Vision of the future

'Looks like it,' Mara agreed, cupping a hand around one ear. 'That sounds like one of the slideways. Shall we take a look?'

Luke nodded. 'I'll go first. You stay behind me.'

He headed out, moving as silently as he could across the empty space, trying to ignore Mara's annoyance from behind him. She could call it overprotectiveness if she wanted—and she undoubtedly was calling it exactly that—but after watching her do five days in a healing trance he much preferred to err on the side of caution. He reached one of the rare—at least on this level—wall segments and eased an eye around it. Beyond it, set right up against the far wall, was the spiral slideway they had heard. 'All right,' Luke murmured over his shoulder. 'Real easy, now—' He sensed Mara's emotional call; but it wasn't coming from directly behind him. He glanced around, feeling a flash of annoyance of his own as he spotted her standing at the corner of one of the other wall segments twenty meters off to his left. She beckoned to him, a quick, impatient gesture. And there was a sudden sense of dread in her emotions...

He made it to her side in less than ten seconds. 'What is it?' he hissed. She nodded toward the wall, a silent churning in her eyes and mind. 'Around there,' she said. Lightsaber ready in his hand, Luke slid around the end of the wall segment. Beyond it was a large open space that had been set up as a sort of command center, though it was currently as unoccupied as everywhere else they'd been today. Two circles of command consoles had been laid out, the boards and displays winking status lights toward the empty chairs in front of them. To one side, a larger and more elaborate chair ringed by its own status boards had been set up on a meter-high platform where it could overlook the entire operation. And in the center of it all was a sight that sent a shiver of memory along Luke's spine: a holographic map of the galaxy, with the sectors of the New Republic, the Empire, and the rest of the known regions marked out in a bewildering array of a dozen different colors. The whole variegated mosaic stretched across perhaps a quarter of the huge spiral, fading into neutral white where the edges of the Outer Rim Territories gave way to the vastness of the Unknown Regions beyond. It was a duplicate of the galactic holo Emperor Palpatine had had in his throne room in Mount Tantiss.

Luke swallowed, tearing his eyes away from the holo to give the surrounding equipment a closer look. Yes, the consoles were indeed Imperial issue: status and computer-access boards from a Star Destroyer or other major capital ship. The chairs, likewise, were straight from a Star Destroyer's bridge crew pits.

And the overseer chair and boards were those of an Imperial fleet admiral. Such as the one Grand Admiral Thrawn would have used.

He felt the whisper of air as Mara came up close beside him. 'I think we've found our link to the Imperials,' he told her. 'It looks like even Palpatine may have had a hand in this place.' Her hair swished against his shoulder as she shook her head. 'You're missing the point, Luke,' she muttered. 'Look at that holo. I mean really look at it.' Luke frowned, focusing on the galactic spiral again. What in space was she referring to?

And then, abruptly, he caught his breath. No. No—he was seeing things. Surely he was seeing things.

But he wasn't. At the edge of the known galaxy, where Palpatine's holo had shown only the white stars of the Unknown Regions, an entirely new area had been colored in.

A huge new area.

'Funny, isn't it,' Mara said, the dread still swirling through her. 'He was exiled from the Imperial court, you know. Just summarily thrown out.'

'Who was?' Luke asked.

'Grand Admiral Thrawn,' she said. 'Picked the wrong side in one of the political battles that were always going on there and lost. Everyone else in the cabal wound up demoted or imprisoned or else reassigned to a semiprivate torture chamber like garrison duty in the Outer Rim. But not Thrawn. Oh, no. Even the Outer Rim was too good for this ungrateful alien who'd been accepted into Imperial society and paid them back for their kindness with a slap in the face. No, they had to come up with something very special for him.'

'And that something was exile to the Unknown Regions?'

Mara nodded. 'If the Outer Rim was a torture cell, the Unknown Regions was a fully populated rancor pit,' she said. 'So with some prodding—and probably a lot of deal-making—they got Palpatine to put him aboard a Star Destroyer and send him on a one-way trip past the Outer Rim.' She snorted out a derisive laugh. 'And just to add insult to injury, they managed to make it a mapping expedition. Imagine—one of the best strategists the Empire had ever known being reduced to mapping duty. Ruining his life and his reputation with a single stroke. I'll bet they were chuckling together about it for years afterward.'

Luke shook his head. 'I seem to be missing the joke.'

'So did they,' Mara said, her dark mood darkening even further. 'The joke is that it apparently never occurred to any of them that Palpatine was always one step ahead of whatever was happening in his court. And if he was a step ahead, a strategist like Thrawn was at least two steps ahead.' Luke's mouth felt dry. 'Are you saying that Thrawn and Palpatine had the whole thing planned out from the beginning?'

'Of course they did.' Mara gestured at the holo. 'Just look at all the territory he opened up. He couldn't possibly have done that by himself, with just a single Star Destroyer, Palpatine must have been feeding him men and ships all along the way.'