by Timothy Zahn
Jinzler straightened up. “Clear,” he agreed. “And thank you.”
“Don’t thank us yet,” Luke warned, nodding toward the door. “The Chiss are waiting. Go back to your quarters.”
“And the next time you think you hear something suspicious, use one of the corridor comm panels to call it in,” Mara added. “If you’d done that, we might have caught him.”
“I understand,” Jinzler said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
He crossed the lounge and disappeared into the corridor. “Well?” Luke asked as the door slid shut behind him. “What do you think?”
“For starters, I’m getting tired of this piecemeal approach,” Mara growled, stalking over to the viewport and leaning against it as she stared out at the stars. “I’d like nothing better than to sit him down and drag the whole story out of him. With hydrogrips, if necessary.”
“You really think that’s the best way to approach it?” Luke asked, crossing to the viewport to stand beside her.
“No, of course not,” she said with a sigh. “I just wish we could, that’s all.”
“At least we’ve got a few new puzzle pieces to work with,” Luke pointed out. “Let’s start with Jorj Car’das. You think this is the same man Karrde asked you and Lando to try to track down ten years ago?”
“Who else could it be?” Mara countered. “Contacting someone working for Karrde’s organization and flying a ship that wasn’t a New Republic design? No, it’s got to be him.”
“What makes you think his ship wasn’t a New Republic design?”
“Jinzler has a certificate in hyperdrive tech,” Mara reminded him. “If he didn’t recognize the ship, it had to be something pretty exotic.”
“Mm,” Luke said. “I don’t suppose you ever got Karrde to open up about who Car’das actually was.”
“Karrde, no,” Mara said. “But I was able to coax a bit out of Shada a couple of years ago. Apparently sometime in or around the Clone Wars era Car’das started up a smuggling operation, building it up into something that rivaled even the Hutts’ organizations. A few years after that, he suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, and one of his lieutenants took over for him.”
“Karrde?”
“Right,” Mara said. “No one apparently heard anything of or from Car’das until you found that beckon call on Dagobah after Thrawn’s return and Karrde sent Lando and me out hunting for him. When the Caamas Document crisis hit three years ago and the New Republic started to tear itself apart over what to do about the Bothans, Karrde and Shada took the Wild Karrde and went out hunting for him themselves.”
“Did they find him?”
“Shada was rather evasive on that point, but it seems clear that they did,” Mara said. “Reading between the lines, I’d also guess Car’das had something to do with the dramatic collapse of that Return-of-Thrawn hysteria that happened while we were out on Nirauan. She also mentioned a huge data card library that she said rivaled the official New Republic archives on Coruscant.”
“Karrde’s former mentor,” Luke murmured thoughtfully. “And Karrde with his deep and abiding interest in gathering information. It fits, I suppose.”
“What fits?” Mara asked. “The bit about Car’das knowing something was in the works and pointing Jinzler to exactly the right place at the right time to intercept an incoming message?”
“Guessing the right place, at least, wouldn’t have taken anything special,” Luke pointed out. “Comra’s the logical spot to pick up a transmission coming from Nirauan or Chiss space. If Car’das knew or guessed Formbi would be contacting us, that’s where the message would come through.”
“That assumes he knew the message was on its way,” Mara pointed out.
“Right,” Luke agreed. “And that part would have taken something special. Though even there you’ll notice he seemed to be a bit off on his timing. Jinzler was at the station a good seven weeks before the message came through.”
“Maybe Formbi had to argue with the Nine Families longer than he expected before he got permission to contact us,” Mara suggested. “You can’t dock Car’das points for someone else’s bureaucracy.”
“I suppose not,” Luke conceded. “There’s also the question of how he could have found out about Jinzler and his sister.”
“Yes—Jinzler’s sister,” Mara growled. “I presume you’ve noticed that up until a couple of days ago there would have been a perfect way to check out that part of his story.”
Luke nodded. “Fel’s Outbound Flight operational manual and its personnel lists.”
