Dark Force Rising

by Timothy Zahn

  “Right.” It was, of course, obvious now where Karrde was going with this. “So how did you happen to find it?”

  “Purely by accident, I assure you. In fact, it wasn’t until several days afterward that I realized what exactly I’d found. I suspect none of the rest of the crew ever knew at all.”

  Karrde’s gaze defocused, his eyes flattening with the memory. “It was just over fifteen years ago,” he said, his voice distant, the thumbs of his intertwined hands rubbing slowly against each other. “I was working as navigator/sensor specialist for a small, independent smuggling group. We’d rather botched a pickup and had had to shoot our way past a pair of Carrack cruisers on our way out. We made it all right, but since I hadn’t had the time to do a complete lightspeed calculation, we dropped back to real-space a half light-year out to recalculate.” His lip twitched. “Imagine our surprise when we discovered a pair of Dreadnaughts waiting directly in our path.”

  “Lying dead in space.”

  Karrde shook his head. “Actually, they weren’t, which was what threw me for those first few days. From all appearances, the ships seemed to be fully functional, with both interior and running lights showing and even a standby sensor scan in operation. Naturally, we assumed it was part of the group we’d just tangled with, and the captain made an emergency jump to lightspeed to get us out of there.”

  “Not a good idea,” Mara murmured.

  “It seemed the lesser of two evils at the time,” Karrde said grimly. “As it turned out, we came close to being fatally wrong on that account. The ship hit the mass shadow of a large comet on the way out, blowing the main hyperdrive and nearly wrecking the rest of the ship on the spot. Five of our crew were killed in the collision, and another three died of injuries before we could limp back to civilization on the backup hyperdrive.”

  There was a moment of silence. “How many of you were left?” Mara asked at last.

  Karrde focused on her, his usual sardonic smile back on his face. “Or in other words, who else might know about the fleet?”

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  “There were six of us left. As I said, though, I don’t think any of the others realized what it was we’d found. It was only when I went back to the sensor records and discovered that there were considerably more than just the two Dreadnaughts in the area that I began to have my own suspicions.”

  “And the records themselves?”

  “I erased them. After memorizing the coordinates, of course.”

  Mara nodded. “You said this was fifteen years ago?”

  “That’s right,” Karrde nodded back. “I’ve thought about going back and doing something with the ships, but I never had the time to do it properly. Unloading two hundred Dreadnaughts on the open market isn’t something you rush into without a good deal of prior preparation. Even if you have markets for all of them, which has always been problematic.”

  “Until now.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting I sell them to the Empire?”

  “They’re in the market for capital ships,” she reminded him. “And they’re offering value plus twenty percent.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I thought you didn’t much care for the Empire.”

  “I don’t,” she retorted. “What’s the other option—give them to the New Republic?”

  He held her gaze. “That might be more profitable in the long run.”

  Mara’s left hand curled into a tight fist, her stomach churning with mixed feelings. To let the Dreadnaughts fall into the hands of the New Republic, successor to the Rebel Alliance that had destroyed her life, was a hateful thought. But on the other hand, the Empire without the Emperor was only a pale shadow of its former self, hardly even worthy of the name anymore. It would be pearls before swine to give the Dark Force to them.

  Or would it? With a Grand Admiral in charge of the Imperial Fleet again, perhaps there was now a chance for the Empire to regain some of its old glory. And if there was … “What are you going to do?” she asked Karrde.

  “At the moment, nothing,” Karrde said. “It’s the same problem we faced with Skywalker, after all: the Empire will be swifter to exact vengeance if we go against them, but the New Republic looks more likely to win in the end. Giving Thrawn the Katana fleet would only delay the inevitable. The most prudent course right now is to stay neutral.”

  “Except that giving Thrawn the Dreadnaughts might get him off our exhaust trail,” Mara pointed out. “That would be worth the trade right there.”

  Karrde smiled faintly. “Oh, come now, Mara. The Grand Admiral may be a tactical genius, but he’s hardly omniscient. He can’t possibly have any idea where we are. And he certainly has more important things to do than spend his resources chasing us down.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Mara agreed reluctantly. But she couldn’t help remembering how, even at the height of his power and with a thousand other concerns, the Emperor had still frequently taken the time to exact vengeance on someone who’d crossed him.

  Beside her the comm board buzzed, and Mara reached over to key the channel. “Yes?”

  “Lachton,” a familiar voice came from the speaker. “Is Karrde around?”

  “Right here,” Karrde called, stepping to Mara’s side. “How’s the camouflage work going?”

  “We’re about done,” Lachton said. “We ran short of flash-netting, though. Do we have any more?”

  “There’s some at one of the dumps,” Karrde told him. “I’ll send Mara to get it; can you have someone come in to pick it up?”

  “Sure, no problem. I’ll send Dankin—he hasn’t got much to do at the moment anyway.”

  “All right. The netting will be ready by the time he gets here.”

  Karrde gestured, and Mara keyed off the channel. “You know where the Number Three dump is?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “Four twelve Wozwashi Street. Three blocks west and two north.”

