Vision of the future

'Watch it!' Mara snapped, her blaster tracking.

'No, wait,' Luke said, pushing her arm to the side off target. He'd caught a glint of metal... 'Just keep moving. Artoo, come on, hurry.'

He could sense Mara's strong disapproval, but she did as instructed without argument. The skittering creatures passed them by without slowing, apparently without even so much as a second glance. Luke reached the end of the collapsed Conner net and stepped off onto the stone floor; and as Mara and Artoo did likewise, he turned around to look.

The creatures had grouped themselves around the front edge of the collapsed net. Even as Luke watched, they began to ease their careful way up the walls, carrying the edge of the net with them. Beside him, Mara snorted gently. 'Of course,' she said, sounding mildly disgusted with herself.

'Maintenance droids, there to get the trap reset. Sorry—I guess I overreacted a bit.'

'Considering it's Thrawn we're dealing with, overreaction isn't likely to be a problem very often,' Luke said.

'Thanks, but you don't have to try to soothe my feelings,' Mara told him, sliding the sleeve gun away and shifting her lightsaber to her right hand again. 'Lesson learned. Shall we go?'

* * *

'What in the Empire are you talking about?' Captain Nalgol demanded, blinking the sleep from his eyes as he grabbed for his uniform and started pulling it on. 'How can they be shooting at each other? The flash point is still three days away.'

'I don't know, sir,' the Tyrannic's duty officer said tautly. 'All I know is that the probe ships report the battle has begun, and that the section of planetary shield over the Bothan capital has collapsed. It's hard to tell from this distance, but they say the capital appears to be on fire in several places.'

Nalgol swore viciously under his breath. Someone had blundered, and blundered badly. Either the Intelligence strike team—

Or Thrawn himself.

It was a shocking thought. A shattering thought, even. If Thrawn's timing could be that far in error—

He shook away his misgivings. What was done was done; and whatever mistakes or miscalculations had been made, he was determined that he and the Tyrannic wouldn't add to them.

'Have the Obliterator and Ironhand been informed?' he asked, grunting out the last word as he leaned over to pull on his boots.

'Yes, sir. Probe ships report they're coming to full battle stations now.'

'Make sure we get there ahead of them,' Nalgol told him tartly.

'Yes, sir,' the officer said again. 'Estimate we'll be at battle readiness in five minutes. Probe ships are continuing to feed us reports.'

'Good,' Nalgol muttered. Now that the shock of the news was fading, he realized it wasn't quite as bad as it had first seemed. All right, so the battle had started early. The three Star Destroyers were ready, or would be before their presence was needed to eliminate the survivors of the battle raging out there.

And blinded by the cloaking shield as they were, they definitely needed up-to-the-minute reports from the probe ships. The danger was that, with the ships dipping in and out of the shield with that kind of regularity, someone might notice something odd happening around the comet head and come over to investigate.

But there was a way to minimize that risk. 'Put all tractor beam operators on full alert,' he ordered. 'If any ship besides our own probe ships—and I mean any ship—pokes its nose inside the cloaking shield, I want it grabbed and held inside out of communication. Make sure that message gets to the other ships, too. No one is going to stumble in on us and live to talk about it. Understood?'

'Understood, sir,' the officer said.

'I'll be on the bridge in two minutes,' Nalgol said, grabbing his tunic and belt. 'I want the ship at full battle readiness by the time I get there.'

'We will be, sir.'

Nalgol slapped off the intercom and headed out the door of his quarters. Fine; so the aliens and alien-lovers couldn't contain their self-destructive hatreds as long as Thrawn had expected. Fine. It just meant that the pent-up boredom and frustration of his crew would get released a little earlier. Smiling grimly, he headed down the corridor toward