“Except that it was stolen,” Mara said. “And now all of a sudden he comes up with a sister. Convenient timing, wouldn’t you say?”
“I might,” Luke had to admit. “But that’s not proof that he took the manual.”
“We’re not exactly rolling in proof on any part of this,” Mara pointed out. “Still, if Jinzler didn’t take the cards, who did? And why?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said, half turning to look back toward the lounge exit. “Right now, I’m more intrigued by the question of what someone was doing lurking in the dark up here. Unless you think Jinzler made that part up to try to deflect suspicion from himself.”
“Oddly enough, I don’t,” Mara said slowly. “He strikes me as being too smart to trot out such a lame story without dressing it up a bit.”
Luke frowned. “Dressing it up how?”
“Suppose he wanted to do some mischief in the shield generator room,” Mara said. “Say, someplace over at the starboard end. The first thing a real professional would do when he got inside would be to go to the portside end and open one of the storage cabinets there. Not too obviously, but enough to see if you were looking for it. Then, if he gets caught, he still spins his story about chasing down an intruder, but adds that he got a glimpse of someone over by the portside cabinets before he took off.”
“The investigators go to look, and they find the open cabinet,” Luke said, nodding his understanding.
“Right,” Mara said. “Not only does it make his story play better, but it also automatically shirts attention away from his real target.”
Luke nodded. “Simple, but effective.”
“All the best tricks are,” Mara agreed. “It’s basically the same thing we assumed our saboteur was doing right from the start: drawing attention to the engines, then going and hitting something in the bow.”
“Right,” Luke said. “Assuming the engine thing was a diversion.”
“Also true,” Mara admitted. “It could just as well be that that was a genuine accident, and that Jinzler or someone else simply took advantage of it to do some late-night skulking.”
Luke shook his head. “This is starting to make my head hurt,” he said. “If Jinzler set the fire to steal Fel’s Outbound Flight data, shouldn’t that have been the end of it? What would he have needed to do up here?”
“Who knows?” Mara said. “He may be on some special mission, either for Car’das or someone else, and had to steal the operational manual first so that we couldn’t crack his story.”
“And since most of what we know comes solely from him, we wouldn’t even be able to guess from that what he’s really up to.”
“Actually, everything we know about him comes solely from him,” Mara corrected. “Karrde told us about Dean Jinzler’s background, but we only have our gray-eyed friend’s word for it that he really is Dean Jinzler.”
Luke hissed between his teeth. That one hadn’t even occurred to him. “Which means what I said about us having a few more puzzle pieces is meaningless, isn’t it?”
“They could be pieces to an entirely imaginary puzzle,” Mara agreed. “And it gets worse. It could even be we have two different sets of late-night skulkers, each with different agendas, working either parallel or at cross-purposes to each other. Don’t forget, we had not only Jinzler up here but at least two Chiss crewers and one of Fel’s stormtroopers, as well.”
“And if Jinzler’s telling th
e truth, one of the Geroons,” Luke reminded her. “All we’re missing is Formbi and Drask to round out the suspect list.”
“Right,” Mara said. “On the other hand, Jinzler’s the only one who got caught where he wasn’t supposed to be. How does that story about just happening to head through the Chiss quarters strike you?”
“It’s actually not as far-fetched as it sounds,” Luke said. “If there was a Jedi in his family, he could easily be Force-sensitive enough to be nudged to the right place at the right time without knowing how or why he’d done it. Not many people know enough about Jedi family patterns to spin that sort of subtlety into a lie, either.”
“Car’das might have known,” Mara said. “And whatever he senses or doesn’t sense, Jinzler still needed Car’das’s advice to get himself transferred to Comra in time.” She waved a hand. “Yes, I know that’s not the same thing.”
“Still, we do keep coming back to Car’das, don’t we?” Luke murmured. “I wonder what he and Formbi might have had to talk about.”
