Vision of the future

he?'

'Of pre-Clone Wars vintage, yes,' Karrde said. 'He bought it soon after he returned from that bout with the Dark Jedi. Said he wanted a decently sized ship that he could fly alone, without the need for a crew.'

'And Skywalker just happened to find his beckon call lying in the mud on some deserted planet. How convenient.'

'That was my thought, too,' Karrde said. 'But I checked with Skywalker, and the discovery seemed entirely fortuitous.'

'Though whether that word can be applied to Jedi has always been arguable,' Shada put in.

'True,' Karrde conceded. 'Still, it was the first clue we'd had in a decade; and even if it was some kind of plant, I thought it was worth the risk of seeing where it led.'

'So you sent Jade to hunt him down,' Shada said, remembering the conversation she'd overheard back in the Solos' Orowood Tower apartment. 'And Calrissian insisted on tagging along.'

'Basically,' Karrde said. 'They started at Dagobah and worked their way outward, searching through old spaceport records for where he might have stopped off for repairs or refueling. They also dug up hints about him here and there—some from the Coruscant library, some from various fringe characters, some from Corellian Security, of all places—and started putting the pieces together.'

'Talk about your lifetime jobs,' Shada murmured.

'It wasn't quite that bad, but it did definitely take some years,' Karrde said. 'Especially as they both kept getting dragged off on other business or pulled in to help fix whatever Coruscant's crisis of the month was. Still, the trail was already so cold that a month or two here or there didn't make much of a difference. They kept at it until they wound up in Kathol sector and Exocron.

'And there, as far as we can tell, the trail ends.'

For a moment the room was silent as Shada digested it all. 'I take it they never actually saw Car'das himself?'

With a visible effort, Karrde seemed to draw himself back from whatever ghosts of the past he was gazing at. 'They had explicit instructions not to,' he said. 'They were to find out where he was—and with a world as well hidden as Exocron they also needed to find a route into the place—and then they were to come home. I would take it from there.'

'And this was how long ago?'

Karrde shrugged uncomfortably. 'A few years.'

'So what happened?'

'To be honest, I lost my nerve,' he admitted. 'After what I'd done, I wasn't at all sure how I was going to face him. Had no idea what I was going to say, how I was going to even try to make amends. So I kept finding excuses to put it off.'

He took a deep breath. 'And now it looks like I'm too late.'

Shada grimaced. 'You think Rei'Kas is working for him.'

'Rei'Kas, possibly Bombaasa, probably a dozen others we haven't heard about,' Karrde said heavily. 'But he's definitely on the move. Only this time he seems to be concentrating on piracy and slaving instead of smuggling and information brokering. The more violent edge of the fringe... and I can only see one reason why he would do that.

'To come after me. Personally.'

For a moment the word seemed to hang in the air like a death mark. 'I don't think that necessarily follows,' Shada said into the silence, moved by some obscure desire to argue the point. 'Why can't he just be building up a force to carve himself a little empire here in the backwater? Take over Exocron, maybe, or even this little so-called Kathol Republic?'

'He's been here for nearly two decades, Shada,' Karrde reminded her. 'If he was into empire-carving, don't you think he would have done it before now?'

'If he was into taking you out, don't you think he would have done that before now, too?' Shada countered.

'He may have already tried.'