Others might have taken the phrase "about a day" and have seen it as a fairly loose measure of time, but to Mirax it was painfully exact. She made her living delivering items of value to various clients, on time and intact. If she had meant twelve standard hours, she'd have said so. If she'd meant twenty-five hours, she'd not have rounded them down to a day, she would have given me her best estimate, to the hour or minute.
As damning and worrisome as that might seem, I knew better than to panic. Any message could have been delayed or misrouted. She could have even stopped off to see her father on the Enfant Venture and his communication system could be down again.
A shiver ran down my spine, but I shrugged it off. "Your good news will just have to wait, I guess." Still feeling a little achy and tired from the run home, I stripped my clothes off, hit the refresher station, cleaned myself up, then dropped into bed. I left the bedroom door open in the hopes that I'd awaken when Mirax returned.
Scant chance of that. I dropped into a deep sleep, dark and black, like the deepest shadows on Coruscant. I realized I was drifting off and tried to seek out the dream about the child, hoping my decision would paint more details onto him, but it eluded me. Consciousness evaporated in a pool of nothingness and I fell into a dreamless sleep.
ColTan.
I stirred at the sound of my name but couldn't recognize the voice.
CORRAN!
Mirax's shriek ripped me to wakefulness. I sat bolt upright in bed and reached out for her. The image of her face faded from before my eyes as my hands encountered only cold sheets where she should have been. I felt about for her, seeking the warmth that her body should have deposited there, but I found none of it. For all of a heartbeat my brain chastened me with a flash of Mirax's message, then something more horrible slammed into me. Bile surged up into my throat, choking me. In one blindingly terrible moment, I knew Mirax was gone I stumbled out of bed on the far side and barked my shin on a low table set there. I kicked out angrily at it. Who would have put that there? I knew I wouldn't have put it there because even a gentle bump would have toppled it and scattered the datacards stacked there as easily as my kick had.
I looked around the room and in the halflight I saw all manner of things that were wrong about the place. The holographs on the walls were pleasant enough, and were even of scenes from CoreIlia, but were of locations I'd not known on my homeworld. Who bttilt this parody of my home?
My feet caught in the sheets I'd tossed off and I crashed to my hands and knees. The pain in my shin found an ally in my knees and hands, and just for a moment shocked me into a clarity of mind. The holographs and the table and the datacards, all these little pieces of the apartment that were not mine, they were things Mirax had placed here. Mirax, my wife.
I looked up at everything she'd brought in to make our apartment feel like a home. Somehow she had found replacements for many of the things we had lost when our previous home had been destroyed. Intellectually, as I looked around the room, I could catalog her contributions to the decor, and could even remember the when and where of her finding the items. I looked at the closet and could see her clothes hanging there. I found it easy to recall when she had purchased this gown, or where she had gotten that jacket.
But I could not recall anything about her connections to those items. In looking at the clothes I couldn't remember which gown was her favorite. I couldn't remember which jacket she considered slimming, or which blouse and slacks she considered appropriate for business, and which outfit she wore when we were out to have fun.
I studied a holograph of Vreni Island on CoreIlia. It showed a small island covered with trees, floating in a stormy sea as a thunderstorm approached. Shifting my view slightly I injected lightning into the picture, a massive triple fork that sent countless tendrils crawling across the waves. The image was fantastic and the holograph was a work of art, but I could not recall why Mirax had wanted it, I didn't know if she had known the holographer or if she had spent time on the island, or if she had purchased it as an investment.
Mirax is gone, and I am losing details of her life.
I got up and ran to the living room. The red light still blinked on the holopad. I punched it with the urgency of a pilot ejecting from a stricken fighter. Her image appeared once again and I smiled, but as she spoke, my smile died. The countless nuances I'd read into how she looked at me, and what she said, how she infiected her voice and shifted her balance, were gone. I could have been looking at some commercial broadcast of a beautiful woman selling anything from lum to a trip to the Alakatha resorts.
I hit another button and switched the holopad over into communications mode. I keyed in a call to Squadron Headquarters. The head and shoulders of a black droid materialized, all but lost in the darkness except for the glow of golden eyes in his clamshell head. "You have reached Rogue Squadron Headquarters. This is Emtrey. It is good to see you, Captain Horn."
"You, too, Emtrey." I raked fingers back through my short brown hair. "I'm going to ask you a question and I want a straight answer-and the question is going to sound strange." "I understand the parameters of your request."
"Good." I hesitated for a moment. "It is approximately 1:30 in the morning, Coordinated Galactic Time, right?" "1:31:27, to be exact, sir."
I nodded. Normally I found Emtrey's slavish adherence to reality annoying, but right now it was a lifeline to sanity. "And I'm Corran Horn, right?"
The droid's head jerked back. "Yes, sir. A moment please.... Your voiceprint checks to within 99.4953 percent of accuracy, the variation being accounted for by travel stress and degree of rest."
"Okay, good, Emtrey, very good." I licked my lips. "Here's the big one."
The droid's image leaned forward toward me. "I am ready, sir."
"I'm married to Mirax Terrik, right?"
