Vision of the future

The droid twittered again. 'Only three are active at the moment,' Luke said. 'But the others are still functional. Running to weapons or shield generators, maybe?'

'I was just wondering that myself.' Mara felt her lip twitch. 'From near the mouth of the cave you can see three towers rising from the fortress: three intact and one broken.'

'Yes, I remember that from the record the Starry Ice brought back,' Luke said, his voice and emotions tight. 'You suggested that the shot that took out that tower might have also gouged out some of the ravine you flew in through. Is Hijarna stone that tough?'

'I don't know,' Mara said grimly. 'But Hijarna stone plus seventeen power lines' worth of shield generators might do the trick.'

Luke whistled softly, shaking his head. 'You know, this place is starting to look more and more impregnable by the minute. I don't think I like that.'

'I'm sure I don't like it,' Mara retorted grimly. 'Especially in potentially unfriendly hands. It'd be worse than Mount Tantiss.'

They reached the landing and the expected switchback and continued on up. For a while Mara tried to keep track of the stair count, but somewhere in the mid-two hundreds she gave up the exercise as useless.

They had passed the fourth landing when she began to detect the alien presence. She kept at the sensation for the next few minutes until she was sure. Then, as they started to round the fifth landing, she leaned over and caught Luke's eye. 'Luke?' she murmured. 'Company.'

'I know,' he murmured back. 'I've been picking them up for a while now. We must be getting close to the inhabited parts of the High Tower.'

'The sensation seem at all familiar to you?'

'Very,' he assured her. 'They're the same species as the pilots who tried to shoot me down on my way in.'

'I've never gotten that close to any of this particular group,' Mara said, a sudden shiver running through her. 'But I've definitely felt this sense before.'

Luke seemed to brace himself. 'Thrawn?'

She nodded. 'Thrawn.'

For a long moment they stood there in silence. 'Well, you called it,' Mara reminded him. 'You said that might be a group of his people in there.'

'It's starting to look that way,' Luke said, looking up and waving toward him. 'Splitter Of Stones?'

There was a rustling of wings, and the Qom Jha fluttered to a landing on one of the stairs ahead of Luke. 'You said there were places where you could see or hear into the High Tower,' Luke said.

'How close are we to the nearest of those?'

Splitter Of Stones began to speak. Suddenly tired of this second-class status of hers, Mara reached over and took Luke's hand.

— not too far away, she heard the Qom Jha's voice echoed through Luke's mind. Two and a portion more turns.

'A portion?' Mara asked, frowning.

'The spot must be partway up one of the stairways,' Luke said, glancing at the cylinders running alongside them. 'At least these power lines should help mask our life-form readings if anyone's looking. That's convenient.'

'It also means Artoo won't be able to pick up much of anything, either,' Mara pointed out. 'Not so convenient.'

But that will surely not be a problem for you, Child Of Winds spoke up. You have the Force.

'True,' Luke agreed.

'Some of us more than others, of course,' Mara added, suppressing a grimace. As he had on that trek across Wayland ten years ago, Luke had been giving her more or less nonstop Jedi instruction during the trip through these caverns. But despite those efforts, she was apparently no closer to hearing this weird Force-driven communication