[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(15)

“It’ll just take a minute,” Leia assured him.

“But I’m bored,” he insisted. He looked at Lak Jit again, and Leia could sense the effort as the child reached out with his limited abilities in the Force. “Are you my mom’s business?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lak Jit said with another thin smile. “And she is right: it will only take a minute. Councilor Organa Solo, it should be clear that historical datacards are precisely the sort of thing the Debble Agreement was created to protect. Therefore-“

“We have only your statement that the datacards are historical,” Cakhmaim put in. We must study them ourselves.”

“Agreed,” Leia said before the Devaronian could object. Unfortunately, that kind of examination could take hours, and the children were waiting. “Here’s the offer, Lak Jit. I’ll take the datacards, paying you five hundred now as earnest money. After I’ve examined them, the New Republic will pay you whatever they’re worth.”

“And who will decide that value?” Lak Jit demanded.

“I will,” Leia said. “Or, if you prefer, I can take the datacards back to Coruscant and ask Councilor Sien Siev or another historical expert to evaluate them.”

“And if I refuse?”

Leia nodded toward Cakhmaim. “Would you prefer I let the Noghri set the price?”

Lak Jit grimaced, an expression that came across as just another Devaronian smile, only thinner. “I seem to have no alternative.” He stepped forward, thrusting out a stack of datacards. “Here, then. Evaluate. Since you have not brought me food, would you and your hosts object if I went and foraged while you work?”

“You said just a minute, Mom,” Jacen spoke up.

“Quiet, Jacen,” Leia said, gingerly taking the stack of datacards and doing a quick count of the edges. Six of them, all right, as filthy and dirtstained as Lak Jit’s clothing. They’d probably been blown out of Mount Tantiss with the general cloud of debris when Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian set off the base’s power reactor, and had been lying buried in the Wayland soil ever since.

Lak Jit cleared his throat. “May I-?”

“Yes, go,” Leia cut him off. She hadn’t realized Devaronians foraged for food, and she certainly wasn’t interested in the details. “Jacen, be quiet. It’ll just be another minute. I promise.”

“Please be quick,” Lak Jit said, and disappeared out the door.

“Mom-“

“If you’re bored, why don’t you ask Cakhmaim to show you the history they’re carving in the walls here,” Leia suggested, gingerly brushing at the dirt covering the top datacard. “Or go join the Noghri children in their fighting class. I think Mobvekhar was going to be teaching them leverage holds today.”

Jacen sniffed. “Jedi don’t need that stuff. We have the Force.”

“You’re not a Jedi yet,” Leia reminded him, giving him a stern look. She wasn’t exactly happy about this interruption in their vacation either, but all his whining was accomplishing was to drag it out further. “If you were, you’d know that just because you have the Force doesn’t mean you can ignore the condition of your physical body. The Noghri combat classes are good exercise.”

“So’s hiking up the mountain,” Jacen countered. “So when are we going?”

“When I’m done,” Leia said firmly, finishing her cleanup job and peering at the datacard’s label. Listings of the Fourth Pestoriv Conference, it said. Nothing important there, one way or the other: the Pestoriv Conferences had been completely open, and just as completely documented.

Unless the Emperor had had his own private version of what had gone on there. Something to check out later, though the datacard would have to be thoroughly cleaned before she would be willing to risk it in her datapad. Shifting the datacard to the bottom of the stack, she peered at the label of the second. Equally innocuous: something about Ri’Dar mating dances. The third datacard&mdash

She stared at the label, a sudden chill running straight through her.

Four words, with the dirt already brushed off. The Hand of Thrawn.

“Mom?” Jacen asked, his voice not much above a whisper. Young and inexperienced in the Force, he nevertheless was keenly attuned to his mother, almost as closely attuned as he was to his sister Jaina. “What’s wrong?”

Leia reached out to the Force, calming herself. “I’m all right,” she told her son. “Something on this card just startled me, that’s all.”

Jacen craned his neck to look. “The Hand of Thrawn.’ What does that mean?”