[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(133)

Carib felt his jaw drop. “That’s impossible,” he hissed. “Thrawn is dead.”

“That’s what everyone said,” Sabmin agreed soberly. “All I know is that his name is on the order.”

They had reached the first row of stalks now. “It could be a lie,” Carib said, turning sideways to ease between the rows, sniffing the familiar sour-musky aroma rising around him as his tanned leatheris vest brushed across the leaves. “Or else a trick.”

“Hardly a trick they could keep up,” Sabmin pointed out “Even using old holo-recordings of him in transmissions wouldn’t fool anyone for long.”

“True,” Carib said, stopping beside a nearly ripe stalk and touching a finger to the tallgrain string peeking coyly from a gap in its sheath. Grand Admiral Thrawn, who had turned around five years of steady decline and brought the Empire to within sight of total victory. “You realize, of course, that this could change everything.”

“I don’t see how,” Sabmin said. “The fact still remains that we were planted here for the express purpose of being ready to cause havoc if and when we were called to do so.” He stroked the tallgrain string. “Well, the planting took root, the crop has ripened … and now they’re calling for the harvest.”

“Yes,” Carib said, dropping his hand back to his side. A harvest of terror and sudden death and destruction, almost certainly directed at the ripe fruit that was Pakrik Major hanging overhead. Pakrik Major, and the annual sector-wide conference that had just gotten under way in the capital. A long-delayed strike against the traitors of the Rebellion, courtesy of the Empire. “But that’s not my point,” he told Sabmin. “My point is that if Thrawn is really back in command, then whatever we’re ordered to do won’t be simply a grand but meaningless gesture of suicidal defiance. If Thrawn is back, then the Empire might just win.”

Sabmin whistled softly. “You’re right,” he murmured. “I hadn’t even thought about it that way.”

“Well, you’d better start thinking about it that way,” Carib warned. “And we’d better make sure the others do, too. Any idea when the last maintenance check was done on the TIEs?”

“Not more than a month ago,” Sabmin said. “I think it was Dobrow who ran it. You want to talk with him tonight?”

“I want to talk with everyone tonight,” Carib said, sidling out of the tallgrain rows and starting back up toward the house. “My place, in two hours.”

“We can try,” Sabmin said, falling into a probably unconscious military step beside him. “Tabric and Hovarb may not be able to make it, though-three of their gornts went into labor this afternoon.”

“The gornts can have their litters by themselves,” Carib said shortly. “This is important.”

Sabmin threw him a frown. “Oh, come on, Carib, aren’t you overreacting just a little? It’s an activation order, not a full-blown attack plan.”

“If Thrawn is in charge, there won’t be a lot of time between the two,” Carib growled. “Whatever he’s up to, he’ll have his timetable shaved down to the half second.”

They walked the rest of the way to Sabmin’s vehicle in silence. “All right, I’ll tell them,” Sabmin said as he climbed in. “They’ll be here.”

Carib sighed. “Let’s make it your place instead,” he suggested. “It’s only three minutes by landspeeder from there to their barn. They can get back in plenty of time if anything goes wrong with the labor.”

Sabmin smiled tightly. “Thanks, Carib. We’ll see you there.”





CHAPTER


21


“There’s Lando,” Leia said, pointing out the canopy as Han set! their Incom T-81 down on the Orowood Tower’s third-level airspeeder pad. “Over there, by the entryway, behind that red cloud car.”

“Yeah, I see him,” Han grunted, shutting down the repulsorlifts. “I still think this is a bad idea, Leia.”

“I know you do,” Leia said, taking a moment to look past the lighted landing area at the darkened shrubbery perimeter beyond it. There was no one visible, either to her eyes or her Jedi senses. “And I can’t say I completely disagree with you. But he insisted on coming.”

“You’d just better hope Dx’ono didn’t get wind of it and have someone follow him here,” Han growled, popping the canopy. “You get someone yelling secret meeting’ and we’ll all have bad it.”

“I know,” Leia said, climbing out of the airspeeder and looking around. There were some airspeeder running lights visible in the sky around them, and the various roads crisscrossing the area around the Tower were carrying their usual quota of landspeeders. None of the vehicles seemed to be particularly heading their direction.