“Perhaps.” C’baoth turned back to Thrawn. “I have all I want or need, Grand Admiral Thrawn. You will leave Wayland now.”
Thrawn didn’t move. “I need your assistance, Master C’baoth,” he repeated quietly. “And I will have it.”
“Or you’ll do what?” C’baoth sneered. “Have your Noghri try to kill me? It would almost be amusing to watch.” He looked at Pellaeon. “Or perhaps you’ll have your brave Star Destroyer captain try to level my city from orbit. Except that you can’t risk damaging the mountain, can you?”
“My gunners could destroy this city without even singeing the grass on Mount Tantiss,” Pellaeon retorted. “If you need a demonstration—”
“Peace, Captain,” Thrawn cut him off calmly. “So it’s the personal, face-to-face sort of power you prefer, Master C’baoth? Yes, I can certainly understand that. Not that there can be much challenge left in it—not anymore. Of course,” he added reflectively, glancing out the window, “that may be the whole idea. I expect that even Jedi Masters eventually get too old to be interested in anything except to sit out in the sun.”
C’baoth’s forehead darkened. “Have a care, Grand Admiral Thrawn,” he warned. “Or perhaps I’ll seek challenge in your destruction.”
“That would hardly be a challenge for a man of your skill and power,” Thrawn countered with a shrug. “But then, you probably already have other Jedi here under your command.”
C’baoth frowned, obviously thrown by the sudden change in subject. “Other Jedi?” he echoed.
“Of course. Surely it’s only fitting that a Jedi Master have lesser Jedi serving beneath him. Jedi whom he may teach and command and punish at will.”
Something like a shadow crossed C’baoth’s face. “There are no Jedi left,” he murmured. “The Emperor and Vader hunted them down and destroyed them.”
“Not all of them,” Thrawn told him softly. “Two new Jedi have arisen in the past five years: Luke Skywalker and his sister, Leia Organa Solo.”
“And what is that to me?”
“I can deliver them to you.”
For a long minute C’baoth stared at him, disbelief and desire struggling for supremacy on his face. The desire won. “Both of them?”
“Both of them.” Thrawn nodded. “Consider what a man of your skill could do with brand-new Jedi. Mold them, change them, re-create them in any image you choose.” He cocked an eyebrow. “And with them would come a very special bonus … because Leia Organa Solo is pregnant. With twins.”
C’baoth inhaled sharply. “Jedi twins?” he hissed.
“They have the potential, or so my sources tell me.” Thrawn smiled. “Of course, what they ultimately became would be entirely up to you.”
C’baoth’s eyes darted to Pellaeon; back to Thrawn. Slowly, deliberately, he stood up. “Very well, Grand Admiral Thrawn,” he said. “In return for the Jedi, I will assist your forces. Take me to your ship.”
“In time, Master C’baoth,” Thrawn said, getting to his feet himself. “First we must go into the Emperor’s mountain. This bargain is dependent on whether I find what I’m looking for there.”
“Of course.” C’baoth’s eyes flashed. “Let us both hope,” he said warningly, “that you do.”
It took seven hours of searching, through a mountain fortress much larger than Pellaeon had expected. But in the end, they did indeed find the treasures Thrawn had hoped for. The cloaking shield … and that other small, almost trivial, bit of technology.
The door to the Grand Admiral’s command room slid open; settling himself, Pellaeon stepped inside. “A word with you, Admiral?”
“Certainly, Captain,” Thrawn said from his seat in the center of the double display circle. “Come in. Has there been any update from the Imperial Palace?”
“No, sir, not since yesterday’s,” Pellaeon said as he walked to the edge of the outer circle, silently rehearsing one last time how he was going to say this. “I can request one, if you’d like.”
“Probably unnecessary.” Thrawn shook his head. “It looks like the details of the Bimmisaari trip have been more or less settled. All we have to do is alert one of the commando groups—Team Eight, I think—and we’ll have our Jedi.”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon braced himself. “Admiral … I have to tell you that I’m not convinced dealing with C’baoth is a good idea. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think he’s entirely sane.”
Thrawn cocked an eyebrow. “Of course he’s not sane. But then, he’s not Joruus C’baoth, either.”
Pellaeon felt his mouth fall open. “What?”
“Joruus C’baoth is dead,” Thrawn said. “He was one of the six Jedi Masters aboard the Old Republic’s Outbound Flight project.14 I don’t know if you were highly enough placed back then to have known about it.”
“I heard rumors,” Pellaeon frowned, thinking back. “Some sort of grand effort to extend the Old Republic’s authority outside the galaxy, as I recall, launched just before the Clone Wars broke out. I never heard anything more about it.”
“That’s because there wasn’t anything more to be heard,” Thrawn said evenly. “It was intercepted by a task force outside Old Republic space and destroyed.”
Pellaeon stared at him, a shiver running up his back. “How do you know?”
Thrawn raised his eyebrows. “Because I was the force’s commander. Even at that early date the Emperor recognized that the Jedi had to be exterminated. Six Jedi Masters aboard the same ship was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Pellaeon licked his lips. “But then …?”
“Who is it we’ve brought aboard the Chimaera?” Thrawn finished the question for him. “I should have thought that obvious. Joruus C’baoth—note the telltale mispronunciation of the name Jorus—is a clone.”
Pellaeon stared at him. “A clone?”
“Certainly,” Thrawn said. “Created from a tissue sample, probably sometime just before the real C’baoth’s death.”
“Early in the war, in other words,” Pellaeon said, swallowing hard. The early clones—or at least those the fleet had faced15—had been highly unstable, both mentally and emotionally. Sometimes spectacularly so … “And you deliberately brought this thing aboard my ship?” he demanded.
“Would you rather we have brought back a full-fledged Dark Jedi?” Thrawn asked coldly. “A second Darth Vader, perhaps, with the sort of ambitions and power that might easily lead him to take over your ship? Count your blessings, Captain.”
“At least a Dark Jedi would have been predictable,” Pellaeon countered.
“C’baoth is predictable enough,” Thrawn assured him. “And for those times when he isn’t—” He waved a hand at the half dozen frameworks encircling his command center. “That’s what the ysalamiri are for.”
Pellaeon grimaced. “I still don’t like it, Admiral. We can hardly protect the ship from him while at the same time having him coordinate the fleet’s attacks.”
“There’s a degree of risk involved,” Thrawn agreed. “But risk has always been an inescapable part of warfare. In this case, the potential benefits far outweigh the potential dangers.”
Reluctantly, Pellaeon nodded. He didn’t like it—was fairly certain he would never like it—but it was clear that Thrawn had made up his mind. “Yes, sir,” he muttered. “You mentioned a message to Team Eight. Will you be wanting me to transmit that?”
“No, I’ll handle it myself.” Thrawn smiled sardonically. “Their glorious leader, and all that—you know how Noghri are. If there’s nothing more …?”
It was, clearly, a dismissal. “No, sir,” Pellaeon said. “I’ll be on the bridge if you require me.” He turned to go.
“It will bring us victory, Captain,” the Grand Admiral called softly after him. “Quiet your fears, and concentrate on that.”