[Thrawn Trilogy] - 01(112)

“Yeah, we don’t stay lost very long,” Han assured him. “What’d you find, Lando?”

“This.” Lando held up a tiny red cylinder with a pair of wires coming out of each end. “It’s a micrel power supply-the kind used for low-draw applications. Our prisoner wired it into the door lock control after the power lines had been burned away-that’s how he got out.” He moved it a little closer. “The manufacturer’s logo is small, but readable. Recognize it?”

Han squinted at it. The script was alien, but it seemed vaguely familiar. “I’ve seen it before, but I don’t remember where.”

“You saw it during the war,” Lando told him, his gaze steady on Karrde. “It’s the logo of the Sibha Habadeet.”

Han stared at the tiny cylinder, a strange chill running through him. The Sibha Habadeet had been one of the Alliance’s major suppliers of micrel equipment. And their specialty had been- “That’s a bioelectronic power supply?”

“That’s right,” Lando said grimly. “Just like the kind that would have been put in, say, an artificial hand.”

Slowly, the muzzle of Han’s blaster came up again to point at Karrde’s stomach. “There was a droid in here,” he told Lando. “The skid marks on the floor look just about right for an R2 unit.” He raised his eyebrows. “Feel free to join the conversation anytime, Karrde.”

Karrde sighed, his face a mixture of annoyance and resignation. “What do you want me to say?-that Luke Skywalker was a prisoner here? All right-consider it said.”

Han felt his jaw tighten. And he and Lando had been right here. Blissfully unaware … “Where is he now?” he demanded.

“I thought Ghent would have told you,” Karrde said darkly. “He escaped in one of my Skipray blastboats.” His lips twisted. “Crashing it in the process.”

“He what?”

“He’s all right,” Karrde assured him. “Or at least he was a couple of hours ago. The stormtroopers who went to investigate said that both wrecks were deserted.” His eyes seemed to flatten, just for a minute. “I hope that means they’re working together to make their way out.”

“You don’t sound sure of that,” Han prompted.

The eyes flattened a little more. “Mara Jade was the one who went after him. She has a certain-well, why mince words. In point of fact, she wants very much to kill him.”

Han threw a startled glance at Lando. “Why?”

Karrde shook his head. “I don’t know.”

For a moment the room was silent. “How did he get here?” Lando asked.

“As I said, purely by accident,” Karrde said. “No-I take that back. It wasn’t an accident for Mara-she led us directly to his crippled starfighter.”

“How?”

“Again, I don’t know.” He fixed Han with a hard look. “And before you ask, we had nothing to do with the damage to his ship. He’d burned out both hyperdrive motivators tangling with one of the Empire’s Star Destroyers. If we hadn’t picked him up, he’d almost certainly be dead by now.”

“Instead of roaming a forest with someone who still wants him that way,” Han countered. “Yeah, you’re a real hero.”

The hard look hardened even further. “The Imperials want Skywalker, Solo. They want him very badly. If you look carefully, you’ll notice that I didn’t give him to them.”

“Because he escaped first.”

“He escaped because he was in this shed,” Karrde retorted. “And he was in this shed because I didn’t want the Imperials stumbling over him during their unannounced visit.”

He paused. “You’ll also notice,” he added quietly, “that I didn’t turn the two of you over to them, either.”

Slowly, Han lowered the blaster. Anything said at the point of a gun was of course suspect; but the fact that Karrde had indeed not betrayed them to the Imperials was a strong argument in his favor.

Or rather, he hadn’t betrayed them yet. That could always change. “I want to see Luke’s X-wing,” he told Karrde.

“Certainly,” Karrde said. “I’d recommend not going there until tomorrow morning, though. We moved it somewhat farther into the forest than your ship; and there will be predators roaming around it in the darkness.”

Han hesitated, then nodded. If Karrde had something subtle going here, he almost certainly would have already erased or altered the X-wing’s computer log. A few more hours wouldn’t make any difference. “All right. So what are we going to do about Luke?”