  “Right.” He peered out the window. “Unfortunately, it’s still too early for repulsorlift vehicles to be on the streets. You’ll have to walk.”

  “That’s all right,” Mara assured him. She felt like a little exercise, anyway. “Two boxes be enough?”

  “If you can handle that many,” he told her, looking her up and down as if making sure her outfit conformed to local Rishi standards of propriety. He needn’t have bothered; one of the first rules the Emperor had drummed into her so long ago was to blend in as best she could with her surroundings. “If not, Lachton can probably make do with one.”

  “All right. I’ll see you later.”

  Their townhouse was part of a row of similar structures abutting one of the hundreds of little market areas that dotted the whole congested valley. For a moment Mara stood in the entry alcove of their building, out of the busy flow of pedestrian traffic, and looked around her. Through the gaps between the nearest buildings she could see the more distant parts of the city-vale, most of it composed of the same cream-white stone so favored by the locals. In places, she could see all the way to the edge, a few small buildings perched precariously partway up the craggy mountains that rose sharply into the sky on all sides. Far up those mountains, she knew, lived loose avian tribes of native Rishii, who no doubt looked down in bemused disbelief at the strange creatures who had chosen the most uncomfortably hot and humid spots of their planet in which to live.

  Dropping her gaze from the mountains, Mara gave the immediate area a quick scan. Across the street were more townhouses; between her and them was the usual flow of brightly clad pedestrians hurrying to and from the market area to the east. Reflexively, her eyes flicked across the townhouses, though with each window composed of mirror glass there wasn’t a lot there for her to see. Also reflexively, she glanced across each of the narrow pedestrian alleyways between the buildings.

  Between two of them, back at the building’s rear where he was hardly visible, was the motionless figure of a man wearing a blue scarf and patterned green tunic. />
  Staring in her direction.

  Mara let her gaze drift on as if she hadn’t seen him, her heart thudding suddenly in her throat. Stepping out of the alcove, she turned east toward the market and joined the flow of traffic.

  She didn’t stay with it long, though. As soon as she was out of the mysterious loiterer’s line of sight, she began cutting her way across the flow, heading across the street toward the townhouse row. She reached it three buildings down from the loiterer, ducked into the alleyway, and hurried toward the rear. If he was indeed monitoring Karrde’s place, there was a good chance she could take him from behind.

  She reached the rear of the buildings and circled around … only to find that her quarry had vanished.

  For a moment she stood there, looking around her for any sign of the man’s whereabouts, wondering what to do now. There was none of the insistent tingling that had gotten them away from Myrkr at the last second; but as she’d told Karrde, it wasn’t a talent she could turn on and off.

  She looked down at the ground where the man had been standing. There were a few faint footprints in the thin coating of dust that had collected at the corner of the townhouse, giving the impression that the man had been there long enough to shuffle his feet a few times. A half dozen steps away, right in the center of another layer of dust, was a clear footprint pointing toward the west behind the row of townhouses.

  Mara looked in that direction, feeling her lip twist. A deliberate lead-on, obviously—footprints in dust never came out that clear and unsmudged unless carefully planted. And she was right. A hundred meters directly ahead, strolling casually along the rear of the buildings toward a north-south street, was the man in the blue scarf and patterned tunic. A not-very-subtle invitation to follow him.

  Okay, friend, she thought as she started off after him. You want to play? Let’s play.

  She had closed the gap between them to perhaps ninety meters when he reached the cross flow of traffic and turned north into it. Another clear invitation, this time to close the gap further lest she lose him.

  But Mara had no intention of taking him up on this one. She’d memorized the geography of the city-vale their first day here, and it was pretty obvious that his intention was to lead her up to the more sparsely populated industrial areas to the north, where presumably he could deal with her without the awkward presence of witnesses. If she could get there first, she might be able to turn things around on him. Double-checking the blaster beneath her left sleeve, she cut through an alley between the buildings to her right and headed north.

  The valley stretched for nearly a hundred fifty kilometers in a roughly east-west direction, but at this point its north-south dimension was only a few kilometers. Mara kept up her pace, continually revising her course to avoid crowds and other impediments. Gradually, the houses and shops began to give way to light industry; and, finally, she judged she’d come far enough. If her quarry had kept with the leisurely pace of a man who didn’t want to lose a tracker, she should now have enough time to prepare a little reception for him.

  There was, of course, always the possibility that he’d shifted to one of the other north-south streets somewhere along the way, changed direction east or west, or even doubled back completely and returned to Karrde’s townhouse. But as she looked carefully around the corner of a building into the street he’d first turned onto, she discovered that his imagination was as limited as his surveillance technique. Halfway down the block, he was crouched motionless behind a row of storage barrels with his back to her, his blue scarf thrown back out of the way across his patterned green tunic, something that was probably a weapon clutched ready in his hand. Waiting, no doubt, for her to stroll into his trap. Amateur, she thought, lip twisting in contempt. Watching him closely, not even bothering with her blaster, she eased around the corner and started silently toward him.

