Dark Force Rising

by Timothy Zahn

  Mara ignored the order, digging in as hard as she could. Thrawn gazed unblinkingly back at her, his throat muscles moving as he fought against the grip. Mara clenched her teeth, waiting for the order or hand movement that would signal permission for the Noghri to choke her, or for the stormtroopers to burn her down.

  But Thrawn remained silent and unmoving … and a minute later, gasping for breath, Mara had to concede defeat.

  “I trust you’ve learned the limits of your small powers,” Thrawn said coldly, fingering his throat. But at least he didn’t sound amused anymore. “A little trick the Emperor taught you?”

  “He taught me a great many tricks,” Mara bit out, ignoring the throbbing in her temples. “How to deal with traitors was one of them.”

  Thrawn’s glowing eyes glittered. “Have a care, Jade,” he said softly. “I rule the Empire now. Not some long-dead Emperor; certainly not you. The only treason is defiance of my orders. I’m willing to let you come back to your rightful place in the Empire—as first officer, perhaps, of one of the Katana Dreadnaughts. But any further outbursts like this one and that offer will be summarily withdrawn.”

  “And then you’ll kill me, I suppose,” Mara growled.

  “My Empire isn’t in the habit of wasting valuable resources,” the other countered. “You’d be given instead to Master C’baoth as a little bonus gift. And I suspect you would soon wish I’d had you executed.”

  Mara stared at him, an involuntary shiver running up her back. “Who is C’baoth?”

  “Joruus C’baoth is a mad Jedi Master,” Thrawn told her darkly. “He’s consented to help our war effort, in exchange for Jedi to mold into whatever twisted image he chooses. Your friend Skywalker has already walked into his web; his sister, Organa Solo, we hope to deliver soon.” His face hardened. “I would genuinely hate for you to have to join them.”

  Mara took a deep breath. “I understand,” she said, forcing out the words. “You’ve made your point. It won’t happen again.”

  He eyed her a moment, then nodded. “Apology accepted,” he said. “Release her, Rukh. Now. Do I take it you wish to rejoin the Empire?”

  The Noghri let go of her neck—reluctantly, Mara thought—and took a short step away. “What about the rest of Karrde’s people?” she asked.

  “As we agreed, they’re free to go about their business. I’ve already canceled all Imperial search and detention orders concerning them, and Captain Pellaeon is at this moment calling off the bounty hunters.”

  “And Karrde himself?”

  Thrawn studied her face. “He’ll remain aboard until he tells me where the Katana fleet is. If he does so with a minimum of wasted time and effort on our part, he’ll receive the three million in compensation which you and I agreed on at Endor. If not … there may not be much left of him to pay compensation to.”

  Mara felt her lip twitch. He wasn’t bluffing, either. She’d seen what a full-bore Imperial interrogation could do. “May I talk to him?” she asked.

  “Why?”

  “I might be able to persuade him to cooperate.”

  Thrawn smiled slightly. “Or could at least assure him that you did not, in fact, betray him?”

  “He’ll still be locked in your detention block,” Mara reminded him, forcing her voice to stay calm. “There’s no reason for him not to know the truth.”

  Thrawn lifted his eyebrows. “On the contrary,” he said. “A sense of utter abandonment is one of the more useful psychological tools available to us. A few days with only thoughts of that sort to relieve the monotony may convince him to cooperate without harsher treatment.”

  “Thrawn—” Mara broke off, strangling back the sudden flash of anger.

  “That’s better,” the Grand Admiral approved, his eyes steady on her face. “Especially considering that the alternative is for me to turn him directly over to an interrogator droid. Is that what you want?”

  “No, Admiral,” she said, feeling herself slump a little. “I just … Karrde helped me when I had nowhere else to go.”

  “I understand your feelings,” Thrawn said, his face hardening again. “But they have no place here. Mixed loyalties are a luxury no officer of the Imperial Fleet can afford. Certainly not if she wishes someday to be given a command of her own.”

  Mara drew herself up again to her full height. “Yes, sir. It won’t happen again.”

