'Yes, sir.' Pellaeon hesitated. 'May I point out, though, that such a drastic psychological fragmentation and reconditioning is well outside the Rebellion's usual operating procedure.'
'I agree,' Thrawn said grimly. 'Which implies all the more strongly that whatever Organa Solo is looking for on Endor, it's considerably mote vital to the Rebellion's war effort than mere sanctuary.' Pellaeon frowned, trying to think of what might be on Endor that anyone could possibly want. 'Some of the materiel left over from the Death Star project?' he hazarded.
'More valuable than that,' the Grand Admiral shook his head.
'Information, perhaps, that the Emperor might have had with him when he died. Information they may think they can still retrieve.' And then Pellaeon got it. 'The location of the Mount Tantiss storehouse.'
Thrawn nodded. 'That's the only thing I can think of that would be worth this much effort on their part. At any rate, it's a risk we can't afford to take. Not now.'
'Agreed.' Pellaeon's board pinged: Navigation and Engineering signaling ready. 'Shall I break orbit?'
'At your convenience, Captain.'
Pellaeon nodded to the helm. 'Take us out. Course as set by Navigation.'
Through the viewports the planet below began to fall away; and as it did so there was the short trill of a priority message coming through. Pellaon pulled it up, read the heading. 'Admiral? Report from the Adamant, in the Abregado system. They've captured one of Talon Karrde's freighters. Transcript of the preliminary interrogation is coming through now.' He frowned as he glanced down to the end. 'It's rather short, sir.'
'Thank you,' Thrawn said with quiet satisfaction as he pulled up the report to his own station.
He was still reading it when the Chimaera made the jump to lightspeed. Reading it very, very carefully.
CHAPTER
17
Mara had never been to the Abregado-rae Spaceport before; but as she walked along its streets she decided it deserved every bit of the rock-bottom reputation it had worked so hard to achieve.
Not that it showed on the surface. On the contrary, the place was neat and almost painfully clean, though with that grating antiseptic quality that showed the cleanliness had been imposed from above by government decree instead of from below by the genuine wishes of the inhabitants. It seemed reasonably peaceful, too, as spaceports went, with lots of uniformed security men patrolling the streets around the landing pits.
But beneath the surface glitter the rot showed straight through. Showed in the slightly furtive manner of the locals; in the halfhearted swaggering of the uniformed security men; in the lingering stares of the plainclothes but just as obvious quiet security men. The whole spaceport-maybe the whole planet-was being held together with tie wire and blaster power packs.
A petty totalitarian regime, and a populace desperate to escape it. Just the sort of place where anyone would betray anyone else for the price of a ticket off planet. Which meant that if any of the locals had tumbled to the fact that there was a smuggling ship sitting here under Security's nose, Mara had about ten steps to go before the whole place came down on top of her. Walking toward a faded door with the equally faded sign 'Landing Pit 21' over it, she hoped sardonically that it wasn't a trap. She would really hate to die in a place like this.
The door to the landing pit was unlocked. Taking a deep breath, acutely conscious of the two pairs of uniformed security men within sight of her, she went inside.
It was the Etherway, all right, looking just as shabby and decrepit as it had when Fynn Torve had had to abandon it in Landing Pit 63 of this same spaceport. Mara gave it a quick once-over, checked out all the nooks and crannies in the pit where an armed ambush squad could be skulking, and finally focused on the dark-haired young man lounging in a chair by the freighter's lowered ramp. Even in that casual slouch he couldn't shake the military air that hovered around him. 'Hello, there,' he called to her, lowering the data pad he'd been reading. 'Nice day for flying. You interested in hiring a ship?'
'No,' she said, walking toward him as she tried to watch all directions at once. 'I'm more in a buying mood, myself. What kind of ship is this flying hatbox, anyway?'
'It's a Harkners-Balix Nine-Oh-Three,' the other sniffed with a second-rate attempt at wounded pride. 'Flying hatbox, indeed.' Not much of an actor, but he was clearly getting a kick out of all this cloak-and-blade stuff. Setting her teeth firmly together, Mara sent a silent curse down on Torve's head for setting up such a ridiculous identification procedure in the first place. 'Looks like a Nine-Seventeen to me,' she said dutifully. 'Or even a Nine- Twenty-Two.'
'No, it's a Nine-Oh-Three,' he insisted. 'Trust m my uncle used to make landing gear pads for them. Come inside and I'll show you how to tell the difference.'
'Oh, that'll be great,' Mara muttered under her breath as she followed him up the ramp.
