Specter of the Past

by Timothy Zahn

  “What did he do that for?” Booster held up a hand. “Never mind; I don’t want to know. Well, if those are gone then I can’t help you. Second question?”

  “Before he went to Kauron, Skywalker helped stop a pirate raid at Iphigin,” Karrde said, glancing casually around the bridge. No one else was in earshot. “No idea which group was involved. During the battle, he sensed what he thought was a group of clones aboard one of the pirates’ ships.”

  No one moved, but the atmosphere was suddenly rigid. “I thought the Empire had already run through its supply of Mount Tantiss clones,” Mirax said, a shadow of dread in her voice.

  “That’s what Coruscant says,” Booster confirmed, not sounding any happier than his daughter. “At least to us outsiders. Corran?”

  “As far as I know, it’s the truth,” Corran said. “It’s been years since we ran across any clone casualties in military action.”

  “How long has it been since you looked for them?” Odonnl asked.

  “Good point,” Corran conceded. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s hard to believe there could be any of them left,” Booster said. “They were some of the best and brightest troops Thrawn had. You’d think Daala or someone else would have spent them long ago.”

  “Unless Thrawn put some in deep cover where Daala couldn’t find them,” Karrde said.

  “What for?” Booster scoffed. “Saving them? For what?”

  “And why would they suddenly be making their appearance now?” Corran added.

  “We don’t know that they are suddenly making their appearance,” Odonnl reminded him tartly. “Maybe they’ve been out there all along and it’s just that you hotshot military guys haven’t noticed.”

  Corran took half a step toward him. “Look, Odonnl, when we’re busy trying to keep peace around the galaxy—”

  “Easy, gentlemen,” Karrde said, stepping between them and holding up a hand. “Let’s try to remember we’re all on the same side here, shall we?”

  Odonnl’s lips puckered. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Why don’t you head back to the Wild Karrde, Odonnl,” Karrde suggested. “Get started on that data search.”

  “Sure,” Odonnl muttered again. “Good idea.”

  “I’ll escort you down,” Ven offered, stepping forward. Karrde looked at him in mild surprise—the Twi’lek had been so quiet he’d almost forgotten he was there. “It’s easy to get lost on a ship this size.”

  The expression on Odonnl’s face clearly indicated his opinion of that as an excuse, but he merely nodded and headed aft, Ven at his side. “My apologies, Commander Horn,” Karrde said quietly as the two of them crossed under the archway and disappeared into the aft bridge. “Odonnl doesn’t have the same fond memories of the New Republic military that I do.”

  “That’s all right,” Corran said darkly. “I have certain unfond memories of smugglers myself.”

  “Corran,” Mirax said warningly, taking his arm.

  The X-wing pilot patted her hand. “Present company excluded, of course,” he amended. “Let’s get back to business.”

  “Thank you,” Karrde said. “What we know for sure—and all we know for sure—is that Skywalker sensed clones aboard those ships. Our first job is to answer one simple question: whether they’re Imperial leftovers, or whether someone else has found another cache of cloning cylinders.”

  “Someone such as the Cavrilhu Pirates?” Mirax asked.

  “That thought has crossed my mind,” Karrde agreed soberly. “It could very well be that my two questions for your father are in fact interconnected.”

  He smiled at Booster. “In which case, of course, I’d expect a discount on price.”

  Booster rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “Oh, for—”

  “Yo, Captain,” a voice called from one of the crew pits.

  “What is it, Shish?” Booster called back.

  “Got a ship incoming—reads out as the Starry Ice,” Shish reported. “Pilot wants landing instructions. You want me to fix her up?”

  “Key the transmission over to me,” Booster instructed him, pulling out his comlink. “She’ll probably be asking about you anyway,” he added to Karrde as he handed him the slender cylinder. “Might as well save ourselves a little time.”

  “Thank you.” Karrde thumbed the comlink on. “Mara, this is Karrde. How are things?”

  “Running quite smoothly, thank you,” Mara said. If she was surprised to hear his voice, she was hiding it well. Though now that he thought about it, there weren’t a lot of things that ever seemed to surprise her. “Afraid we didn’t have time to swing by Dronseen for that cargo.”