  “I trust not.” Thrawn glanced past her shoulder and nodded. With a rustle of movement, her stormtrooper escort began to withdraw. “The deck officer’s station is just beneath the control tower,” he said, gesturing to the large transparisteel bubble nestled in among the racked TIE fighters three-quarters of the way up the hangar bay’s back wall. “He’ll assign you a shuttle and pilot to take you back to the surface.”

  It was clearly a dismissal. “Yes, Admiral,” Mara said. Stepping past him, she headed toward the door he’d indicated. For a moment she could feel his eyes on her, then heard the faint sound of his footsteps as he turned away toward the lift cluster beyond the starboard blast doors.

  Yes; the Grand Admiral had made his point. But it wasn’t exactly the one he’d intended to make. With that single casual act of betrayal, he had finally destroyed her last wistful hope that the new Empire might someday measure up to the one that Luke Skywalker had destroyed out from under her.

  The Empire she’d once been proud to serve was gone. Forever.

  It was a painful revelation, and a costly one. It could erase in one stroke everything she’d worked so hard to build up for herself over the last year.

  It could also cost Karrde his life. And if it did, he would die believing that she had deliberately betrayed him to Thrawn.

  The thought twisted in her stomach like a heated knife, mixing with her bitter anger toward Thrawn for lying to her and her shame at her own gullibility in trusting him in the first place. No matter how she looked at it, this mess was her fault.

  It was up to her to fix it.

  Beside the door to the deck officer’s office was the huge archway that led from the hangar bay proper into the service and prep areas behind it. Mara threw a glance over her shoulder as she walked, and spotted Thrawn stepping into one of the turbolifts, his tame Noghri at his side. Her stormtrooper escort, too, had disappeared, its members probably returning to their private section aft for debriefing over the mission they’d just completed. There were twenty or thirty other people in the bay, but none of them seemed to be paying any particular attention to her.

  It was probably the only chance she would ever get. With her ear cocked for the shout—or the blaster shot—that would mean she’d been noticed, she bypassed the deck officer’s office and stepped past the retracted blast doors into the prep area.

  There was a computer terminal just inside the archway, built against the wall where it would be accessible to both the forward prep area and the aft hangar bay. Its location made it an obvious target for unauthorized access, and as a consequence it would undoubtedly be protected by an elaborate entry code. Probably changed hourly, if she knew Thrawn; but what even a Grand Admiral might not know was that the Emperor had had a private back door installed into the main computer of every Star Destroyer. It had been his guarantee, first during his consolidation of power and then during the upheaval of Rebellion, that no commander could ever lock him out of his own ships. Not him, and not his top agents.

  Mara keyed in the backdoor entry code, permitting herself a tight smile as she did so. Thrawn could consider her a glorified courier if he liked. But she knew better.

  The code clicked, and she was in.

  She called up a directory, trying to suppress the creepy awareness that she might already have brought the stormtroopers down on top of her. The backdoor code was hardwired into the system and impossible to eliminate, but if Thrawn suspected its existence, he might well have set a flag to trigger an alarm if it was ever used. And if he had, it would take far more than another show of humble loyalty to keep her out of trouble.

&nb
sp; No stormtroopers had appeared by the time the directory came up. She keyed for the detention section and ran her eye down the listing, wishing fleetingly that she had an R2 astromech droid like Skywalker’s to help cut through all of it. Even if Thrawn had missed the backdoor code, he would certainly have alerted the deck officer to expect her. If someone in the control tower noticed she was overdue and sent someone out to look for her …

  There it was: an updated prisoner list. She keyed for it, pulling up a diagram of the entire detention block while she was at it. A duty roster was next, with attention paid to the shift changes, then back to the daily orders and a listing of the Chimaera’s projected course and destinations for the next six days. Thrawn had implied he would be waiting a few days before beginning a formal interrogation, letting boredom and tension and Karrde’s own imagination wear down his resistance. Mara could only hope she could get back before that softening-up period was over.

