The Last Command (44 page)

C’baoth laughed softly, the amusement rippling pleasantly through Covell’s mind. Covell thought about asking what was funny, but it was easier and far more agreeable to just sit back and enjoy the laughter. And anyway, he knew perfectly well what it was that was funny.

“You do, don’t you,” C’baoth agreed, shaking his head. “Ah, General, General. It’s so very ironic, isn’t it? From the very beginning—from that very first meeting in my city— Grand Admiral Thrawn has had the answer within his grasp. And yet even now he is as far from understanding as he was then.”

“Is it about power, Master C’baoth?” Covell asked. This was a familiar topic, and even without the prompting in his mind he would have remembered his lines.

“It is indeed, General Covell,” C’baoth said gravely. “I told him at the very beginning that true power didn’t lie in the conquering of distant worlds. Or in battles and war and the crushing of faceless rebellions.”

He smiled, his eyes glittering brightly in Covell’s mind. “No, General Covell,” he said softly. “This—
this
—is true power. Holding another’s life in the palm of your hand. Having the power to choose his path, and his thoughts, and his feelings. To rule his life, and decree his death.” Slowly, theatrically, C’baoth held out his hand, palm upward. “To command his soul.”

“Something not even the Emperor ever understood,” Covell reminded him.

Another ripple of pleasure rolled through Covell’s mind. It was so satisfying to see the Master enjoying his game. “Not even the Emperor,” C’baoth agreed, his eyes and thoughts drifting far away. “He, like the Grand Admiral, saw power only as how far outside himself he could reach. And it destroyed him, as I could have told him it would. For if he’d truly commanded Vader…” He shook his head. “In many ways he was a fool. But perhaps it was not his destiny to be otherwise. Perhaps it was the will of the universe that I, and I alone, would understand. For only I have both the strength and the will to grasp hold of this power. The first… but not the last.”

Covell nodded, swallowing against a dry throat. It was not pleasant when C’baoth left him like this, even for a little bit. Especially not when there was this strange loneliness along with it…

But of course, the Master knew that. “Do you ache with my loneliness, General Covell?” he said, warming Covell’s mind with another smile. “Yes, of course you do. But be patient. The time is coming when we shall be many. And when that time is here, we will never be lonely again. Observe.”

He felt the distant sense as he did all others now: filtered and focused and structured through the Master’s perfect mind. “You see, I was right,” C’baoth said, reaching out to examine that sense. “They are here. Skywalker and Jade both.” He smiled at Covell. “They will be the first, General Covell—the first of our many. For they will come to me, and when I have shown to them the true power, they will understand and will join us.” His eyes drifted away again. “Jade will be first, I think,” he added thoughtfully. “Skywalker has resisted once, and will resist again; but the key to his soul is even now waiting for me in the mountain below. But Jade is another matter. I have seen her in my meditations—have seen her coming to me and kneeling at my feet. She will be mine, and Skywalker will follow. One way or another.”

He smiled again. Covell smiled back, pleased at the Master’s own pleasure and by the thought of others who would be there to warm his mind.

And then, without any warning, it all went dark. Not loneliness, not the way it had been. But a sort of emptiness…

By and by, he felt his head being roughly lifted by his chin. C’baoth was there, in a way, staring into his eyes. “General Covell!” the Master’s voice thundered. Thundered strangely, too. Covell could hear it, but it wasn’t really there. Not like it should have been. “Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you,” Covell said. His own voice sounded strange, too. He looked past C’baoth’s face, to the interesting pattern of lines on the shuttle bulkhead.

He felt himself being shaken. “Look at me!” C’baoth demanded.

Covell did so. That was odd, too, because he could see the Master but he wasn’t really there. “Are you still there?”

The Master’s face changed. Something—was it called a smile?—came across it. “Yes, General, I am here,” the distant voice said. “I no longer touch your mind, but I am still your Master. You will continue to obey me.”

Obey.
An odd concept, Covell thought. Not like simply doing what was natural. “Obey?”

“You will do as I tell you,” C’baoth said. “I will give you things to say, and you will repeat every word.”