  “That’s all right,” Karrde said. “Faughn can make the pickup after she drops you here. How did the pirate hunt go?”

  “Complete washout,” she said. “We tracked their vector to Di’wor but then lost it completely. The traffic around there was fierce—Starspeeder 3000s all over the place.”

  “It’s pollination season for the singfruit groves,” Booster murmured. “Peace breeds tourists.”

  Karrde nodded. “Don’t worry about it,” he told Mara. “I wasn’t really expecting them to leave a trail you could follow. Have Faughn bring the Starry Ice aboard and we’ll—”

  “Jade!” Faughn’s voice cut in. “Over there—coming in from starboard.”

  “I see it,” Mara said, her tone suddenly crisp. “Terrik, you’ve got company—coming in one-one-seven by fifteen, your vector.”

  Booster was already running along the command walkway toward the forward viewport, Corran right behind him. “One-one-seven by fifteen, Bodwae,” he snapped. “What do you see?”

  “Nothjing,” a bewildered Laerdocian voice said from one of the crew pits. “These shas’mink sensors—”

  “It’s hard to see,” Mara put in, her voice coming now from the Errant Venture’s main bridge speaker system. “Small and dark—looks a little like a severely modified TIE fighter.”

  “Doesn’t show up well on sensors, either,” Faughn added.

  “Stjill see nothjing,” Bodwae insisted.

  “Skip it,” Booster said tartly. He and Corran were standing together now by the forward viewports, Booster’s head turning slowly back and forth as he searched the sky. “Get the deflector shields up, and stand by turbolasers.”

  “Shjields shortjing out agajin,” Bodwae said. “Turbolasers—”

  “I’m getting a transmission now,” Shish barked. “Strong signal. It’s … well, stang it all, I don’t know what it is.”

  “Mara?” Karrde asked.

  “We’re picking up the edge of it,” Mara confirmed. “Pretty faint out here, though. So far the computer’s not making anything of it.”

  “There it is,” Corran snapped, jabbing out a finger. “Coming straight at us.”

  “Get that bridge deflector up!” Booster snapped. “Now!”

  “Mara?” Karrde called.

  “We’re still out of firing range,” she said tightly. “Better take cover.”

  Karrde glanced around, belatedly wondering where Mirax was. He spotted her at once, heading at a dead run back toward the relative safety of the aft bridge, her bewildered-looking son Valin clutched in her arms. For a moment he considered joining her, realized it was already too late, and turned back instead toward the forward viewports. He could see the unknown intruder now, burning space directly toward them. Like no ship he’d ever seen …

  “Brjidge deflector not comjing up,” Bodwae snarled. “Shjip gojing to hjit.”

  “Hit the ground!” Booster snapped, grabbing Corran’s arm and dropping them both flat on the command walkway. Karrde took a long step toward the nearest crew pit, realized he wouldn’t have time to jump down into it, and stopped. The intruder was still coming—

  And then, at the last second, it made a strange corkscrewing maneuver to one side and shot around and above past the viewport.

  It took Karrde a second to find his voice. “Mara?”

  “You all rig
ht?” she asked anxiously.

  “Yes, we’re fine,” he assured her, breaking his paralysis and starting down the command walkway toward where Booster and Corran were still stretched out on the deck. “Where did it go?”

  “Overshot the command superstructure, cut around behind the drive nozzles where we couldn’t see it, then jumped to lightspeed,” she told him. “Same trick as the one Luke spooked.”

  Karrde frowned out the viewports. “This was the same type as that one?”

  “It looked like it,” Mara told him. “Torve’s doing a scrub of the sensor data now.”

  Booster and Corran were back on their feet by the time Karrde reached them. “Did you see that?” Booster demanded, shaking his head as he brushed himself off. “Of all the stupid, cherfer-brained stunts—”

  “Captain, this is Torve,” the young man’s voice cut him off. “It’s confirmed: same type of ship as before.”

  “Where did you see this other ship?” Booster asked.

