khabarakh. "A natural malfunction, do you think, or an artificial one?"

  The maitrakh stirred, as if about to say something. Thrawn looked at her, and she subsided. "Impossible to say, sir," the tech said, choosing his words carefully. Obviously, he hadn't missed the fact that this was skating him close to the edge of insult in the middle of a group of Noghri who might decide to take offense at it. "Someone who knew what he was doing could probably have pulled it off. I have to say, though, sir, that compensator computers in general have a pretty low reputation among mechanics. They're okay on the really serious stuff that can get unskilled pilots into big trouble, but on noncritical reroutes like this they've always had a tendency to foul up something else along the way."

  "Thank you." If Thrawn was annoyed that he hadn't caught Khabarakh red-handed in a lie, it didn't show in his face. "Your team will take the ship back to Nystao for repairs."

  "Yes, sir." The tech saluted and left.

  Thrawn looked back at Khabarakh. "With your team destroyed, you will of course have to be reassigned," he said. "When your ship has been repaired you will fly it to the Valrar base in Glythe sector and report there for duty."

  "Yes, my lord," Khabarakh said.

  Thrawn stood up. "You have much to be proud of here," he said, inclining his head slightly to the maitrakh. "Your family's service to the clan Kihm'bar and to the Empire will be long remembered by all of Honoghr."

  "As will your leadership and protection of the Noghri people," the maitrakh responded.

  Flanked by Rukh and Ir'khaim, Thrawn stepped down from the chair and headed back toward the double doors. Pellaeon took up the rear, and a minute later they were once again out in the chilly night air. The shuttle was standing ready, and without further comment or ritual Thrawn led the way inside. As they lifted, Pellaeon caught just a glimpse out the viewport of the Noghri filing out of the dukha to watch their departing leaders. "Well, that was pleasant," he muttered under his breath.

  Thrawn looked at him. "A waste of time, you think, Captain?" he asked mildly.

  Pellaeon glanced at Ir'khaim, seated farther toward the front of the shuttle. The dynast didn't seem to be listening to them, but it would probably still pay
to be tactful. "Diplomatically, sir, I'm sure it was wortwhile to demonstrate that you care about all of Honoghr, including the outer villages," he told Thrawn. "Given that the commando ship really had malfunctioned, I don't think anything else was gained."

  Thrawn turned to stare out the side viewport. "I'm not so sure of that, Captain," he said. "There's something not quite right back there. Rukh, what's your reading of our young commando Khabarakh?"

  "He was unsettled," the bodyguard told him quietly. "That much I saw in his hands and his face."

  Ir'khaim swiveled around in his chair. "It is a naturally unsettling experience to face the lord of the Noghri," he said.

  "Particularly when one's hands are wet with failure?" Rukh countered.

  Ir'khaim half rose from his seat, and for a pair of heartbeats the air between the two Noghri was thick with tension. Pellaeon felt himself pressing back in his seat cushions, the long and bloody history of Noghri clan rivalry flooding fresh into his consciousness : "This mission has generated several failures," Thrawn said calmly into the taut silence. "In that, the clan Kihm'bar hardly stands alone."

  Slowly, Ir'khaim resumed his seat. "Khabarakh is still young," he said.

  "He is indeed," Thrawn agreed. "One reason, I presume, why he's such a bad liar. Rukh, perhaps the Dynast Ir'khaim would enjoy the view from the forward section. Please escort him there."

  "Yes, my lord." Rukh stood up. "Dynast Ir'khaim?" he said, gesturing toward the forward blast door.

  For a moment the other Noghri didn't move. Then, with obvious reluctance, he stood up. "My lord," he said stiffly, and headed down the aisle.

  Thrawn waited until the door had closed on both aliens before turning back to Pellaeon. "Khalarakh is hiding something, Captain," he said, a cold fire in his eyes. "I'm certain of it."

  "Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, wondering how the Grand Admiral had come to that conclusion. Certainly the routine sensor scan they'd just run hadn't picked up anything. "Shall I order a sensor focus on the village?"

  "That's not what I meant," Thrawn shook his head. "He wouldn't have brought anything incriminating back to Honoghr with him-you can't hide anything for long in one of these close-knit villages. No, it's something he's not telling us about that missing month. The one where he claims he was off meditating by himself."

  "We might be able to learn something from his ship," Pellaeon suggested.

  "Agreed," Thrawn nodded. "Have a scanning crew go over it before the techs get to work. Every cubic millimeter of it, interior and exterior both. And have Surveillance put someone on Khalarakh."

