“Unless one of the transfers was a droid,” Pellaeon pointed out.
“Unlikely,” Thrawn shook his head. “Historically, Solo has never liked droids, nor allowed them to travel aboard his ship except under highly unusual circumstances. Skywalker’s droid and its astromech counterpart appear to be the sole exceptions; and thanks to your transmission data, we already know that that droid has remained on the Millennium Falcon.”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, not entirely convinced but knowing better than to argue the point. “Shall I put out an alert on the Lady Luck, then?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Thrawn said, and this time the satisfaction came through clearly. “I know exactly where Leia Organa Solo is going.”
Pellaeon stared at him. “You’re not serious. Sir.”3
“Perfectly serious, Captain,” Thrawn said evenly. “Consider. Solo and Organa Solo have nothing to gain by simply transferring together to the Lady Luck—the Millennium Falcon is faster and far better defended. This exercise only makes sense if Organa Solo and the Wookiee are together.” Thrawn smiled up at Pellaeon. “And given that, there is only one logical place for them to go.”
Pellaeon looked at the display, feeling slightly sandbagged. But the Grand Admiral’s logic tracked clean. “Kashyyyk?”
“Kashyyyk,” Thrawn confirmed. “They know they can’t evade our Noghri forever, and so they’ve decided to surround her with Wookiees. For all the good it will do them.”
Pellaeon felt his lip twitch. He’d been aboard one of the ships that had been sent to Kashyyyk to capture Wookiees for the Empire’s slave trade. “It may not be as easy as it sounds, Admiral,” he cautioned. “Kashyyyk’s ecology can best be described as a layered deathtrap. And the Wookiees themselves are extremely capable fighters.”
“So are the Noghri,” Thrawn countered coldly. “Now. What of Skywalker?”
“His vector away from Athega was consistent with a course toward Jomark,” Pellaeon told him. “Of course, he could easily have altered it once he was out of range of our probes.”
“He’s going there,” Thrawn said, lips twisting in a tight smile. “Our Jedi Master has said so, hasn’t he?” The Grand Admiral glanced at the chrono on his display board. “We’ll leave for Jomark immediately. How much lead time will we have?”
“A minimum of four days, assuming that Skywalker’s X-wing hasn’t been overly modified. More than that, depending on how many stopovers he has to make on the way.”
“He’ll make no stopovers,” Thrawn said. “Jedi use a hibernation state for trips of such length. For our purposes, though, four days will be quite adequate.”
He straightened in his chair and touched a switch. The command room’s lights came back up, the holographic sculptures fading away. “We’ll need two more ships,” he told Pellaeon. “An Interdictor Cruiser to bring Skywalker out of hyperspace where we want him, and some kind of freighter. An expendable one, preferably.”
Pellaeon blinked. “Expendable, sir?”
“Expendable, Captain. We’re going to set up the attack as a pure accident—an opportunity that will seem to have arisen while we were investigating a suspicious freighter for Rebellion munitions.” He cocked an eyebrow. “That way, you see, we retain the option of turning him over to C’baoth if we choose to do so, without even Skywalker realizing he was actually ambushed.”
“Understood, sir,” Pellaeon said. “With your permission, I’ll get the Chimaera under way.” He turned to go—
And paused. Halfway across the room, one of the sculptures had not disappeared with the others. Sitting all alone in its globe of light, it slowly writhed on its pedestal like a wave in some bizarre alien ocean. “Yes,” Thrawn said from behind him. “That one is indeed real.”
“It’s … very interesting,” Pellaeon managed. The sculpture was strangely hypnotic.
“Isn’t it?” Thrawn agreed, his voice sounding almost wistful. “It was my one failure, out on the Fringes. The one time when understanding a race’s art gave me no insight at all into its psyche. At least not at the time. Now, I believe I’m finally beginning to understand them.”
“I’m sure that will prove useful in the future,” Pellaeon offered diplomatically.
“I doubt it,” Thrawn said, in that same wistful voice. “I wound up destroying their world.”4
Pellaeon swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said, starting again for the door. He winced only a little as he passed the sculpture.
C H A P T E R 16
There was no dreaming in the Jedi hibernation trance. No dreaming, no consciousness, virtually no awareness of the outside world. It was very much like a coma, in fact, except for one interesting anomaly: despite the absence of true consciousness, Luke’s time sense still somehow managed to function. He didn’t understand it, exactly, but it was something he’d learned to recognize and use.
It was that time sense, coupled with Artoo’s frantic gurgling in the foggy distance, that was his first hint something was wrong.
“All right, Artoo, I’m awake,” he reassured the droid as he worked his way back toward consciousness. Blinking the gummy feeling out of his eyes, he gave the instruments a quick scan. The readings confirmed what his time sense had already told him: the X-wing had come out of hyperspace nearly twenty light-years short of Jomark. The proximity indicator registered two ships practically on top of him ahead, with a third off to one side in the distance. Still blinking, he raised his head for a look.
And with a rush of adrenaline came fully awake. Directly ahead of him was what looked like a light freighter, a blazing overload in its engine section visible through crumpled and half-vaporized hull plates. Beyond it, looming like a dark cliff face, was an Imperial Star Destroyer.
Anger, fear, aggression—the dark side of the Force are they. With an effort, Luke forced down his fear. The freighter was between him and the Star Destroyer; concentrating on their larger prey, the Imperials might not even have noticed his arrival. “Let’s get out of here, Artoo,” he said, keying the controls back to manual and swinging the X-wing hard around. The etheric rudder whined in protest with the turn—
“Unidentified starfighter,” a harsh voice boomed from the speaker. “This is the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera. Transmit your identification code and state your business.”
So much for hoping he wouldn’t be noticed. In the distance now, Luke could see what it was that had yanked the X-wing out of hyperspace: the third ship was an Interdictor Cruiser,1 the Empire’s favorite tool for keeping opponents from jumping to lightspeed. Obviously, they’d been lying in wait for the freighter; it was just his bad luck that he’d run across the Interdictor’s projected mass shadow and been kicked out of hyperspace along with it.
The freighter. Closing his eyes briefly with concentration, Luke reached out with the Force, trying to discover whether it was a Republic ship, a neutral, or even a pirate that the Chimaera had caught. But there was no hint of any life aboard. Either the crew had escaped, or else they’d already been taken prisoner.
Either way, there was nothing Luke could do for them now. “Artoo, find me the nearest edge of that Interdictor’s gravity-wave cone,” he ordered, throwing the X-wing into a stomach-churning downward drop that even the acceleration compensator couldn’t quite handle. If he could keep the freighter directly between him and the Star Destroyer, he might be able to get out of range before they could bring a tractor beam to bear.