[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(101)

“I remember reading about that,” Mara said. “The Corporate Sector was especially bad about abusing the privilege, and we’re not all that far from there.”

“Right,” Faughn said. “Still, all that having been said, I have to agree with Elkin’s guts on this one. If this is somebody’s military base, where are the defenses? Where’s the base itself, for that matter?”

“No one said it was military,” Mara reminded her. “They’re using an alien technology-that’s all we know.” She looked out the viewport. “And it’s all we’re going to know as long as we stay out here.”

“I don’t know,” Faughn said. “We’ve confirmed this is the system. Maybe we should head back and get some backup.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t know this is really the system,” Mara pointed out. “It could be just this month’s rendezvous point. If we leave now, they may all be gone by the time we get back.”

“I suppose,” Faughn said reluctantly. “Well … looks like that target zone is rotating away from us. We could give them a few hours to get around the horizon, then ease the ship in.”

“That assumes they don’t have a network of warning sensors scattered around the planet,” Torve put in. “If they do, it won’t matter whether the main base is line-of-sight to us or not.”

Faughn shrugged. “It’s a calculated risk.”

“But not one the whole ship has to take,” Mara said, mentally sifting through the possibilities. Along with its escape pods, the Starry Ice carried three shuttle-sized ships: two cargo-movers and a highly illegal New Republic Defender in-system starfighter Karrde had appropriated from somewhere. “What’s the sensor stealthing like on that Defender?” she asked.

“Minimal,” Faughn said. “On the other hand, it’s got a pretty small sensor cross section to begin with, and of course no hyperdrive emissions at all. If their equipment isn’t too good and you take it easy, you ought to have a fair chance of sneaking in.”

“All right,” Mara said, stretching out to the Force. There was no particular tingling from her danger sense. At least, not yet. “We’ll go with your idea of letting the target zone rotate away from us for a few hours. Maybe upgrade the Defender’s stealthing a little while we wait. After that … I go in and take a look.”

***

From a distance the planet had looked dark and grim and desolate. Up close, Mara decided, it didn’t look a whole lot better.

There was vegetation, certainly, everything from squat trees with wide, fan-shaped leaves to ground-hugging plants impossible to see clearly at the speed she was making. But the usual variety of color that was the norm on most of the worlds she’d visited seemed to have skipped Nirauan somehow. Everything here seemed to be done in shades of brown or gray, with only occasional splashes of dark red or deep violet to break up the monotony. Possibly it was a natural adaptation to the dim red light of the planet’s sun; perhaps in the infrared part of the spectrum the plants were actually quite colorful. Somehow, she doubted it.

“Starting to get into some hills now,” she said to the recorder fastened to one end of the Defender’s control panel. “They look pretty craggy, actually-whatever dirt was on them seems to have eroded away.” She glanced down at her displays. “Still no indication of sensor probes.”

She looked back up from her board, frowning at the landscape ahead. Up there, between two of the craggier hills … ? “Looks like a sort of gully up ahead,” she said. “No-make that a full-fledged ravine. In fact …”

She brushed the Defender’s control stick gently, risking a little more altitude to get a better look. Her first impression had indeed been correct: the deep canyon ahead was pointing right toward the target zone.

And in fact, unless the terrain was somehow deceiving her, it looked like it would take her all the way in.

“I think I’ve found my route,” she said, tapping a key to download the navigational information onto the recorder’s data track. “Looks like a straight run right to their door.”

Unless the unknown aliens had the ravine sensor-rigged, of course, in which case it would be a straight run into an ambush. She would just have to trust her danger sense to give her enough warning.

The ravine was indeed just as it had looked from a distance: fairly straight, its width varying from fifty to a hundred meters, its depth averaging around a hundred meters but dipping as deep as three hundred in places. Most similar ravines Mara had seen had been cut by rapid rivers, but the bottom of this one was dry. The walls were composed of craggy gray rock, with small bushes and tenacious vines clinging to the sides. “Still no sign of sensor activity,” she told the recorder as she settled into the task of flying down the narrow passage. Standard military logic, she knew, would be for her opponents to launch their attack somewhere along these first few kilometers, while her maneuverability was limited but before she got unnecessarily close to their base. Stretching out to the Force, keeping a wary eye on the pale blue-green sky above her, she kept going.