The Last Command (6 page)

“I imagine they were pleased. So why are you still here?”

“Well…” For a moment Ghent seemed taken aback. “No one’s come back to get me, for one thing.” His face brightened. “Besides, there’s this really neat encrypt code someone nearby is using to send information to the Empire. General Bel Iblis says the Imperials call it Delta Source, and that it’s sending them stuff right out of the Palace.”

“And he asked you to slice it for them,” Mara nodded, feeling her lip twist. “I don’t suppose he offered to pay you or anything?”

“Well…” Ghent shrugged. “Probably they did. I don’t remember, really.”

The medic replaced her comlink in her belt. “Your guide will be here momentarily,” she told Mara.

“Thank you,” Mara said, resisting the urge to tell the other that she probably knew the Imperial Palace better in her sleep than any guide they had could do in broad daylight. Cooperation and politeness—those were the keys to talking them out of a ship and getting her and Ghent out of this place and out of their war.

Behind the medic the door slid open, and a tall woman with pure white hair glided into the room. “Hello, Mara,” she said, smiling gravely. “My name is Winter, personal aide to Princess Leia Organa Solo. I’m glad to see you on your feet again.”

“I’m glad to be there,” Mara said, trying to keep her voice polite. Someone else associated with Skywalker. Just what she needed. “I take it you’re my guide?”

“Your guide, your assistant, and anything else you need for the next few days,” Winter said. “Princess Leia asked me to look after you until she and Captain Solo return from Filve.”

“I don’t need an assistant, and I don’t need looking after,” Mara said. “All I really need is a ship.”

“I’ve already started working on that,” Winter said. “I’m hoping we’ll be able to find something for you soon. In the meantime, may I show you to your suite?”

Mara hid a grimace. The usurpers of the New Republic, graciously offering her hospitality in what had once been her own home. “That’s very kind of you,” she said, trying not to sound sarcastic. “You coming, Ghent?”

“You go on ahead,” Ghent said absently, gazing at the computer display. “I want to sit on this run for a while.”

“He’ll be all right here,” Winter assured her. “This way, please.”

They left the anteroom, and Winter led the way toward the rear of the Palace. “Ghent has a suite right next to yours,” Winter commented as they walked, “but I don’t think he’s been there more than twice in the past month. He set up temporary shop out there in the recovery anteroom where he could keep an eye on you.”

Mara had to smile at that. Ghent, who spent roughly 90 percent of his waking hours oblivious to the outside world, was not exactly what she would go looking for in either a nurse or a bodyguard. But it was the thought that counted. “I appreciate you people taking care of me,” she told Winter.

“It’s the least we could do to thank you for coming to our assistance at the
Katana
battle.”

“It was Karrde’s idea,” Mara said shortly. “Thank him, not me.”

“We did,” Winter said. “But you risked your life, too, on our behalf. We won’t forget that.”

Mara threw a sideways look at the white-haired woman. She had read the Emperor’s files on the Rebellion’s leaders, including Leia Organa, and the name Winter wasn’t ringing any bells at all. “How long have you been with Organa Solo?” she asked.

“I grew up with her in the royal court of Alderaan,” Winter said, a bittersweet smile touching her lips. “We were friends in childhood, and when she began her first steps into galactic politics, her father assigned me to be her aide. I’ve been with her ever since.”

“I don’t recall hearing about you during the height of the Rebellion,” Mara probed gently.

“I spent most of the war moving from planet to planet working with Supply and Procurement,” Winter told her. “If my colleagues could get me into a warehouse or depot on some pretext, I could draw a map for them of where the items were that they wanted. It made the subsequent raids quicker and safer.”

Mara nodded as understanding came. “So you were the one called Targeter. The one with the perfect memory.”

Winter’s forehead creased slightly. “Yes, that was one of my code names,” she said. “I had many others over the years.”

“I see,” Mara said. She could remember a fair number of references in pre-Yavin Intelligence reports to the mysterious Rebel named Targeter, much of the politely heated discussion centering around his or her possible identity. She wondered if the data-pushers had ever even gotten close.