“All right,” Covell said. “If I do that, will you come back?”

“I will,” the Master promised. “Despite Grand Admiral Thrawn’s treachery. With your obedience—with you doing what I tell you—we will together destroy his betrayal of us. And then we will never be apart again.”

“The emptiness will be gone?”

“Yes. But only if you do what I say.”

The other men came a little later. The Master stayed at his side the whole time, and he said all the words the Master told him to say. They all went somewhere, and then the men left, and the Master left, too.

He stared off across the place they’d left him in, watching the patterns of lines and listening to the emptiness all around him. Eventually, he fell asleep.

A strange sort of birdcall warbled off in the distance, and instantly the background crackle of insects and scuttling animals ceased. But apparently there was no immediate danger, and a minute later the nighttime sounds and activity resumed. Shifting her position against her chosen tree trunk, Mara eased her aching back muscles and wished this whole thing was over.

“There is no need for you to stay awake,” a soft Noghri voice said at her shoulder. “We will guard.”

“Thanks,” Mara said shortly. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll do my job.”

The Noghri was silent a moment. “You still do not trust us, do you?”

Actually, she hadn’t thought all that much about it one way or the other. “Skywalker trusts you,” she said. “Isn’t that good enough?”

“It is not approval we seek,” the Noghri told her. “Only the chance to repay our debt.”

She shrugged. They’d protected the camp, they’d tackled the always tricky job of first contact with the Myneyrshi and Psadans, and now here they were protecting the camp again. “If it’s a debt to the New Republic, I’d say you’re doing a pretty good job of it,” she conceded. “You finally figured out Thrawn and the Empire had been stringing you along?”

There was a quiet click, like needle teeth coming together. “You knew about that?”

“I heard rumors,” Mara said, recognizing how potentially dangerous this ground was but not really caring. “More like jokes, really. I never knew how much of it was true.”

“Most likely all of it,” the Noghri said calmly. “Yes. I can see how our lives and deaths could be amusing to our enslavers. We will convince them otherwise.”

No white-hot rage, no fanatical hatred. Just a simple, icy determination. About as dangerous as you could get. “How are you going to do that?” she asked.

“When the time is right the Noghri will turn upon their enslavers. Some on Imperial worlds, some on transporting ships. And five groups will come here.”

Mara frowned. “You knew about Wayland?”

“Not until you led us here,” the other said. “But we know now. We have sent the location to those waiting at Coruscant. By now they will have passed the word on to others.”

Mara snorted quietly. “You have a lot of confidence in us, don’t you?”

“Our missions complement each other,” the Noghri assured her, his gravelly mewing somehow sounding grimmer. “You have set for yourselves the task of destroying the cloning facility. With the help of the son of Vader we do not doubt you will succeed. For ourselves, the Noghri have chosen the task of eliminating every last reminder of the Emperor’s presence on Wayland.”

Probably the last relics of the Emperor’s presence anywhere. Mara turned that idea over in her mind, wondering why it didn’t seem to grieve or anger her. Probably she was just tired. “Sounds like a big project,” she said instead. “Who is this son of Vader you’re expecting to show up and help us?”

There was a brief silence. “The son of Vader is already with you,” the Noghri said, sounding puzzled. “You serve him, as do we.”

Mara stared at him through the darkness… and suddenly her heart seemed to freeze in her chest. “You mean…
Skywalker
?”

“You did not know?”

Mara turned away from him, staring down at the sleeping form no more than a meter away from her feet, a horrible numbness flooding through her. Suddenly, finally, after all these years, the last elusive piece had fallen into place. The Emperor didn’t want her to kill Skywalker for his own sake. It was, instead, one final act of vengeance against his father.

YOU
WILL
KILL
LUKE
SKYWALKER
.

And in the space of a few heartbeats everything Mara had believed about herself—her hatred, her mission, her entire life—had turned from certainty to confusion.

YOU
WILL
KILL
LUKE
SKYWALKER
.
YOU
WILL
KILL
LUKE
SKYWALKER
.
YOU
WILL
KILL
LUKE
SKYWALKER
.