  A drop of sweat trickled down her spine as she cleared the display. And now came the really painful part. She’d run through the logic a dozen times while walking across the hangar bay deck, and each time had been forced to the same odious answer. Karrde would almost certainly have had a backup spotter watching the Etherway’s approach, who would have had a front-row view of the stormtroopers’ trap. If Mara now returned free and clear from the Chimaera, she would never be able to convince Karrde’s people that she hadn’t betrayed him to the Imperials. She’d be lucky, in fact, if they didn’t burn her down on sight.

  She couldn’t rescue Karrde alone. She couldn’t expect any help from his organization. Which left only one person in the galaxy she might be able to enlist. Only one person who might possibly feel he owed Karrde something.

  Clenching her teeth, she keyed for the current location of a Jedi Master named Joruus C’baoth.

  It seemed to take the computer an inordinate amount of time to dig out the information, and the skin on Mara’s back was starting to crawl by the time the machine finally spat it out. She caught the planet’s name—Jomark—and keyed off, doing what she could to bury the fact that this interaction had ever taken place. Already she’d pushed her timing way too close to the wire; and if they caught her here on a computer she shouldn’t have been able to access at all, she was likely to find herself in the cell next to Karrde’s.

  She barely made it. She’d just finished her cleanup and started back toward the archway when a young officer and three troopers came striding through from the hangar bay, their eyes and weapons clearly ready for trouble. One of the troopers spotted her, muttered something to the officer—

  “Excuse me,” Mara called as all four turned to her. “Can you tell me where I can find the deck officer?”

  “I’m the deck officer,” the officer said, scowling at her as the group came to a halt in front of her. “You Mara Jade?”

  “Yes,” Mara said, putting on her best unconcerned/innocent expression. “I was told your office was over here somewhere, but I couldn’t find it.”

  “It’s on the other side of the wall,” the officer growled. Brushing past her, he stepped to the terminal she’d just left. “Were you fiddling with this?” he asked, tapping a few keys.

  “No,” Mara assured him. “Why?”

  “Never mind—it’s still locked down,” the officer muttered under his breath. For a moment he looked around the area, as if searching for some other reason Mara might have wanted to be back here. But there was nothing; and almost reluctantly, he brought his attention back to her again. “I’ve got orders to give you transport down to the planet.”

  “I know,” she nodded. “I’m ready.”

  The shuttle lifted and turned and headed off into the sky. Standing by the Etherway’s ramp, the stink of burned paving still thick in the air, Mara watched the Imperial craft disappear over the top of the landing pit. “Aves?” she called. “Come on, Aves, you’ve got to be here somewhere.”

  “Turn around and put your hands up,” the voice came from the shadows inside the ship’s hatchway. “All the way up. And don’t forget I know about that little sleeve gun of yours.”

  “The Imperials have it now,” Mara said as she turned her back to him and raised her hands. “And I’m not here for a fight. I came for help.”

  “You want help, go to your new friends upstairs,” Aves retorted. “Or maybe they were always your friends, huh?”

  He was goading her, Mara knew, pushing for a chance to vent his own anger and frustration in an argument or gun battle. “I didn’t betray him, Aves,” she said. “I got picked up by the Imperials and blew them a smoke ring that I thought would buy us enough time to get out. It didn’t.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Aves said flatly. There was a muffled clank of boot on metal as he came cautiously down the ramp.

  “No, you believe me,” Mara shook her head. “You wouldn’t have come here if you didn’t.”

  She felt a breath of air on the back of her neck as he stepped close behind her. “Don’t move,” he ordered. Reaching carefully to her left arm, he pulled the sleeve down to reveal the empty holster. He checked her other sleeve, then ran a hand down each side of her body. “All right, turn around,” he said, stepping back again.

  She did so. He was standing a meter away from her, his face tight, his blaster pointed at her stomach. “Turn the question around, Aves,” she suggested. “If I betrayed Karrde to the Imperials, why would I come back here? Especially alone?”

  “Maybe you needed to get something from the Etherway,” he countered harshly. “Or maybe it’s just a trick to try to round up the rest of us.”