  "Ah-yes, sir," Pellaeon said. "One of our people, or another Noghri?"

  Thrawn cocked an eyebrow at him. "The ridiculously obvious or the heavily political, in other words?" he asked dryly. "Yes, you're right, of course. Let's try a third option: does the Chimaera carry any espionage droids?"

  "I don't believe so, sir," Pellaeon said, punching up the question on the shuttle's computer link. "No. We have some Arakyd Viper probe droids, but nothing of the more compact espionage class."

  "Then we'll have to improvise," Thrawn said. "Have Engineering put a Viper motivator into a decon droid and rig it with full-range optical and auditory sensors and a recorder. We'll have it put in with the group working out of Khabarakh's village."

  "Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, keying in the order. "Do you want a transmitter installed, too?"

  Thrawn shook his head. "No, a recorder should be sufficient. The antenna would be difficult to conceal from view. The last thing we want is for some curious Noghri to see it and wonder why this one was different."

  Pellaeon nodded his understanding. Especially since that might lead the aliens to start pulling decon droids apart for a look inside. "Yes, sir. I'll have the order placed right away."

  Thrawn's glowing eyes shifted to look out the viewport. "There's no particular rush here," he said thoughtfully. "Not now. This is the calm before the storm, Captain; and until the storm is ready to unleash, we might as well spend our time and energy making sure our illustrious Jedi Master will be willing to assist us when we want him."

  "Which means bringing Leia Organa Solo to him."

  "Exactly." Thrawn looked at the forward blast door. And if my presence is what the Noghri need to inspire them, then my presence is what they'll have."

  "For how long?" Pellaeon asked.

  Thrawn smiled tightly. "For as long as it takes."

  Chapter 11

  "Han?" Lando's voice came from the cabin intercom beside the bunk. "Wake up."

  "Yeah, I'm awake" Han grunted, swiping at his eyes with one hand and swiveling the repeater displays toward him with the other. If there was one thing his years on the wrong side of the law had hammered into him, it was the knack of going from deep sleep to full alertness in the space between heartbeats. "What's up?"

  "We're here," Lando announced. "Wherever here is."

  "I'll be right up."

  They were in sight of their target planet by the time he'd dressed and made his way to the Lady Luck's cockpit. "Where's Irenez?" he asked, peering out at the mottled blue-green crescent shape they were rapidly approaching. It looked pretty much like any of a thousand other planets he'd seen.

  "She's gone back to the aft control station," Lando told her. "I got the impression she wanted to be able to send down some recognition codes without us looking over her shoulder."

  "Any idea where we are?"

  "Not really," Lando said. "Transit time was forty seven hours, but that doesn't tell us a whole lot."

  Han nodded, searching his memory. "A Dreadnaught can pull, what, about Point Four?"

  "About that," Lando agreed. "When it's really in a hurry, anyway.

  "Means we aren't any more than a hundred fifty lightyears from New Cov, then."

  "I'd guess we're closer than that, myself," Lando said. "It wouldn't make much sense to use New Cov as a contact point if they were that far away."

  "Unless New Cov was Breil'lya's idea and not theirs," Han pointed out.

  "Possible," Lando said. "I still think we're closer than a hundred fifty light-years, though. They could have taken their time getting here just to mislead us."

  Han looked up at the Dreadnaught that had been hauling them through hyperspace for the past two days. "Or to have time to organize a reception committee."

  "There's that," Lando nodded. "I don't know if I mentioned it, but after they apologized for getting the magnetic coupling off-center over our hatch I went back and took a look"

  "You didn't mention it, but I did the same thing," Han said sourly. "Looked kind of deliberate, didn't it?"

  "That's what I thought, too," Lando said. "Like maybe they wanted an excuse to keep us cooped up down here and not wandering around their ship."

  "Could be lots of good and innocent reasons for that," Han reminded him.

  "And lots of not-so-innocent ones," Lando countered. "You sure you don't have any idea who this Commander of theirs might be?"

  "Not even a guess. Probably be finding out real soon, though."

  The comm crackled on. "Lady Luck, this is Sena," a familiar voice said. "We've arrived."

  "Yes, we noticed," Lando told her. "I expect you'll want us to follow you down."

  "Right," she said. "The Peregrine will drop the magnetic coupling whenever you're ready to fly."

  Han stared at the speaker, barely hearing Lando's response. A ship called the Peregrine :?