engine prestart sequence was keyed in and ready. And then settled in to wait.
The scanning crew was fast, efficient, and thorough; and it took them just over thirty minutes to come up completely dry.
'Well, so much for that.' Pellaeon grimaced as he watched the negative reports scroll up his display. A good practice session for the ground forces, perhaps, but otherwise the whole exercise seemed to have been pretty useless. 'Unless your observers have picked up any reactions in Hyllyard City,' he added, turning to face Thrawn.
The Grand Admiral's glowing red eyes were on his displays. 'There was a small twitch, as a matter of fact,' he said. 'Cut off almost before it began, but I think the implications are clear.'
Well, that was something, anyway. 'Yes, sir. Shall I have Surveillance begin equipping a long-term ground team?'
'Patience, Captain,' Thrawn said. 'It may not be necessary, after all. Key for a midrange scan, and tell me what you see.
Pellaeon swiveled back to his command board and tapped for the appropriate readout. There was Myrkr itself of course, and the standard TIE
fighter defense cloud ranged around the Chimaera. The only other object anywhere within midrange distance-'You mean that little asteroid out there?'
'That's the one,' Thrawn nodded. 'Nothing remarkable about it, is there? No, don't do a sensor focus,' he added, almost before the thought of doing one had even occurred to Pellaeon. 'We wouldn't want to prematurely flush our quarry, would we?'
'Our quarry?' Pellaeon repeated, frowning at the sensor data again. The routine sensor scans that had been done of the asteroid three hours earlier had come up negative, and nothing could have sneaked up on it since then without being detected. 'With all due respect, sir, I don't see any indication that anything's out there.
'I don't either,' Thrawn agreed. 'But it's the only sizable cover available for nearly ten million kilometers around Myrkr. There's really no other place for Karrde to watch our operation from.' Pellaeon pursed his lips. 'Your permission, Admiral, but I doubt Karrde is foolish enough to just sit around waiting for us to arive. The glowing red eyes narrowed, just a bit. 'You forget, Captain,' he said softly, 'that I've met the man. More important, I've seen the sort of artwork he collects.' He turned back to his displays. 'No; he's out there. I'm sure of it. Talon Karrde is not merely a smuggler, you see. Perhaps not even primarily a smuggler. His real love is not goods or money but information. More than anything else in the galaxy, he craves knowledge...and the knowledge of what we have or have not found here is too valuable a gem for him to pass up.'
Pellaeon studied the Grand Admiral's profile. It was, in his opinion, a pritty tenuous leap of logic. But on the other hand, he'd seen too many similar leaps borne out not to take this one seriously. 'Shall I order a TIE
fighter squad to investigate, sir?'
'As I said, Captain, patience,' Thrawn said. 'Even in sensor stealth mode with all engines shut down, he'll have made sure he can power up and escape before any attack force could reach him.' He smiled at Pellaeon. 'Or rather, any attack force from the Chimaera.'
A stray memory clicked: Thrawn, reaching for his comm just as Pellaeon was giving the ground forces the order to attack. 'You sent a message to the rest of the fleet,' he said. 'Timing it against my attack order to mask the transmission.
Thrawn's blue-black eyebrows lifted a fraction. 'Very good, Captain. Very good, indeed.'
Pellaeon felt a touch of warmth on his cheeks. The Grand Admiral's compliments were few and far between. 'Thank you, sir.' Thrawn nodded. 'More precisely, my message was to a single ship, the Constrainer. It will arrive in approximately ten minutes. At which point'-his eyes glittered-'we'll see just how accurate my reading of Karrde has been.' Over the Wild Karrde's bridge speakers, the reports from the scanning crew were beginning to taper off. 'Doesn't sound like they've found anything,' Aves commented.
'Like you said, we were thorough,' Mara reminded him, hardly hearing her own words. The nameless thing nagging at the back of her mind seemed to be getting stronger. 'Can we get out of here now?' she asked, turning to look at Karrde.
He frowned down at her. 'Try to relax, Mara. They can't possibly know we're here. There's been no sensorfocus probe of the asteroid, and without one there's no way for them to detect this ship.'
'Unless a Star Destroyer's sensors are better than you think,' Mara retorted.
'We know all about their sensors,' Aves soothed. 'Ease up, Mara, Karrde knows what he's doing. The Wild Karrde has probably the tightest sensor stealth mode this side of-'
He broke off as the bridge door opened behind them; and Mara turned just as Karrde's two pet vornskrs bounded into the room.
