The hatchway opened, and Mara appeared. She glanced around the pit as she started down the ramp, spotting him immediately in his chosen shadow.
'Karrde?' she called.
'Welcome home, Mara,' he said, stepping out into the light. 'You're a bit late.'
'I wound up making a little detour,' she said grimly, coming toward him.
'That can happen,' he said, frowning. Her attention was still flitting around the pit, her face lined with a vague sort of tension.
'Trouble?' he asked quietly.
'I don't know,' she murmured. 'I feel-' She never finished the sentence. At Karrde's belt his comlink suddenly squawked, screeched briefly with the electronic stress of blanket jamming, and then went silent. 'Come on,' Karrde snapped, drawing his blaster and spinning back toward the exit. At the far end of the tunnel he could see shapes moving; lifting his blaster, he fired toward the violent thunderclap of a sonic boom shattered the air around him, slamming hard against his head and nearly toppling him to the ground. He glanced up, ears ringing, just as two slower-moving TIE fighters swooped past overhead, laying down a spitting pattern of laser fire at the mouth of the exit tunnel. The paving erupted into steaming blocks of half-molten ceramic under the assault, blocking any chance of quick escape in that direction. Kaerde snapped off a reflexive if meaningless shot toward the TIE fighters; and he was just beginning to shift his aim back toward the figures in the tunnel when a dozen stormtroopers suddenly leaped into view at the upper rim of the landing pit, sliding down droplines to the ground. 'Down!' he snapped at Mara, his voice hardly audible to his paralyzed sense of hearing. He dived for the ground, hitting awkwardly on his left arm and bringing his blaster to bear on the nearest stormtrooper. He fired, missing by half a meter...and he was just noticing the curious fact that the Imperials weren't returning fire when the blaster was deftly plucked from his hand.
He rolled half over, looking up at Mara with stunned disbelief.
'What-'
She was standing over him, her face so pinched with emotion he could hardly recognize it, her lips moving with words he couldn't hear. But he didn't really need any explanation. Strangely, he felt no anger at her; not for concealing her Imperial past from him all this time, nor for now returning to her origins. Only chagrin that he'd been fooled so easily and so thoroughly ... and a strange regret that he had lost such a skilled associate.
The stormtroopers hauled him to his feet and moved him roughly toward a drop ship that was settling onto the paving beside the Etherway; and as he stumbled toward it, a stray thought occurred to him.
He was betrayed and captured and probably facing death ... but at least he now had a partial answer to the mystery of why Mara wanted to kill Luke Skywalker.
Mara glared at the Grand Admiral, her hands curled into fists, her body trembling with rage. 'Eight days, Thrawn,' she snarled, her voice echoing oddly through the background noises of the Chimaera's vast shuttle bay. 'You said eight days. You promised me eight days.'
Thrawn gazed back with a polite calmness that made her long to burn him down where he stood. 'I changed my mind,' he said coolly. 'It occurred to me that Karrde might not only refuse to divulge the Katana fleet's location, but might even abandon you here for suggesting that he make such a deal with us.'
'The gates of hell you did,' Mara snapped back. 'You planned to use me like this right from the start.'
'And it got us what we wanted,' the red-eyed freak said smoothly.
'That's all that matters.'
Deep within Mara, something snapped. Ignoring the armed stormtroopers standing just behind her, she threw herself at Thrawn, fingers hooking like a hunting bird's talons for his throat And came to an abrupt bone- wrenching stop as Thrawn's Noghri bodyguard sidled in from two meters away, threw his arm across her neck and shoulder, and spun her around and halfway to the deck.
She grabbed at the iron-hard arm across her throat, simultaneously throwing her right elbow back toward his torso. But the blow missed; and even as she shifted to a two-handed grip on his arm, white spots began to flicker in her vision. His forearm was pressing solidly against her carotid artery, threatening her with unconsciousness.
There wasn't anything to be gained by blacking out. She relaxed her struggle, felt the pressure ease. Thrawn was still standing there, regarding her with amusement. 'That was very unprofessional of you, Emperor's Hand,' he chided.
Mara glared at him and lashed out again, this time with the Force. Thrawn frowned slightly, fingers moving across his neck as if trying to brush away an intangible cobweb. Mara leaned into her tenuous grip on his throat; and he brushed again at his neck before understanding came. 'All right, that's enough,' he said, his voice noticeably altered, his tone starting to get angry. 'Stop it, or Rukh will have to hurt you.' Mara ignored the order, digging in as hard as she could. Thrawn gazed unblinkingly back at her, his throat muscles moving as he fought against the grip. Mara clenched her teeth, waiting for the order or hand movement that would signal permission for the Noghri to
