She was still looking suspicious. “There’s a sonde balloon included that can take the antenna high enough to get past most of the forest damping. But it’s nondirectional, which means the Imperials and anyone else in this hemisphere will be able to listen in.”
“That’s okay,” Luke said. “I can encrypt it so that no one else will be able to get anything out of it. Or rather, Artoo can.”
Mara smiled thinly. “Wonderful. Except for one minor detail: if the encrypt is that good, how is Karrde supposed to decrypt it?”
“He won’t have to,” Luke told her. “The computer in my X-wing will do it for him.”
The thin smile vanished from Mara’s face. “You’re stalling,” she snarled. “You can’t do a counterpart encrypt between an astromech droid and a ship computer.”
“Why not? Artoo’s the only droid who’s worked with that computer in more than five years, with close to three thousand hours of flight time. He’s bound to have molded it to his own personality by now. In fact, I know he has-the ground maintenance people have to run diagnostics through him to make any sense out of them.”
“I thought standard procedure was to wipe and reload droid memories every six months to keep that from happening.”
“I like Artoo the way he is,” Luke said. “And he and the X-wing work better together this way.”
“How much better?”
Luke searched his memory. Maintenance had run that test just a few months ago. “I don’t remember the exact number. It was something like thirty percent faster than a baseline astromech/X-wing interface. Maybe thirty-five.”
Mara was staring hard at Artoo. “That’s counterpart-level speed, all right,” she agreed reluctantly. “The Imperials could still crack it, though.”
“Eventually. But it would take some specialized equipment to do it. And you said yourself we’d be out of here in three days.”
For a long minute she stared at him, her jaw tight with clenched teeth, her face a mirror of fiercely battling emotions. Bitterness, hatred, desire for survival … and something else. Something that Luke could almost believe might be a touch of loyalty. “Your ship’s sitting all alone out in the forest,” she growled at last. “How are you going to get the message back to Karrde?”
“Someone’s bound to check on the ship eventually,” he pointed out. “All we have to do is dump the message into storage and leave some kind of signal flashing that it’s there. You have people who know how to pull a dump, don’t you?”
“Any idiot knows how to pull a dump.” Mara glared at him. “Funny, isn’t it, how this scheme just happens to require that I keep both of you alive a while longer.”
Luke remained silent, meeting that bitter gaze without flinching … and then, abruptly, Mara’s internal battle seemed to end. “What about the droid?” she demanded. “It’ll take forever to get it across this terrain.”
“Artoo’s made it through forests before. However …” Luke looked around, spotted a tree with two low branches just the right size. “I should be able to rig up a dragging frame to carry him on-a travois, or something like that.” He started to get up. “If you’ll give me my lightsaber for a minute I can cut a couple of those branches off.”
“Sit down,” she ordered, standing up. “I’ll do it.”
Well, it had been worth a try. “Those two,” he told her, pointing. “Be careful-lightsabers are tricky to handle.”
“Your concern for my welfare is touching,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm. She drew the lightsaber and stepped over to the indicated tree, keeping an eye on Luke the whole time. She raised the weapon, ignited it—
And in a handful of quick, sure swipes trimmed, shortened, and cut the branches from the tree.
She closed down the weapon and returned it to her belt in a single smooth motion. “Help yourself,” she said, moving away.
“Right,” Luke said mechanically, his mind tingling with astonishment as he stumbled over to collect the branches. The way she’d done that … “You’ve used a lightsaber before.”
She gazed at him coldly. “Just so you know I can handle it. In case you should feel tempted to try and make a grab for my blaster.” She glanced upward at the darkening sky. “Come on-get busy with that travois. We’ll need to find some kind of clearing to put the sonde balloon up, and I want to get that done before nightfall.”
Chapter 24
“I must apologize for chasing you out like that,” Karrde said as he walked Han toward the central building. “Particularly in the middle of a meal. Not exactly the sort of hospitality we strive for here.”