Emtrey's eyes flared. "Oh, yes, sir. You will recall that I attended the ceremony Commander Antilles conducted on the Lusankya, and again attended the ceremony you had here on Coruscant. I believe Whistler made a holographic record of the first ceremony, and I know there were multiple holographs of the second one."
My jaw dropped. I knew there were holographs of the ceremonies, but I had forgotten them. Our original copies had been destroyed when our home had been leveled, but Mirax had obtained new copies from her father. I wanted to turn to the cabinet where we stored them and play one immediately, but I hesitated. I couldn't risk finding them as emotionally empty as I had the replay of Mirax's message.
"Are you all right, Captain Horn?"
I frowned, then nodded slowly. "I don't know, Emtrey. Is the colonel available?"
Emtrey's eyes flickered for a moment. "The colonel is in his office. He has a meeting scheduled thirty standard minutes from now."
"Ask him to cancel it or postpone it, please. I have to talk to him." I stared intently at Emtrey as if I could reach into his robotic brain and communicate my urgency. "Mirax is gone, I mean really gone, and I have to find her. I'll be there in a half hour. Horn out."
I arrived at headquarters a little later than expected because of gross indecision on my part concerning clothes. I went to toss almost anything on, but I saw too many shirts and pants and jackets that Mirax had bought for me and, rather often, transported from all over the galaxy. Try as I might, I couldn't remember what she had said about any of them. I couldn't remember her smiles or laughter as she dressed me up, or what she'd said as she later worked me back out of the clothes. Each shirt hung there like a ghost of a memory, all two dimensional and lifeless.
I'd finally shrugged something on-a hideous matching of patterns and colors, as it turned out, but I had dressed in the dark. I had a haunted look on my face so people on the hoverbus shied away from me. I would have taken our air-speeder and doubtlessly salvaged some of the time I'd lost dressing, but even as messed up as I was, I knew I had no place piloting anything through Imperial City even if the traffic was light.
Emtrey made no attempt to stop me in the antechamber to Tycho's o
ffice. I shot in past him, then snapped to attention and gave Tycho as crisp a salute as I could manage. "Thank you for seeing me, sir."
Standing at his desk, with a big transparisteel viewport framing a view of the Imperial Palace behind him, Tycho looked every bit the recruiting hologram image of a pilot. Steel-spined straight, wasp-waisted, with his light brown hair cut short and just beginning to show some white at the temples, he returned mv salute sharply. Sympathy softened his blue eyes. "Emtrey told me about your problem, though he didn't give me much detail."
"I didn't have much to give him. I'm sorry."
Tvcho shook his head and pointed me to a chair in front of his desk. "Not your fault, I think." He glanced back at the doorway. "That's why I asked General Cracken to join us."
I turned back and saw Airen Cracken enter the office. Though an older man, he had not thickened around the middle with age. White predominated in his hair, but tinges of the red hair he'd passed on to his son Pash still lingered around the sides and back. His eyes were green, like mine, but more of a sea-green, which did not make them lack for intensity. He waited for both of us to salute, which we did, and he returned it sharply.
Tycho waited for General Cracken to take the other chair and sit before he sat himself. "General Cracken was my appointment anyway, and one I could not postpone."
"No, sir," I said, as I sat. I had first met General Cracken on Coruscant, when I showed up at Tycho's treason and murder trial. My arrival seemed to surprise the general, but that was the first and last time I'd seen him taken unawares by anything. He'd asked me to help him negotiate with Booster Terrik for possession of an Imperial Star Destroyer, and I had failed in that mission rather dismally. The infrequent times we had met since then had been more satisfactory, but his presence here did nothing to put me at ease.
Cracken smiled carefully. "I wanted to discuss with Colonel Celchu the intelligence we obtained from Phan Riizolo, the Booty Full's captain. From him, really, we learned very little that will help us deal with the Invidious and solving the mystery of its location."
I frowned. "I'd really rather talk about my wife.... "
"I know, but this is germane, believe me, Captain Horn." He leaned forward and plugged a cable from the datapad he carried into the holoprojector pad on the corner of Tycho's desk. An image of an Imperial Star Destroyer hovered there as if in orbit around the crystalline model of Alderaan centered on the near edge of the desk. "This is the Invidious, represented in old Imperial holo-images because we have no current ones of any reliable quality. At the time of the Emperor's death, it was part of a task force commanded by High Admiral Teradoc and served as part of the fleet with which he secured his holdings as the Empire crumbled. That was a good seven years ago. Then, approximately six years ago, Leonia Tavira appears to have obtained it."
Cracken hit a key on his datapad and the image shifted to that of a very young woman in an Imperial Naval uniform, with the rank insignia of an admiral. I'd seen enough of those rank badges on selfstyled warlords to make me imagine the Empire had given them away as party favors at the Emperor's funeral, but I'd never seen them on someone so young. Her black hair had been cut to the line of her jaw, emphasizing her youth, but an ancient hunger played through her violet eyes.
I looked at Cracken. "She's a child."