  “That’s far enough,” a mocking voice said from behind her.

  Mara froze. The figure crouched by the barrels ahead of her didn’t even twitch … and it was only then that she belatedly realized that it was far too still to be simply waiting in ambush. Far too still, for that matter, to even be alive.

  Slowly, keeping her arms stretched straight out to her sides, she turned around. The man facing her was of medium height, with a somewhat bulky build and dark, brooding eyes. His undertunic hung open to reveal a light-armor vest beneath it. In his hand, of course, was a blaster. “Well, well, well,” he sneered. “What we got here? ’Bout time you showed up—I was startin’ to think you’d gotten lost or somethin’.”

  “Who are you?” Mara asked.

  “Oh, no, Red, I’m the one what’s askin’ the questions here. Not that I need to, ’course. That fancy stuff on top pret’ well tells me aw I need t’ know.” He gestured with his blaster at her red-gold hair. “Shoulda gotten rid o’ that—hide it or dyed it, y’know. Dead give’way. Pardon the ’spression.”

  Mara took a careful breath, forcing her muscles to unknot. “What do you want with me?” she asked, keeping her voice calm.

  “Same thin’ ev’ry man reall’ wants,” he grinned slyly. “A pile o’ hard cold cash.”

  She shook her head. “In that case, I’m afraid you’ve picked the wrong person. I’ve only got about fifty on me.”

  He grinned even wider. “Cute, Red, but you’re wastin’ your time. I know who y’are, aw right. You ’n’ your pals are gonna make me real rich. C’mon—let’s go.”

  Mara didn’t move. “Perhaps we can work a deal,” she suggested, feeling a drop of sweat trickle down between her shoulder blades. She knew better than to be fooled by the other’s careless speech and manner—whoever and whatever he was, he knew exactly what he was doing.

  On the plus side, she still had the blaster hidden beneath her sleeve; and she would give long odds that her assailant wouldn’t expect that a weapon that potent might be small enough to conceal there. The fact that he hadn’t already searched her seemed to confirm that assessment.

  But whatever she was going to do, she had to do it now, while she was still facing him. Unfortunately, with her hands spread apart there was no way for her to get at her weapon without telegraphing the movement. Somehow, she needed to distract him.

  “A deal, huh?” he asked lazily. “What kind o’ deal you got in mind?”

  “What kind of deal do you want?” she countered. If there’d been a box anywhere near her feet, she might have been able to scoop it up with her foot and throw it at him. But though there was a fair amount of junk littering the street in this part of town, nothing suitable was within reach. Her half-boots were firmly fastened around her ankles, impossible to get loose without him noticing. Rapidly, she ran through an inventory of items she was carrying or wearing—nothing.

  But the Emperor’s intensive training had included direct manipulation of the Force as well as the long-range communication abilities that had been her primary value to his regime. Those skills had vanished at the moment of his death, reappearing only briefly and erratically in the years since then.

  But if the sensory tingles and hunches had started again, perhaps the power was back, too …

  “I’m sure we can double whatever you’ve been offered,” she said. “Maybe even throw in something extra to sweeten the pot.”

  His grin turned evil. “That’s a real gen’rous offer, Red. Real gen’rous. Lotta men’d jump on that right away, sure ’nough. Me”—he lifted the blaster a little higher—“I like stayin’ with a sure thing.”

  “Even if it means settling for half the money?” Two meters behind him, piled carelessly up against a retaining wall, was a small stack of scrap metal parts waiting to be picked up. A short length of shield tubing, in particular, seemed to be rather precariously positioned on one edge of a battered power cell case.

  Setting her teeth, clearing her thoughts as best she could, Mara reached her mind out toward the tubing.

  “On my pad, half a sure thing’s better than twice o’ nothin’,” the man sai
d. “Anyway, I don’t ’spect you can outbid the Empire.”

  Mara swallowed. She’d suspected it from the first; but the confirmation still sent a shiver up her back. “You might be surprised at our resources,” she said. The length of tubing twitched, rolled a couple of millimeters—

  “Naw, don’t think so,” the other said easily. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  Mara tilted a finger back toward the dead man crouched at the box behind her. “You mind telling me first what happened here?”

  Her assailant shrugged. “What’s t’ tell? I needed a decoy; he was wanderin’ around the wrong place at the wrong time. End o’ story.” His grin suddenly vanished. “Enough stallin’. Turn around and start walkin’ … unless you’re lookin’ t’ spite me by makin’ me settle for the death fee instead.”

  “No,” Mara murmured. She took a deep breath, straining with every bit of strength she possessed, knowing that this was her last best chance—

  And behind her captor, the tubing fell with a muffled clank onto the ground.

  He was good, all right. The tubing had hardly even finished its fall before he’d dropped to one knee, spinning around and spraying the area behind him with a splattering of quick cover fire as he searched for whoever was sneaking up on him. It took less than a second for him to recognize his mistake, and with another spray of blaster fire he spun back again.

  But one second was all Mara needed. His desperate blaster spray was still tracking toward her when she shot him neatly in the head.