[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(16)

Leia shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Oh.” Jacen frowned up at her. “Then how come you were so scared?”

It was a good question, Leia had to admit. Could the simple if unexpected appearance of Thrawn’s name really have thrown her so hard? Even coupled with her memories of his near victory, it didn’t seem likely. “I don’t know that, either, Jacen,” she said. “Maybe I was just remembering the past.”

“Or seeing into the future,” Cakhmaim said softly. “The Mal’ary’ush has great powers, secondson of Vader.”

“I know,” Jacen said gravely. “She’s my mom.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Leia admonished him mock-severely as she ruffled his hair. “Now be quiet a minute and let’s see what this is all about” Pulling her datapad from her pouch, suddenly not caring at all about possible dust contamination, she slid the datacard in.

“What does it say?” Cakhmaim asked quietly.

Leia shook her head. “Nothing,” she told him. “At least, nothing legible.” She tried a different section of the card, then another. “Looks like the whole datacard has been scrambled. I guess ten years of exposure will do that. Maybe the experts on Coruscant can-“

She broke off. Jacen’s face and thoughts&mdash

“Mom!” he blurted. “Jaina and Anakin!”

“It’s Lak Jit,” Leia snapped, stretching out through the Force and catching the sudden flash of fright from her children. She caught a secondhand image of the Devaronian charging through the clearing and a sudden cloud of billowing white smoke&mdash

“Cakhmaim!”

But Cakhmaim was already through the door, screaming the alert in the warbling Noghri combat code. Jamming the datapad and datacards back into her hip pack, Leia grabbed Jacen’s hand and followed Cakhmaim outside, clearing the doorway just as an answer trilled through the trees. “They are unharmed,” Cakhmaim said, his tone icy with grim relief. “The Devaronian has stolen a speeder bike.”

All around them, armed Noghri were pouring out of the houses in response to Cakhmaim’s alert. “Which way was he going?” Leia asked, heading across the settlement On both sides of them, Noghri were falling into escort positions; ahead, through the trees, she could see glimpses of the smoke as it dispersed. Stretching out through the Force, she sent reassurance to her children.

Cakhmaim warbled again, was answered as they reached the edge of the settlement. “Unknown,” he reported. “They could not see his departure.”

Most of the smoke had cleared by the time they reached the clearing a minute later. Of the nine Noghri Leia had left there, six remained, pressing in a tight defensive circle around the children. “Jaina, Anakin,” she breathed, dropping to one kite beside them and giving them each a quick but tight hug. There was no need to ask if they were all right, her Jedi senses had already confirmed that, “Khabarakh, what happened?”

“He surprised us, Lady Vader,” the Noghri said, his face set in the quiet agony of a warrior who has failed his duty. “He walked casually into the clearing and dropped his digging tool onto the ground between us. Part of the handle was a disguised smoke grenade, which exploded with the impact. We could hear him as he activated one of the speeder bikes, but I would not allow any to try to seek him out in the smoke. Should I have acted differently?”

“No,” Cakhmaim said firmly. “The machine is of no consequence. Only the safety of the Lady Vader’s firstchildren is important. Your honor is not compromised, Khabarakh clan Kihm’bar.”

Jaina tugged at Leia’s sleeve. “Why did he run, Mother? Was he afraid of the Noghri?”

“In a way, honey, yes,” Leia said grimly. Suddenly, with the clear vision of hindsight, the whole deception was obvious. Pulling the Devaronian’s datacards from her hip pack, she fanned them in her hands.

All of them, as she’d already noted, had dirty edges. On one, though, it was only the edges that were dirty.

“Lady Vader?”

Leia turned. From the brush at the edge of the clearing, two Noghri were helping up a dazed-looking Threepio. “Oh, my,” the droid breathed. “I must have taken a bad step.”

“Threepio!” Anakin squealed, ducking between his mother and Cakhmaim and racing across to help. “You all right?”

Threepio briefly examined his arms. “I appear to be undamaged, Master Anakin, thank you,” he assured the child.

“We’ve got to find him,” Leia said, turning back to Cakhmaim and Khabarakh and holding up the clean datacard. “He’s still got one of the datacards he found at the mountain.”