Dragging, very literally, their handler behind them.
'What are you doing here, Chin?' Karrde asked.
'Sorry, Capt',' Chin puffed, digging his heels into the deck and leaning back against the taut leashes. The effort was only partially successful; the predators were still pulling him slowly forward. 'I couldn't stop them. I thought maybe, they wanted to see you, hee?'
'What's the matter with you two, anyway?' Karrde chided the animals, squatting down in front of them. 'Don't you know we're busy?' The vornskrs didn't look at him. Didn't even seem to notice his presence, for that matter. They continued staring straight ahead as if he wasn't even there.
Staring directly at Mara.
'Hey,' Karrde said, reaching over to slap one of the animals lightly across the muzzle. 'I'm talking to you, Sturm. What's gotten into you, anyway?' He glanced along their unblinking line of sight Paused for a second and longer look. 'Are you doing something, Mara?' Mara shook her head, a cold shiver tingling up her back. She'd seen that look before, on many of the wild vornskrs she'd run into during that long three-day trek through the Myrkr's forest with Luke Skywalker. Except that those vornskr stares hadn't been directed at her. They'd been reserved instead for Skywalker. Usually just before they attacked him.
'That's Mara, Sturm,' Karrde told the animal, speaking to it as he might a child. 'Mara. Come on, now-you saw her all the time back home.' Slowly, almost reluctantly, Sturm stopped his forward pull and turned his attention to his master. 'Mara,' Karrde repeated, looking th'e vornskr firmly in the eye. 'A friend. You hear that, Drang?' he added, reaching over to grip the other vornskr's muzzle. 'She's a friend. Understand?' Drang seemed to consider that. Then, as reluctantly as Sturm had, he lowered his head and stopped pulling. 'That's better,' Karrde said, scratching both voruslo's briefly behind their ears and standing up again. 'Better take them back down, Chin. Maybe walk them around the main hold-give them some exercise.
'If I can find a clear track through all the stuff in there, hee?' Chin grunted, twitching back on the leashes. 'Come on, littles - we go now.' With only a slight hesitation the two vornskrs allowed him to take them off the bridge. Karrde watched as the door shut behind them. 'I wonder what that was all about,' he said, giving Mara a thoughtful look.
'I don't know,' she told him, hearing the tightness in her voice. With the temporary distraction now gone, the strange dread she'd been feeling was back again in full force. She swiveled back to her board, half expecting to see a squadron of TIE fighters bearing down on them. But there was nothing. Only the Chimaera, still sitting harmlessly out there in orbit around Myrkr. No threat any of the Wild Karrde's instruments could detect. But the tingling was getting stronger and stronger...
And suddenly she could sit still no longer. Reaching out to the control board, she keyed for engine prestart.
'Mara!' Aves yelped, jumping in his seat as if he'd been stung. 'What in-?'
'They're coming,' Mara snarled back, hearing the strain of a half dozen tangled emotions in her voice. The die was irrevocably cast-her activation of the Wild Karrde's engines would have set sensors screaming all over the Chimaera. Now there was nowhere to go but out.
She looked up at Karrde, suddenly afraid of what his expression might be saying. But he was just standing there looking down at her, a slightly quizzical frown on his face. 'They don't appear to be coming,' he pointed out mildly.
She shook her head, feeling the pleading in her eyes. 'You have to believe me,' she said, uncomfortably aware that she didn't really believe it herself. 'They're getting ready to attack.'
'I believe you,' he said soothingly. Or perhaps he, too, recognized that there weren't any other choices left. 'Aves: lightspeed calculation. Take the easiest course setting that's not anywhere toward Rishi; we'll stop and reset later.'
'Karrde-'
'Mara is second in command,' Karrde cut him off. 'As such, she has the right and the duty to make important decisions.
'Yeah, but-' Aves stopped, the last word coming out pinched as he strangled it off. 'Yeah,' he said between clenched teeth. Throwing a glower at Mara, he turned to the nav computer and got to work.
'You might as well get us moving, Mara,' Karrde continued, stepping over to the vacant communications chair and sitting down. 'Keep the asteroid between us and the Chimaera as long as you can.
'Yes, sir,' Mara said. Her tangle of emotions was starting to dissolve now, leaving a mixture of anger and profound embarrassment in its wake. She'd done it again. Listened to her inner feelings-tried to do things she knew full well she couldn't do-and in the process had once again wound up clutching the sharp end of the bayonet.
And it was probably the last she'd hear of being Karrde's second in command, too. Command unity in front of Aves was one thing, but once they were out of here and he could get her alone there was going to be hell to pay. She'd be lucky if he didn't bounce her out of his organization altogether. Jabbing viciously at her board, she swung
