“The datacard was so badly scrambled that they couldn’t get anything from it,” Corran continued. “Councilor Organa Solo thought it might be Thrawn’s version of an Emperor’s Hand. General Bel Iblis wanted me to ask Booster if he’d run across the term before.”
“Never,” Booster said, shaking his head. “Karrde? Mara?”
“No,” Karrde said.
“Me, neither,” Mara said. “And personally, I find it hard to picture Thrawn having that kind of shadow agent. He wasn’t into the same kind of political manipulation that the Emperor was. Besides, he had the Noghri if he needed something special done.”
“Yet there was a datacard with that title in the Emperor’s private files,” Karrde pointed out. “It must mean something.”
“How do you know it was from his private files?” Booster asked.
“Because if it was something Bel Iblis could have looked up in the Kamparas archives, he wouldn’t have sent Corran to ask you about it,” Karrde pointed out
“Point,” Booster rumbled. “So you figure these ships are looking for either Thrawn or this Hand of Thrawn?”
“Or else the person in the ship is the Hand of Thrawn,” Mara said. Whichever, it’s starting to look more important than ever that we try to track these ships down.”
“Agreed,” Karrde said. “How do you suggest we start?”
“We’ve got the vector from their jump a few minutes ago,” Mara said. “We’ also got the vector from the Kauron ship. Faughn’s plotting an intercept point.”
“Got it,” Faughn said. “It’s an unexplored system in Gradilis sector, right on the boundary between Wild Space and the Unknown Regions. It’s listed as the Nirauan system, so someone must have visited the place, but there’s no other data.”
“Sounds too easy,” Booster rumbled. “They wouldn’t really be stupid enough to jump directly to their base like that, would they? Especially not with us watching.”
“Depends on how they make their jumps,” Karrde pointed out. “They may not have the computing power aboard to handle complicated hyperspace’ calculations. Or it could be that their return home is preprogrammed to make sure none of their ships go astray.”
“They also may not realize we can still pull their vector for a few microseconds after they jump,” Mara added. “Both times now they’ve made sure they were out of our line of sight before kicking in their hyperdrive. They might think that’s all they need to do.”
“At any rate, it’s a place to start,” Karrde said, an odd reluctance seeping into him.
A reluctance Mara evidently could hear in his voice. “Would we rather not go?” she asked. “We could just turn all this over to the New Republic and let them handle it.”
“Corran?” Booster prompted.
The X-wing pilot was still staring out the viewport at the stars. “I can take it back to Bel Iblis, no problem,” he said, sounding vaguely distracted. “But I doubt he’ll be able to do anything about it, at least not now. This whole Caamas thing has everybody in a knot-tie twist.”
Karrde nodded, his instinctive reluctance turning still darker. Booster was right: this was too easy. A trap, perhaps, or at the very least a wild tresher hunt and a waste of time.
But if it wasn’t …
“No, you’d better check it out,” he sighed. “Have Faughn transmit her schedule to Chin before you jump; we’ll sort her assignments out among the other ships.”
“Right,” Mara said. “Anyplace in particular you want us to rendezvous when we get back?”
“Just get in touch with the network-they’ll find me,” Karrde told her. “And be careful.”
“Don’t worry,” Mara assured him grimly. “If they’re trying some game, they’ll be sorry they tried it on us. See you later.”
Karrde thumbed off the comlink. “Good luck,” he said softly.
“Don’t worry, they’ll be fine,” Booster said, plucking the comlink from Karrde’s hand and replacing it in his own belt. “Mara and Faughn are both pretty sharp, and the Starry Ice is a good ship. Better than this one, anyway,” he added, glowering as he brushed past Karrde and stomped back down the command walkway. “All right, Bodwae, what the blinking mradhe muck is going on with those shields?”
He squatted down to hear the Laerdocian’s excuses; and as he did so, Karrde stepped over to Corran’s side. “You were right here when that alien ship went past,” he said quietly. “Did you happen to sense anything unusual about it?”