Lando shook his head, “It wasn’t just the voice, Karrde. Or the face, or anything else you could look at. It was-I don’t know. There was a presence there, a hidden power and confidence I don’t think any droid could fake. It was him. It bad to be.”
“Could it have been a clone, then?” Karrde persisted, “Thrawn could easily have taken one or more of the cloning tanks out of Mount Tantiss before it was destroyed.”
“I’ve been wondering about that, too,” Leia said. “It could also explain where the clones Luke sensed at Iphigin come from.”
“A clone of Thrawn would be dangerous enough,” Lando agreed tightly. “But turn it around a minute. Couldn’t it just as easily have been a clone sitting on the Chimaera’s bridge at Bilbringi? What if Thrawn had anticipated everything that was going to happen-everything-and made the necessary arrangements?”
Karrde swished his drink around a little more in his glass. “Then why did he sit back and let the Empire collapse when his leadership could very likely have saved it?” he asked. “No. If he really was alive, he must have been incapacitated by his wound and gone off somewhere to heal.”
“That’s pretty much what he implied to Miatamia and me,” Lando agreed. “He implied he’d been off recovering.”
“Unless that’s just what he wanted you to think,” Leia warned. “Maybe he was simply off doing something else instead.”
“Instead of protecting the Empire?” Han objected. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Abruptly Karrde set his glass down on the low table beside his chair. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s assume the worst case: that that really was Thrawn you saw, and that he’s back and out for blood. Why suddenly make an appearance now? And why just to you and Senator Miatamia instead of all of Coruscant?”
“Probably to create exactly the situation we’re now in,” Leia said. “The tension level in the Senate has jumped straight to the ceiling, with a tremendous amount of animosity and suspicion being focused on the Diamala. And, by extension, to everyone on that side of the Caamas issue.”
“With a hint that Gavrisom might not want to resolve the crisis thrown in just to stir things up a little more,” Lando added. “I hear some of the Senators are already complaining that he’s been dragging his hooves on the whole question of reparations for the Caamasi.”
Han grimaced. The Bothans’ financial crisis . . “He’s doing the best he can,” be told Lando.
“Maybe,” Lando said darkly. “But it strikes me that there are a lot of other ways Thrawn could have stirred up the government if that was all he wanted.”
“What else could be want?” Karrde asked. “He surely wouldn’t be foolish enough to take on the entire New Republic. Not with only eight sectors’ worth of resources at his disposal.”
“Maybe he’s found a new superweapon the Emperor bad stashed away somewhere,” Lando suggested ominously. “Another Death Star-a completed one this time-or maybe another Sun Crusher. Or something even more dangerous.”
Karrde shook his bead. “Farfetched. If there was something like that out there, we surely would have heard of it by now.”
“There’s another point that needs to be made here,” Leia-said. “You talked about him taking on the entire New Republic; but that’s only if we could get the entire New Republic together to fight him. With the Caamas issue dividing us so strongly-and with the Empire so weak that most people don’t even think of it as a threat-that’s not a given anymore.”
“If it ever was,” Han said sourly. “There was never more than a small fraction of the galaxy actually fighting against the Empire.”
“And never more than a small fraction of the Empire fighting against us,” Lando pointed out, his eyes on Karrde. “I don’t think we realized back then just how much of their energy was going to keeping all these little planetary vendettas and rivalries from blowing up in their faces. Now we’re in that same situation, and in my opinion, we simply don’t have the resources available to take on whatever Thrawn has planned.”
“That of course depends on what he has planned,” Karrde said. He was eyeing Lando closely, Han noticed suddenly. As closely as Lando was eyeing him. “So what do you suggest as your next move?”
“Our next move,” Lando said, leaning on the word, “is to get this blasted Caamas issue out of the way so we can focus on Thrawn. And that means finding out exactly who the guilty Bothans were.”