opponents. 'A handy talent,' she murmured.
'Extremely handy,' Karrde agreed. 'But even as his organization grew, Car'das himself began to change. He became—I don't know. Moody, perhaps, inclined to flashes of screaming rage over little things that shouldn't have bothered him at all, or brooding alone for hours on end over charts of the Empire. More significantly, perhaps, after years of vigorous youth, he seemed to be aging rapidly. Much faster than one would have thought normal or likely.
'And then, one day, he got into his private ship, took off... and vanished.' Shada frowned. 'Vanished. You mean...
'I mean disappeared from the known galaxy,' Karrde said. 'He didn't go near any of his people; didn't contact any of his chief lieutenants; and if he was ever seen again by any of his enemies, they never announced the fact.'
'When was this?' Shada asked.
'Twenty years ago,' Karrde said. 'At first there wasn't too much concern—he'd gone off on occasional secret trips before. But after three months had gone by and he still hadn't surfaced, his lieutenants began to talk about what they should do if he didn't come back.'
'Let me guess,' Shada said. 'They wanted to hold a vote and see which of them would take over.'
'I don't think voting was the procedure any of them had in mind,' Karrde said ruefully. 'In fact, the threat of violence was so thick that the suggestion was made that we simply split up the organization and each take a chunk.'
'The trick being how you divide it to everyone's satisfaction,' Shada said, noting the telltale word with interest. It was the first time in his recitation that Karrde had used the word 'we.' 'So you wound up with a power struggle anyway.'
Karrde's lips pressed briefly together. 'Not exactly. I saw what would happen in that kind of struggle, and I wasn't totally convinced that Car'das wouldn't be coming back. So I... took over.' Shada lifted her eyebrows slightly. 'Just like that?'
He shrugged uncomfortably. 'More or less. It took planning and timing, of course, and a fair amount of luck, though I don't think I realized quite how much until I looked back on it from a distance of a few years. But yes, basically, just like that. I neutralized the other lieutenants and moved them out, and announced to the rest of the organization that it was henceforth to be business as usual.'
'I bet that made you very popular,' Shada said. 'But I seem to be missing the problem here, at least as far as Car'das is concerned. He left and never came back, right?'
'The problem,' Karrde said heavily, 'is that I'm not sure he didn't.' Shada felt her eyes narrow. 'Oh?'
'I took over the organization in a single night,' Karrde said. 'But that doesn't mean there weren't attempts by the ousted lieutenants and their cadres afterward to drive me out and take over themselves. There were eight different attempts, in fact, ranging from two immediate and abortive tries to an intricate scheme three years later that had probably taken the conspirators that entire time to plan.'
'All of which failed, obviously.'
Karrde nodded. 'The point is that the leaders of four of those plots claimed during their interrogations that Car'das had been secretly behind them.'
Shada snorted under her breath. 'Smokecovers,' she said scornfully, dismissing them with a wave of her hand. 'Just trying to rattle you into cutting a deal.'
'That was my conclusion at the time,' Karrde said. 'But of course there was no way for me to be sure. Still isn't, for that matter.'
'I suppose not.' Shada studied his face. 'So what happened six years ago that made you send Jade and Calrissian out here to look for him?'
'It started further back than that,' Karrde said. 'Ten years ago, actually, just after Grand Admiral Thrawn died.' His lip twitched. 'Or perhaps merely faked his death. I was on Coruscant helping set up the Smugglers Alliance and Calrissian happened to show me something Luke Skywalker had found buried on a planet called Dagobah.'
Shada searched her memory. 'I don't think I've ever heard of the place.'
'No reason why you should have,' Karrde said. 'There's absolutely nothing there—no cities, no technology, no colonies. What Skywalker wanted with the swamps I don't know, but it was obvious that stray electronic devices were out of place, which is probably why he brought it back. At any rate, from the markings I recognized it as the beckon call from Car'das's personal ship.'
'Really,' Shada said, frowning. A beckon call was the control for a fully slave-rigged ship, one that could operate on complete remote control whenever its owner signaled for it. The Mistryl never used full-rigged ships themselves, but she'd occasionally ridden on one with a client. Overall, they gave her the creeps. 'Car'das had a full-rigged ship, did