They’d reached the set of turbolifts at the rear of the Imperial Palace now, one of the major renovations the Emperor had made in the deliberately antiquated design of the building when he’d taken it over. The turbolifts saved a lot of walking up and down the sweeping staircases in the more public parts of the building… as well as masking certain other improvements the Emperor had made in the Palace. “So what’s the problem with getting me a ship?” Mara asked as Winter tapped the call plate.

“The problem is the Empire,” Winter said. “They’ve launched a massive attack against us, and it’s tied up basically everything we have available, from light freighter on up.”

Mara frowned. Massive attacks against superior forces didn’t sound like Grand Admiral Thrawn at all. “It’s that bad?”

“It’s bad enough,” Winter said. “I don’t know if you knew it, but they beat us to the
Katana
fleet. They’d already moved nearly a hundred and eighty of the Dreadnaughts by the time we arrived. Combined with their new bottomless source of crewers and soldiers, the balance of power has been badly shifted.”

Mara nodded, a sour taste in her mouth. Put that way, it
did
sound like Thrawn. “Which means I nearly got myself killed for nothing.”

Winter smiled tightly. “If it helps, so did a lot of other people.”

The turbolift car arrived. They stepped inside, and Winter keyed for the Palace’s residential areas. “Ghent mentioned that the Empire was making trouble,” Mara commented as the car began moving upward. “I should have realized that anything that could penetrate that fog he walks around in had to be serious.”

” ‘Serious’ is an understatement,” Winter said grimly. “In the past five days we’ve effectively lost control of four sectors, and thirteen more are on the edge. The biggest loss was the food production facilities at Ukio. Somehow, they managed to take it with its defenses intact.”

Mara felt her lip twist. “Someone asleep at the board?”

“Not according to the preliminary reports.” Winter hesitated. “There are rumors that the Imperials used a new superweapon that was able to fire straight through the Ukians’ planetary shield. We’re still trying to check that out.”

Mara swallowed, visions of the old Death Star spec sheets floating up from her memory. A weapon like that in the hands of a strategist like Grand Admiral Thrawn…

She shook the thought away. This wasn’t her war. Karrde had promised they would stay neutral in this thing. “I suppose I’d better get in touch with Karrde, then,” she said. “See if he can send someone to pick us up.”

“It would probably be faster than waiting for one of our ships to be free,” Winter agreed. “He left a data card with the name of a contact you can send a message through. He said you’d know which encrypt code to use.”

The turbolift let them out on the President’s Guests floor, one of the few sections of the Palace that the Emperor had left strictly alone during his reign. With its old-fashioned hinge doors and hand-carved exotic wood furnishings, walking around the floor was like stepping a thousand years into the past. The Emperor had generally reserved the suites here for those emissaries who had fond feelings for such bygone days, or for those who could be impressed by his carefully manufactured continuity with that era. “Captain Karrde left some of your clothes and personal effects for you after the
Katana
battle,” Winter said, unlocking one of the carved doors and pushing it open. “If he missed anything, let me know and I can probably supply it. Here’s the data card I mentioned,” she added, pulling it from her tunic.

“Thank you,” Mara said, inhaling deeply as she took the card. This particular suite was done largely in Fijisi wood from Cardooine; and as the delicate scent rose around her, her thoughts flashed back to the glittering days of grand Imperial power and majesty….

“Can I get you anything else?”

The memory faded. Winter was standing before her… and the glory days of the Empire were gone. “No, I’m fine,” she said.

Winter nodded. “If you want anything, just call the duty officer,” she said, gesturing to the desk. “I’ll be available later; right now, there’s a Council meeting I need to sit in on.”

“Go ahead,” Mara said. “And thank you.”

Winter smiled and left. Mara took another deep breath of Fijisi wood, and with an effort pushed the last of the lingering memories away. She was here, and it was now; and as the Emperor’s instructors had so often drummed into her, the first item of business was to fit into her surroundings. And that meant not looking like an escapee from the medical wing.

Karrde had left a good assortment of clothing for her: a semiformal gown, two outfits of a nondescript type that she could wear on the streets of a hundred worlds without looking out of place, and four of the no-nonsense tunic/jumpsuit outfits that she usually wore aboard ship. Choosing one of the latter, she got dressed, then began sorting through the other things Karrde had left. With any luck—and maybe a little foresight on Karrde’s part—

There it was: the forearm holster for her tiny blaster. The blaster itself was missing, of course—the captain of the
Adamant
had taken it away from her, and the Imperials weren’t likely to return it anytime soon. Looking for a duplicate in the New Republic’s arsenals would probably be a waste of effort, as well, though she was tempted to ask Winter for one just to see the reaction.