  “In the asteroids near the Cavrilhu’s Kauron base,” Karrde told him. “Mara, what about that transmission?”

  “We’re running it now,” she said. “It consists of what seems to be a short message, followed by a pause, followed by a repeat of the message. So far we’re not coming up with a match to any known language, code, or encrypt.”

  “Probably something useless like that Qella ship Calrissian chased halfway across the galaxy,” Booster said with a scornful sniff.

  “That’s what we thought at first,” Mara said. “I don’t think so anymore.”

  “Why?” Booster asked. “Just because it was transmitting something?”

  “Because it was transmitting specifically toward this ship,” Karrde said. “And the fact that it paused and then repeated itself implies it was expecting an answer.”

  Booster scratched his cheek. “Does kind of sound that way, doesn’t it? Mara, you’re running Imperial codes against it, too, aren’t you?”

  “First thing we tried,” she told him. “Nothing came even close.”

  “Yet they came in for a close look at an Imperial Star Destroyer,” Karrde mused. “And before that they were poking around a pirate base with suspected Imperial ties.”

  “Sounds like they’re either already involved with the Empire or else want to be,” Mara said.

  “Or maybe it’s something else entirely,” Faughn put in, her voice suddenly tight. “I’ve just run a phoneme analysis on that transmission; and I think I’ve found the name ‘Thrawn’ in there.”

  Karrde frowned. “Let’s hear it.”

  There was a brief pause; and then over the comlink came a sputter of alien language. Squarely in the middle of the gibberish—

  “I heard it,” Booster said. “It was kind of broken up, like he was stuttering or something.”

  “That’s because you were getting his full name there,” Mara said, her voice suddenly grim. “Mitth’raw’nuruodo. Thrawn was what he called his core name.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Karrde saw something flash across Corran’s expression. “So you were on a full-name basis with the guy?” Booster asked with forced casualness.

  “Hardly,” Mara said. “But I did know his full name. And there weren’t a lot of people in the Empire who did.”

  Karrde chewed his lower lip. “You know anything about his history? His early history with the Empire, I mean?”

  “Not really,” she said. “Some Imperial commander ran into him on a deserted world just inside the Unknown Regions while chasing smugglers. He was impressed by his tactical ability, and brought him back to Coruscant. Rumor was his own people had exiled him there, incidentally.”

  “Why?” Booster asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mara said. “But it could be that ship was someone who’s finally figured out where he went and has come looking for him.”

  Booster snorted. “They’re going to be real disappointed when they find out they’re ten years too late.”

  “Maybe not,” Corran muttered. “It could be it’s not Thrawn they’re looking for.”

  Karrde studied the other’s face. There was something there, all right. “I take it that’s not an idle guess,” he said mildly. “Would you care to share it with the rest of us?”

  Corran’s lip twitched. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything about this to anyone but Booster,” he said reluctantly. “But under the circumstances … That Devaronian you got the Caamas Document from, Karrde? He found some other datacards in the same batch. One of them was labeled ‘The Hand of Thrawn.’ ”

  Karrde nodded slowly. So that was the secret Leia had been holding out on him at Wayland. And the reason she’d been giving Mara such a strange look.

  “The datacard was so badly scrambled that they couldn’t get anything from it,” Corran continued. “Councilor Organa Solo thought it might be Thrawn’s version of an Emperor’s Hand. General Bel Iblis wanted me to ask Booster if he’d run across the term before.”

  “Never,” Booster said, shaking his head. “Karrde? Mara?”

  “No,” Karrde said.

  “Me, neither,” Mara said. “And personally, I find it hard to picture Thrawn having that kind of shadow agent. He wasn’t into the same kind of political manipulation that the Emperor was. Besides, he had the Noghri if he needed something special done.”

  “Yet there was a datacard with that title in the Emperor’s private files,” Karrde pointed out. “It must mean something.”

  “How do you know it was from his private files?” Booster asked.

  “Because if it was something Bel Iblis could have looked up in the Kamparas archives, he wouldn’t have sent Corran to ask you about it,” Karrde pointed out.