  Mara braced herself. “If you really believe that,” she said quietly, “you might as well go ahead and shoot. I can’t get Karrde out of there without your help.”

  For a long minute Aves stood there in silence. Mara watched his face, trying to ignore the white-knuckled hand holding the blaster. “The others won’t help you, you know,” he said. “Half of them think you’ve been manipulating Karrde from the minute you joined up. Most of the rest figure you for the type who switches loyalties twice a year anyway.”

  Mara grimaced. “That was true once,” she admitted. “Not anymore.”

  “You got any way to prove that?”

  “Yeah—by getting Karrde out,” Mara retorted. “Look, I haven’t got time to talk. You going to help, or shoot?”

  He hesitated for a handful of heartbeats. Then, almost reluctantly, he lowered the blaster until it was pointed at the ground. “I’m probably scribing my own death mark,” he growled. “What do you need?”

  “For starters, a ship,” Mara said, silently letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Something smaller and faster than the Etherway. One of those three boosted Skipray blastboats we brought in from Vagran would do nicely. I’ll also need one of those ysalamiri we’ve been carrying around on the Wild Karrde. Preferably on a nutrient frame that’s portable.”

  Aves frowned. “What do you want with an ysalamir?”

  “I’m going to talk to a Jedi,” she said briefly. “I need a guarantee he’ll listen.”

  Aves studied her a moment, then shrugged. “I suppose I really don’t want to know. What else?”

  Mara shook her head. “That’s it.”

  His eyes narrowed. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. How soon can you get them to me?”

  Aves pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Let’s say an hour,” he said. “That big swamp about fifty kilometers north of the city—you know it?”

  Mara nodded. “There’s a soggy sort of island near the eastern edge.”

  “Right. You bring the Etherway to the island and we’ll do the switch there.” He glanced up at the freighter towering over him. “If you think it’s safe to move it.”

  “It should be for now,” Mara said. “Thrawn told me he’d lifted all the search and detention orders for the rest of the group. But you’d better disappear anyway after I go. He’ll have the whole Fleet screaming do
wn your necks again if and when I get Karrde out. Better run a fine-edge scan on the Etherway before you take it anywhere, though—there has to be a homing beacon aboard for Thrawn to have gotten the jump on me the way he did.” She felt her lip twitch. “And knowing Thrawn, he’s probably got someone tailing me, too. I’ll have to get rid of him before I leave the planet.”

  “I can give you a hand with that,” Aves said grimly. “We’re disappearing anyway, right?”

  “Right.” Mara paused, trying to think if there was anything else she needed to tell him. “I guess that’s it. Let’s get going.”

  “Right.” Aves hesitated. “I still don’t know whose side you’re on, Mara. If you’re on ours … good luck.”

  She nodded, feeling a hard lump settle into her throat. “Thanks.”

  Two hours later she was strapped into the Skipray’s cockpit, a strange and unpleasant sense of déjà vu burning through her as she drove toward deep space. It had been in a ship just like this one that she’d screamed off into the sky over the Myrkr forest a few weeks ago, in hot pursuit of an escaped prisoner. Now, like a twisted repeat of history, she once again found herself chasing after Luke Skywalker.

  Only this time, she wasn’t trying to kill or capture him. This time, she was going to plead for his help.

  CHAPTER

  20

  The last pair of villagers detached themselves from the group standing at the back wall and made their way toward the raised judgment seat. C’baoth stood there, watching them come; and then, as Luke had known he would, the Jedi Master stood up. “Jedi Skywalker,” he said, gesturing Luke to the seat. “The final case of the evening is yours.”

  “Yes, Master C’baoth,” Luke said, bracing himself as he stepped over and gingerly sat down. It was, to his mind, a thoroughly uncomfortable chair: too warm, too large, and far too ornate. Even more than the rest of C’baoth’s home, it had an alien smell to it, and a strangely disturbing aura that Luke could only assume was a lingering aftereffect of the hours the Jedi Master had spent in it judging his people.