“No idea,” Mara said. “As far as I know, Karrde himself never did any work out in the Unknown Regions. If Car’das made it out this far, it was before he and Karrde met.”
“Or after Car’das disappeared,” Luke pointed out. “We don’t know anything about him during that period, either.”
“Maybe we should go ask Formbi,” Mara suggested.
“Sure, why not?” Luke said. “We need to warn him to check the shield generators, anyway.”
Mara shook her head. “I don’t think the generators were the target,” she said. “I think it was something else.”
“Any idea what?”
“Not really,” Mara conceded. “But if I had to vote, I’d vote for someone putting a tap on the sensor lines. Remember when we were called into the command center earlier this evening and Formbi was listing all the dangers we would be facing inside the cluster?”
“Yes,” Luke said, wondering where she was going with this.
“Among the various natural hazards to life and happiness, he also mentioned something called firepoints,” she went on. “I’ve been meaning to ask him what exactly those are, but I think I may have figured it out.” She pointed out the viewport. “You see that asteroid over there? The one with all the dark spots?”
Luke peered out into the brilliant starscape. A spotted asteroid. . . “Yes,” he said as he picked it out of the shadows.
“Ten to one it’s either a missile cluster or a fighter nest,” Mara said. “Those dark spots are almost certainly the ends of launching tubes.”
“A firepoint,” Luke murmured, studying the asteroid. There were a lot of dark spots on it, too. “Aptly named.”
“Very aptly named,” Mara agreed. “An unfriendly ship that stops here for a nav check is going to be in for a world of hurt.”
She looked at Luke, her expression grim in the reflected starlight. “Anyone who might be thinking about taking on the Chiss would have a definite interest in locating as many of those defenses as possible.”
Luke felt his stomach tighten. “Fel?”
“Or the Geroons might have an interested client with an unused planet to swap them,” Mara said. “Jinzler could be fronting for someone, too.”
“Car’das?”
She shrugged. “Could be. We do know that Car’das likes collecting information. This would certainly come under that heading.”
“Point,” Luke said, taking one last look around at the stars. The last refuge of the Chiss people, Formbi had called it. Who out there would be interested in learning its secrets? “I think we’ve pushed this set of puzzle pieces around as much as we can. Let’s go see if we can pick up another piece or two.”
Mara pushed away from the viewport. “Formbi?”
Luke nodded. “Formbi.”
* * *
They found the Aristocra in a service corridor midway between the control center and the main engines, watching in silence as a pair of Chiss crewers dug into an open conduit access panel with long, tonglike probes. A third crewer stood expectantly by with a sealed metal container. “Ah, our noble Jedi,” Formbi said as they maneuvered past the workers in the cramped space and came to his side. “I understand you’ve been busy this evening.”
“I see you have, too, Aristocra,” Luke pointed out. “Have you found the problem?”
Formbi nodded. “Line creepers, as we suspected.”
“Line creepers?”
“Long, slender creatures that chew their way into power and control systems and live on the electrical power generated within,” Formbi explained. “They’re a vermin we’ve worked very hard to destroy or contain.”
“Sounds like conduit worms,” Mara commented. “That’s a type of vermin we’ve tried hard to destroy.”
“With no more success than we’ve had, I suspect,” Formbi said.
“True,” Luke said. “What was this particular batch working on? The engine control lines?”
“Yes,” Formbi said. “That’s what caused the flutter you apparently felt earlier. We’re clearing them out now.”
“What about the lights in the forward part of the ship?” Mara asked. “Did they get in there, too?”
“No,” Formbi said. “It appears someone merely shut them down.”
“Accidentally?” Mara asked.
Formbi’s glowing eyes seemed to blaze a bit brighter as he looked at her. “What do you think?” he countered.
“We think the Chaf Envoy has some serious problems,” Luke said. “We’re not sure everyone aboard wants this mission to succeed.”