Fortunately, there was another way.

Each residential floor of the Imperial Palace had an extensive library, and in each of those libraries was a multicard set entitled
The Complete History of Corvis Minor
. Given how unexceptional most of Corvis Minor’s history had been, the odds of anyone actually pulling the set off the shelf were extremely slim. Which, given there were no actual data cards in the box, was just as well.

The blaster was a slightly different style from the one Mara had lost to the Imperials. But its power pack was still adequately charged, and it fit snugly into her forearm holster, and that was all that mattered. Now, whatever happened with either the war or New Republic infighting, she would at least have a fighting chance.

She paused, the false data card box in her hand, a stray question belatedly flicking through her mind. What had Winter meant by that reference to a bottomless source for crewers and soldiers? Had one or more of the New Republic’s systems gone over to the Imperial side? Or could Thrawn have discovered a hitherto unknown colony world with a populace ripe for recruitment?

It was something she should probably ask about sometime. First, though, she needed to get a message encrypted and relayed out to Karrde’s designated contact. The sooner she was out of this place, the better.

Replacing the empty data card set, the comforting weight of the blaster snugged up against her left arm, she headed back to her suite.

Thrawn raised his glowing red eyes from the putrid-looking alien artwork displayed on the double display ring surrounding his command chair. “No,” he said. “Completely out of the question.”

Slowly, deliberately, C’baoth turned back from the holographic Woostroid statue he’d been gazing at. “No?” he repeated, his voice rumbling like an approaching thunderstorm. “What do you mean, no?”

“The word is self-explanatory,” Thrawn said icily. “The military logic should be, as well. We don’t have the numbers for a frontal assault on Coruscant; neither have we the supply lines and bases necessary for a traditional siege. Any attack would be both useless and wasteful, and the Empire will therefore not launch one.”

C’baoth’s face darkened. “Have a care, Grand Admiral Thrawn,” he warned. “I rule the Empire, not you.”

“Do you really?” Thrawn countered, reaching up behind him to stroke the ysalamir arched over his shoulder on its nutrient frame.

C’baoth drew himself up to his full height, eyes blazing with sudden fire. “I rule the Empire!” he shouted, his voice echoing through the command room. “You will obey me, or you will die!”

Carefully, Pellaeon eased a little deeper into the Force-empty bubble that surrounded Thrawn’s ysalamir. At those times when he was in control of himself, C’baoth appeared more confident and in control than he ever had before; but at the same time these violent bursts of clone madness were becoming more frequent and more vicious. Like a system in a positive feedback loop, swinging farther from its core point with each oscillation until it ripped itself apart.

So far C’baoth hadn’t killed anyone or destroyed anything. In Pellaeon’s opinion it was just a matter of time before that changed.

Perhaps the same thought had occurred to Thrawn. “If you kill me, you’ll lose the war,” he reminded the Jedi Master. “And if you lose the war, Leia Organa Solo and her twins will never be yours.”

C’baoth took a step toward Thrawn’s command seat, eyes blazing even hotter—and then, abruptly, he seemed to shrink again to normal size. “You would never speak that way to the Emperor,” he said, almost petulantly.

“On the contrary,” Thrawn told him. “On no fewer than four occasions I told the Emperor that I would not waste his troops and ships attacking an enemy which I was not yet prepared to defeat.”

C’baoth snorted. “Only fools spoke that way to the Emperor,” he sneered. “Fools, or those tired of life.”

“The Emperor also thought that way,” Thrawn agreed. “The first time I refused he called me a traitor and gave my attack force to someone else.” The Grand Admiral reached up again to stroke his ysalamir. “After its destruction, he knew better than to ignore my recommendations.”

For a long minute C’baoth studied Thrawn’s face, his own expression twitching back and forth as if the mind behind it was having trouble maintaining a grip on thought or emotion. “You could repeat the Ukian fraud,” he suggested at last. “That trick with cloaked cruisers and timed turbolaser blasts. I would help you.”