"Was." Cracken sat back in his chair. "We think she was sixteen standard years old when she began an affair with the Moff on Eiattu 4, the homeworld of a former pilot in Rogue Squadron."
Tycho smiled. "Plourr. We didn't know she was part of the world's ruling family until they came looking for her to come back and guide them."
I concentrated for a moment. "She was before my time, before the squadron was reformed and Coruscant was taken. Didn't realize who she was when I met her on CoreIlia, back when I was still with CorSec."
"Her reports on that incident spoke highly of you nonetheless, Captain Horn." Cracken pressed his hands together. "Leonia proved to be ambitious, and after the apparently accidental death of the Moff's wife, he married Leonia. Then he suffered a stroke that left him speechless and paralyzed. Because of an allergy to bacta, the road back to health was not easy for him, but he worked hard in physical rehab. He regained use of his hands, a goal he had, it seems, because he then turned a blaster on himself and committed suicide. Leonia assumed his title and duties and ruled Eiattu 4 until Plourr and the Rogues forced her to flee. This she did, with a considerable portion of the planet's wealth."
I felt a chill run down my spine. Over the years I had heard countless stories of people willing to sacrifice others for their own greed. With CorSec I had even investigated a couple of these mourning-murderers, but they were nothing in comparison to Leonia Tavira. "Is there any question that she did away with her husband and his first wife?"
Cracken shook his head. "Not in my mind, but there is no evidence to prove she did. From Eiattu there is no trace of her-she escaped in a shuttle-until she had another run in with Rogue Squadron. This time she was in command of a small band of pirates that proved somewhat less tractable than the Invids. She fled from that confrontation and hooked up with Teradoc. She obtained the Invidious from him by means unknown and vanished except for the occasional supply raid. She became more bold during Thrawn's campaign, and first appeared with the Invids during the Emperor's return. She was a minor concern then, but she learned very well how to manage her pirates."
An image of the Booty Full replaced her holograph. "What she has done is forged a loose coalition of freebooters and marauders into a fleet that looks to her for planning and coor-dination. She provides them times and places for rendezvous, then plots courses, downloads battleplans and uses the Invidi-otts' firepower to suppress planetary defenses. Her allies then loot and pillage to their hearts' content, transferring half of what they take to her. She then vanishes and they return to their bolt-holes, waiting for her next call."
I frowned. "Why haven't we gone after her fleet? Tracking them can't be that difficult."
"It isn't. We know, for a fact, that many of them spend their time at Nal Hutta, or lairing up in various and sundry smug-glers' hide-outs throughout the galaxy." Cracken's eyes nar-rowed. "Without Tarira and the Invidious, her fleet would fall apart and mopping them up would be simple. With her ship intact, we can't begin to prey on the fleet unless we devote sufficient forces to be able to repel an ambush. You were at K'vath. We had a Mon Cal Cruiser and two Star Destroyers there to take down a bulk cruiser and eighteen Tri-fighters."
Tycho leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk.
"The fact is, though, sir, that we were not ambushed at K'vath."
"I know, and that is one of the more troubling aspects of this whole affair." Cracken sighed and I felt a wave of fatigue wash out with his breath. "The source that tipped us to the BooO' Full's raid appears to be one tied to Tavira. Riizolo says he wanted to go out on his own, so he severed ties with Tavira. He says he had been holding out on her anyway, which is why he was able to buy his own clutches. He even sliced the plans for the taking of the Glitterstar from her computer. Because we escorted the liner back to Coruscant, he believes he just got unlucky in the timing of the raid, since we were obviously there to escort the ship, not go after him."
I shook my head. "He'd not be the first criminal to refuse to believe he was set up."
"He still is stupid enough to think what little information he was able to give us will save him from prison." Cracken hit another key on the datapad. "About the most useful thing he did give us is this updated image of Leonia Tavira."
Gone was the prim vixen from the previous image. Though still very young, Leonia had become sharper and far more beautiful. Her violet eyes had a piercing quality that belied the gentle smile on her face. Her hair had grown out somewhat and was raggedly cut, but held back with a red bandanna of the same hue as the scarlet panels on her black jacket. She wore blaster pistols on either hip, and the gunbelts that encircled her waist emphasized her slender, petite physique. He
r black leg-gings clung to her like synthetic flesh, while armored boots en-cased her legs from the knees down.
I shook my head. "Looks like life gave her some Iceheart lessons."
Cracken snorted a laugh. "I hate to think what Tavira would have become if Ysanne Isard had taken her on as an appren-tice. Or even Grand Admiral Thrawn, for that matter. She ap-pears to learn from her experiences very quickly and very well, which is part of the reason we have trouble locating her. As we suspected before, and as Riizolo confirmed, she initiates con-tact, not the other way around. None of the Invid pirates know where she hides her ship or when she will show up. Only those individuals recruited to crew on the Invidious learn those secrets, but that avenue of access is one-way only. Once you are invited to the Invidious, you do not leave it."
Tvcho studied Tavira's image, then glanced at Cracken. "I seem to recall a number of other operations launched against her that proved fruitless. Do you suspect she has sources of information that tip her to our plans?"
Star Wars - I, Jedi Page 3