He stretched out to the Force, hoping for a telling reaction. But Formbi merely shook his head. “You’re wrong, Master Skywalker,” he said quietly. “Everyone aboard very much wishes the mission to succeed.”
“Maybe so,” Mara said. “But it may not be the same mission as the one you have scheduled.”
“I presume you’ve heard of the incident in the bow a few minutes ago?” Luke asked.
“I have,” Formbi said. “Captain Talshib is already searching for damage or theft in that part of the vessel.”
“Good,” Mara said. “What did you and Jorj Car’das talk about?”
Luke had been trying, without success, to spark a reaction from the elderly Chiss. Mara’s attempt was just as futile. “Jorj Car’das?” Formbi asked, lifting his eyebrows politely, his composure not even flickering.
“The human who brought Ambassador Jinzler to Crustai,” Mara said. “The ambassador said you two spoke at length.”
Formbi smiled faintly. “And you suspect something sinister about it?” He shook his head. “Not at all. He introduced the ambassador to me and listed his credentials and honors. I greeted him in turn, and welcomed him on behalf of the Chiss Ascendancy.”
“And you did all this in that trade language, Minnisiat?”
“At the time I doubt he was aware I could speak your New Republic Basic,” Formbi said.
“And you’d never met Car’das before?” Mara persisted.
“How could I possibly know anyone from the New Republic?” Formbi asked patiently. “I’ve never been farther than a few light-years outside Chiss space. Ah.”
He pointed over Luke’s shoulder. Luke turned to see one of the workers pull a long, segmented worm from the conduit with his tongs. The third Chiss had his container open, and the first eased the worm carefully into the opening. “A line creeper,” Formbi identified it as the third crewer sealed the container again. “A young one, too, from its size. If left undisturbed long enough, they can grow to be as long as an adult Chiss and thick enough to nearly fill a conduit that size.”
“I can see why you don’t want them around,” Luke said. “Any idea how it got in there?”
“Not yet,” the Aristocra said. “We’ll begin a thorough search of the vessel in the morning.” His eyes bored into Luke’s. “Of our vessel, and all others associated with it.”
“Of course,” Luke said, sensing Mara’s sudden warine
ss. “May I ask exactly what this search will entail?”
“For you, it will most likely be noninvasive,” Formbi assured them. “Line creepers exhale a distinctive mixture of gases that is quite easy to detect. If none of those gases is detected in your vessel’s compartments, that will be the end of the procedure.”
“And if you do detect any?” Mara asked.
“Then we will of course need to examine those areas more thoroughly,” Formbi said. “But you should have nothing to be concerned about. If you haven’t opened your vessel elsewhere in this region of space, it’s highly unlikely you could have picked up any vermin. But we must check nevertheless.”
“We understand,” Luke said. “Actually, if one of these things is aboard the Sabre, we’d be just as glad for you to get rid of it. Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Thank you, but no,” Formbi said. “We’ll alert you before entering your vessel, of course.”
“We thank you in turn,” Luke said, sensing the dismissal in his tone. “We’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“One other thing,” Formbi said as they turned to go. “I’m informed that both you and Jedi Skywalker activated your lightsabers during your search this evening.”
“Yes, we did,” Mara said. “We were hunting a possible saboteur, if you recall. Not to mention defending ourselves against a Chiss warrior with a twitchy trigger finger.”
“Yes—that,” Formbi said, sounding embarrassed. “An unfortunate occurrence. The warriors have been spoken to, and it will not happen again.”
Something seemed to flicker through the Aristocra’s eyes too fast for Luke to catch. “But in return, I must ask you not to activate your weapons again as long as you are aboard a vessel of the Chiss Ascendancy.”
Luke frowned. “Not at all?”
“Not at all,” Formbi said flatly.
“What if we’re in danger?” Mara demanded. “Or if you or one of your people is in danger?”
“Then of course you may do whatever you deem necessary,” Formbi said. “But General Drask has insisted that the casual waving of alien weapons aboard the Chaf Envoy will no longer be tolerated.”