[Thrawn Trilogy] - 02(118)

Skywalker looked up at her. “We’re not going to kill him,” he said. “Not like this.”

“Would you rather wait until he’s conscious again and can fight back?” she retorted.

“There’s no need to kill him at all,” Skywalker insisted. “We can be off Jomark long before he wakes up.”

“You don’t leave an enemy at your back,” she told him stiffly. “Not if you like living.

“He doesn’t have to be an enemy, Mara,” Skywalker said with that irritating earnestness of his. “He’s ill. Maybe he can be cured.”

Mara felt her lip twist. “You didn’t hear the way he was talking before you showed up,” she said. “He’s insane, all right; but that’s not all he is anymore. He’s a lot stronger, and a whole lot more dangerous.” She hesitated. “He sounded just like the Emperor and Vader used to.”

A muscle in Skywalker’s cheek twitched. “Vader was deep in the dark side, too,” he told her. “He was able to break that hold and come back. Maybe C’baoth can do the same.

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Mara said. But she holstered her blaster. They didn’t have time to debate the issue; and as long as she needed Skywalker’s help, he had effective veto on decisions like this. “Just remember, it’s your back that’ll get the knife if you’re wrong.”

“I know.” He looked down at C’baoth once more, then back up at her. “You said Karrde was in trouble.”

“Yes,” Mara nodded, glad to change the subject.

Skywalker’s mention of the Emperor and Vader had reminded her all too clearly of that recurring dream. “The Grand Admiral’s taken him. I need your help to get him out.”

She braced herself for the inevitable argument and bargaining; but to her surprise, he simply nodded and stood up. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

With one last mournful electronic wail Artoo signed off and with the usual flicker of pseudomotion, the X-wing was gone. “Well, he’s not happy about it,” Luke said, shutting down the Skipray’s transmitter. “But I think I’ve persuaded him to go straight home.”

“You’d better be more than just thinking you’ve persuaded him,” Mara warned from the pilot’s chair, her eyes on the nav computer display. “Sneaking into an Imperial supply depot is going to be hard enough without a New Republic X-wing in tow.

“Right,” Luke said, throwing a sideways look at her and wondering if getting into the Skipray with her had been one of the smarter things he’d done lately. Mara had put the ysalamir away in the rear of the ship, and he could feel her hatred of him simmering beneath her consciousness like a half-burned fire. It evoked unpleasant memories of the Emperor, the man who’d been Mara’s teacher and Luke briefly wondered if this could be some sort of overly elaborate trick to lure him to his death.

But her hatred seemed to be under control, and there was no deceit in her that he could detect.

But then, he hadn’t seen C’baoth’s deceit either, until it was almost too late.

Luke shifted in his chair, his face warming with embarrassment at how easily he’d been taken in by C’baoth’s act. But it hadn’t all been an act, he reminded himself. The Jedi Master’s emotional instabilities were genuine-that much he was convinced of. And even if those instabilities didn’t extend as far as the insanity that Mara had alluded to, they certainly extended far enough for C’baoth to qualas ill.

And if what she’d said about C’baoth working with the Empire was also true :

Luke shivered. I will teach her such power as you can’t imagine, C’baoth had said about Leia. The words had been different from those Vader had spoken to Luke on Endor, but the dark sense behind them had been identical. Whatever C’baoth had once been, there was no doubt in Luke’s mind that he was now moving along the path of the dark side.

And yet, Luke had been able to help Vader win his way back from that same path. Was it conceit to think he could do the same for C’baoth?

He shook the thought away. However C’baoth’s destiny might yet be entwined with his, such encounters were too far in the future to begin planning for them. For now, he needed to concentrate on the immediate task at hand, and to leave the future to the guidance of the Force. “How did the Grand Admiral find Karrde?” he asked Mara.

Her lips compressed momentarily, and Luke caught a flash of self-reproach. “They put a homing beacon aboard my ship,” she said. “I led them right to his hideout.”