“No,” she muttered at the voice through clenched teeth. “Not like that.
My
decision.
My
reasons.”

But the voice continued unabated. Perhaps it was her resistance and defiance fueling it now, or perhaps the deeper power in the Force that Skywalker had given her over the past few days had made her more receptive to it.

YOU
WILL
KILL
LUKE
SKYWALKER
.
YOU
WILL
KILL
LUKE
SKYWALKER
.

But you are another matter, Mara Jade.

Mara jerked, the sudden motion banging the back of her head against the tree trunk behind her. Another voice; but this one wasn’t coming from inside her. It was coming from—

I have seen you in my meditations
, the voice continued placidly.
Have seen you coming to me and kneeling at my feet. You will be mine, and Skywalker will follow. One way or another.

Mara shook her head violently, trying to shake away the words and thoughts. The second voice seemed to laugh; then, suddenly, the words and laughter disappeared beneath a distant but steady pressure against her mind. Setting her teeth, she pushed back against it. Dimly, she heard the voice laugh again at her efforts—

And then, with a suddenness that made her catch her breath, the pressure was gone.

“Are you all right?” Skywalker’s voice asked quietly.

Mara looked down. Skywalker had risen up on one elbow, his silhouetted face turned toward her. “Did you hear it, too?” she asked.

“I didn’t hear any words. But I felt the pressure.”

Mara looked up toward the leaf canopy overhead. “It’s C’baoth,” she said. “He’s here.”

“Yes,” Skywalker said; and she could hear the apprehension in his voice. Small wonder—he’d faced C’baoth once, back on Jomark, and nearly lost out to him.

“So what now?” Mara asked, rubbing at the sweat around her mouth with a shaking hand. “We abort the mission?”

The silhouette shrugged. “How? We’re only a couple of days from the mountain. It’d take us a lot longer than that to get back to the
Falcon
.”

“Except that the Imperials know we’re here now.”

“Maybe,” Skywalker said slowly. “But maybe not. Did the contact cut off suddenly for you, too?”

She frowned; and suddenly it hit her. “You think they moved some ysalamiri around him?”

“Or else strapped him into one of those frames you were using on Jomark,” Skywalker said. “Either way, it would imply he was a prisoner.”

Mara thought about that. If so, he might not be interested in telling his captors about the invaders moving toward the mountain.

She looked sharply at him as another thought suddenly occurred to her. “Did you know C’baoth was going to come?” she demanded. “Is that why you wanted me to practice my old Jedi training?”

“I didn’t know he’d be here,” Skywalker said. “But I knew we would eventually have to face him again. He said that himself on Jomark.”

Mara shivered.
Kneeling at my feet
... “I don’t want to face him, Skywalker.”

“Neither do I,” he said softly. “But I think we have to.”

He sighed; and then, quietly, he peeled off the top of his bedroll and got to his feet. “Why don’t you go get some sleep,” he said, stepping over to her side. “I’m awake now anyway; and you took the brunt of that attack.”

“All right,” Mara said, too tired to argue. “If you need any help, call me.”

“I will.”

She picked her way across Calrissian and the Wookiee to her bedroll and crawled into it. Her last memory, as she dropped off to sleep, was of the voice in the back of her mind.

YOU
WILL
KILL
LUKE
SKYWALKER
...

The report came in from Mount Tantiss during ship’s night and was waiting for him when Pellaeon arrived on the bridge in the morning. The
Draklor
had reached Wayland more or less on schedule six hours previously, had offloaded its passengers, and had left the system bound for Valrar as per orders. General Covell had refused to take command until local morning—

Pellaeon frowned.
Refused to take command?
That didn’t sound like Covell.

“Captain Pellaeon?” the comm officer called up to him. “Sir, we’re getting a holo transmission from Colonel Selid on Wayland. It’s marked urgent.”

“Put it through to the aft bridge hologram pod,” Pellaeon instructed, getting up from his command chair and heading aft. “Signal the Grand Admiral to—never mind,” he interrupted himself as, through the archway, he spotted Thrawn and Rukh coming up the steps into the aft bridge.