The first time, years ago, the cave had spun him an image of a possible future. This time, he knew now, it had shown him a possible past. “You would have succeeded,” he said quietly.
Mara looked sharply at him. “I’m not asking for understanding or sympathy,” she bit out. “You wanted to know. Fine; now you know.”
He let her tend her wounds in silence for a moment. “So why are you here?” he asked. “Why not with the Empire?”
“What Empire?” she countered. “It’s dying-you know that as well as I do.”
“But while it’s still there-“
She cut him off with a withering glare. “Who would I go to?” she demanded. “They didn’t know me-none of them did. Not as the Emperor’s Hand, anyway. I was a shadow, working outside the normal lines of command and protocol. There were no records kept of my activities. Those few I was formally introduced to thought of me as court-hanging froth, a minor bit of mobile decoration kept around the palace to amuse the Emperor.”
Her eyes went distant again with memory. “There was nowhere for me to go after Endor,” she said bitterly. “No contacts, no resources-I didn’t even have a real identity anymore. I was on my own.”
“And so you linked up with Karrde.”
“Eventually. First I spent four and a half years sloshing around the rotten underfringes of the galaxy, doing whatever I could.” Her eyes were steady on him, with a trace of hatred fire back in them. “I worked hard to get where I am, Skywalker. You’re not going to ruin it for me. Not this time.”
“I don’t want to ruin anything for you,” Luke told her evenly. “All I want is to get back to the New Republic.”
“And I want the old Empire back,” she retorted. “We don’t always get what we want, do we?”
Luke shook his head. “No. We don’t.”
For a moment she glared at him. Then, abruptly, she scooped up a tube of salve and tossed it at him. “Here-get that welt fixed up. And get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.”
Chapter 27
The battered A-Class bulk freighter drifted off the Chimera’s starboard side: a giant space-going box with a hyperdrive attached, its faded plating glistening dully in the glare of the Star Destroyer’s floodlights. Sitting at his command station, Thrawn studied the sensor data and nodded. “It looks good, Captain,” he said to Pellaeon. “Exactly the way it should. You may proceed with the test when ready.”
“It’ll be a few more minutes yet, sir,” Pellaeon told him, studying the readouts on his console. “The technicians are still having some problems getting the cloaking shield tuned.”
He held his breath, half afraid of a verbal explosion. The untested cloaking shield and the specially modified freighter it was mounted to had cost hideous amounts of money-money the Empire really didn’t have to spare. For the technology to now suddenly come up finicky, particularly with the whole of the Sluis Van operation hanging squarely in the balance …
But the Grand Admiral merely nodded. “There’s time,” he said calmly. “What word from Myrkr?”
“The last regular report came in two hours ago,” Pellaeon told him. “Still negative.”
Thrawn nodded again. “And the latest count from Sluis Van?”
“Uh …” Pellaeon checked the appropriate file. “A hundred twelve transient warships in all. Sixty-five being used as cargo carriers, the others on escort duty.”
“Sixty-five,” Thrawn repeated with obvious satisfaction. “Excellent. It means we get to pick and choose.”
Pellaeon stirred uncomfortably. “Yes, sir.”
Thrawn turned away from his contemplation of the freighter to look at Pellaeon. “You have a concern, Captain?”
Pellaeon nodded at the ship. “I don’t like sending them into enemy territory without any communications.”
“We don’t have much choice in the matter,” Thrawn reminded him dryly. “That’s how a cloaking shield works-nothing gets out, nothing gets in.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Assuming, of course, that it works at all,” he added pointedly.
“Yes, sir. But …”
“But what, Captain?”
Pellaeon braced himself and took the plunge. “It seems to me, Admiral, that this is the sort of operation we ought to use C’baoth on.”
Thrawn’s gaze hardened, just a bit. “C’baoth?”
“Yes, sir. He could give us communications with-“
“We don’t need communications, Captain,” Thrawn cut him off. “Careful timing will be adequate for our purposes.”