[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(104)

It was as if an emotional seismic shock had rippled through the cave. Suddenly the almost-voices were clamoring even louder at the edge of her mind. “Skywalker?” Mara demanded. “You know him?”

Again the almost-voices clamored, this time with a coloring of frustration in their tone. “Yeah, I’m frustrated, too,” Mara snapped back. “Come on, speak up. Or whatever it is you’re doing. What does Skywalker have to do with you ?”

If they gave an answer, she never heard it. From the mouth of the cave to her left came a whisper of movement. She spun around, swinging her lightsaber to defense position&mdash

And felt her mouth drop open in astonishment. Moving awkwardly into the mouth of the cave was a huge cloud of dark, vaguely mynock-like creatures, their wings flapping madly.

And in the center of that cloud, supported on the backs of those beneath it as it was hauled by the half-hidden claws of the ones above, was her ship.

“What in blazes?” she snapped, jumping forward. Too quickly. Her foot caught on a pile of dead leaves, throwing her off balance. She twisted around, trying to recover, and instead swerved the opposite direction. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a sharp-edged stone jutting out from the cave wall rushing at her&mdash

She woke gradually, painfully, with a matting of what felt like dried blood on the side of her head and eyes that didn’t seem to want to open.

It was perhaps half a groggy minute more before she was conscious enough to realize that her eyes were in fact open. It was simply a matter of its being too dark to see anything.

“Uh-oh,” she muttered, her voice echoing oddly. Had she been unconscious long enough for it to become night? Or had she been dragged or carried farther back into the cave?

The survival pack was still strapped to her back. Pulling the glow rod from its pocket, she flicked it on.

She had indeed been moved deeper into the cave. And, for good measure, it had also become night outside.

“Nice to know I can still call em,” she muttered in disgust, glaring at her chrono. She’d been unconscious for nearly three hours, far longer than she would have expected. Either she’d hit the wall harder than she realized, or else her kidnappers had dropped her a few times on the way here.

Wherever “here” was.

For a moment she played the beam from the glow rod around the walls and high ceiling of the cavern around her, comparing it with her memory of the brief glimpse the illumination from her earlier blaster shot had given her. But nothing matched. That put her at least thirty meters inside, she estimated, probably more. Not an unreasonable hike, assuming she didn’t get lost in a maze of side passages. And assuming her Defender was waiting somewhere along the way for her to find.

And assuming that if assumptions one and two worked out there would be some place for her to go.

She looked at her chrono again. Three hours. The recorder had been set up to dump a pulse-transmission back to the Starry Ice if she either shut off the comlink or else stopped talking for fifteen minutes. Which meant Faughn bad had the record of her trip for over two and a half hours now, including that last startled yelp before she’d knocked herself out The question was, what had she decided to do with it?

Unfortunately, there was only one likely answer. Faughn had no other fighters aboard; had no way to come to Mara’s aid except to bring the Starry Ice itself in. She knew better than to risk her ship that way, particularly when she was the only one who had the information Mara had sent.

Which meant the Starry Ice was long gone. And with no hyperdrive on the Defender, that meant Mara was stuck here.

“I suppose I could walk to the fortress and see if they’ve got a room to rent,” she muttered. But that really didn’t sound like a smart idea; and even as she said it, she could hear a strong note of disapproval enter the almost-voices tickling at the edge of her mind. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere,” she growled. It was their fault she was marooned here, after all.

On the other hand, depending on who or what had been in the aircraft she’d heard, it was possible they’d also saved her life. Under the circumstances, she supposed, it was a fair trade-off.

And it wasn’t like this was permanent exile, either. A few days-two weeks at the most-and Karrde would have a force here to get her out.

In the meantime, she bad survival to worry about. Balancing the glow rod on an outcropping where it could give her some working light, she unstrapped her pack and began setting up camp.





CHAPTER


15


Lando looked up from his datapad at the grizzled man sitting across the tapcafe table from him, face half hidden behind his mug. “You must be joking,” he said, waving at the datapad. “Fifty thousand? A month?”