  “Point,” Booster rumbled. “So you figure these ships are looking for either Thrawn or this Hand of Thrawn?”

  “Or else the person in the ship is the Hand of Thrawn,” Mara said. “Whichever, it’s starting to look more important than ever that we try to track these ships down.”

  “Agreed,” Karrde said. “How do you suggest we start?”

  “We’ve got the vector from their jump a few minutes ago,” Mara said. “We also got the vector from the Kauron ship. Faughn’s plotting an intercept point.”

  “Got it,” Faughn said. “It’s an unexplored system in Gradilis sector, right on the boundary between Wild Space and the Unknown Regions. It’s listed as the Nirauan system, so someone must have visited the place, but there’s no other data.”

  “Sounds too easy,” Booster rumbled. “They wouldn’t really be stupid enough to jump directly to their base like that, would they? Especially not with us watching.”

  “Depends on how they make their jumps,” Karrde pointed out. “They may not have the computing power aboard to handle complicated hyperspace calculations. Or it could be that their return home is preprogrammed to make sure none of their ships go astray.”

  “They also may not realize we can still pull their vector for a few microseconds after they jump,” Mara added. “Both times now they’ve made sure they were out of our line of sight before kicking in their hyperdrive. They might think that’s all they need to do.”

  “At any rate, it’s a place to start,” Karrde said, an odd reluctance seeping into him.

  A reluctance Mara evidently could hear in his voice. “Would we rather not go?” she asked. “We could just turn all this over to the New Republic and let them handle it.”

  “Corran?” Booster prompted.

  The X-wing pilot was still staring out the viewport at the stars. “I can take it back to Bel Iblis, no problem,” he said, sounding vaguely distracted. “But I doubt he’ll be able to do anything about it, at least not now. This whole Caamas thing has everybody in a knot-tie twist.”

  Karrde nodded, his instinctive reluctance turning still darker. Booster was right: this was too easy. A trap, perhaps, or at the very least a wild tresher hunt and a waste of time.

  But if it wasn’t …

  “No, you’d better c
heck it out,” he sighed. “Have Faughn transmit her schedule to Chin before you jump; we’ll sort her assignments out among the other ships.”

  “Right,” Mara said. “Anyplace in particular you want us to rendezvous when we get back?”

  “Just get in touch with the network—they’ll find me,” Karrde told her. “And be careful.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mara assured him grimly. “If they’re trying some game, they’ll be sorry they tried it on us. See you later.”

  Karrde thumbed off the comlink. “Good luck,” he said softly.

  “Don’t worry, they’ll be fine,” Booster said, plucking the comlink from Karrde’s hand and replacing it in his own belt. “Mara and Faughn are both pretty sharp, and the Starry Ice is a good ship. Better than this one, anyway,” he added, glowering as he brushed past Karrde and stomped back down the command walkway. “All right, Bodwae, what the blinking mradhe muck is going on with those shields?”

  He squatted down to hear the Laerdocian’s excuses; and as he did so, Karrde stepped over to Corran’s side. “You were right here when that alien ship went past,” he said quietly. “Did you happen to sense anything unusual about it?”

  Corran threw him a sideways look. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean whatever it is that Skywalker picks up when he gets near a group of clones,” Karrde told him. “Whatever this disturbance is that it creates in the Force.”

  For a long moment the only sound on the bridge was the argument going on behind them, now become three-way as Shish joined in on Bodwae’s side. “I don’t know what Luke senses when there are clones nearby,” Corran said at last, his voice barely audible. “All I felt here was the presence of something alien.”

  Karrde nodded. “I see.”

  Corran turned to face him. “My … talent … is not exactly public knowledge, Karrde,” he said, his tone somewhere between challenge and threat.

  “Yes, I know,” Karrde replied evenly. “Wise of you to keep it that way.”

  “I think so,” Corran countered. “Problem is, you’re in the business of selling information.”

  “Ah, but I’m also in the business of survival,” Karrde said. “And in this big, dangerous galaxy one occasionally needs a helping hand.” He cocked an eyebrow. “I always think it’s nice when there are cards in that hand which the opposition doesn’t know about.”