be important enough to tie up a Victory-class Star Destroyer for. And if he was, they would certainly not have been so incompetent as to spring the trap prematurely.
'Freighter Etherway,' a cold voice boomed over her comm speaker.
'This is the Star Destroyer Adamant. You are ordered to shut down your engines and prepare to be brought aboard.'
So that was that. They had indeed been looking for her. In a very few minutes now she would be their prisoner.
Unless ...
Reaching over, she keyed her mike. 'Star Destroyer Adamant, this is the Etherway,' she said briskly. 'I congratulate you on your vigilance; I was afraid I was going to have to search the next five systems to find an Imperial ship.'
'You will shut down all deflector systems-' The voice faltered halfway through the standard speech as the fact belatedly penetrated that this was not the normal response of the normal Imperial prisoner.
'I'll want to speak to your captain the minute I'm aboard,' Mara said into the conversational gap. 'I'll need him to set up a meeting with Grand Admiral Thrawn and provide me transport to wherever he and the Chimaera are at the moment. And get a tractor beam ready-I don't want to have to land this monster in your hangar bay myself.'
The surprises were coming too fast for the poor man. 'Ah-freighter Etherway-' he tried again.
'On second thought, put the captain on now,' Mara cut him off. She had the initiative now, and was determined to keep it as long as possible.
'There's no one around who can tap into this communication.' There was a moment of silence. Mara continued on her intercept course, a trickle of doubt beginning to worm its way through her resolve. It's the only way, she told herself sternly.
'This is the captain,' a new voice came on the speaker. 'Who are you?'
'Someone with important information for Grand Admiral Thrawn,' Mara told him, shifting from brisk to just slightly haughty. 'For the moment, that's all you need to know.'
But the captain wasn't as easily bullied as his junior officers.
'Really,' he said dryly. 'According to our sources, you're a member of Talon Karrde's smuggling gang.'
'And you don't believe such a person could tell the Grand Admiral anything useful?' she countered, letting her tone frost over a bit.
'Oh, I'm sure you can,' the captain said. 'I simply don't see any reason why I should bother him with what will be, after all, a routine interrogation.'
Mara squeezed her left hand into a fist. At all costs she had to avoid the kind of complete mind-sifting the captain was obviously hinting at.
'I wouldn't advise that,' she told him, throwing every bit of the half-remembered dignity and power of the old Imperial court into her voice.
'The Grand Admiral would be extremely displeased with you. Extremely displeased.'
There was a short pause. Clearly, the captain was starting to recognize that he had more here than he'd bargained for. Just as clearly, he wasn't ready yet to back down. 'I have my orders,' he said flatly. 'I'll need more than vague hints before I can make you an exception to them.' Mara braced herself. This was it. After all these years of hiding from the Empire, as well as from everyone else, this was finally it. 'Then send a message to the Grand Admiral,' she said. 'Tell him the recognition code is Hapspir, Barrini, Corbolan, Triaxis.'
There was a moment of silence, and Mara realized she'd finally gotten through to the other. 'And your name?' the captain asked, his voice suddenly respectful.
Beneath her, the Etherway jolted slightly as the Adanant's tractor beam locked on. She was committed now. The only way out was to see it all through. 'Tell him,' she said, 'that he knew me as the Emperor's Hand.' They brought her and the Etherway aboard, settled her with uncertain deference into one of the senior officers' quarters ... and then headed away from Abregado like a mynock with its tail on fire.
She was left alone in the cabin for the rest of the day and into the night, seeing no one, speaking with no one. Meals were delivered by an SE4
servant droid; at all other times the door was kept locked. Whether the enforced privacy was on the captain's
