Vision of the future

'Thank you, Colonel,' he said, handing back the other's datapad. 'You may return to your duties. Before you do, though, I want you to check with Probe Control about whether we can increase our probe flights to twice a day without drawing unwanted attention.'

'Yes, sir,' Oissan said with another tight smile. 'After all, we wouldn't want to miss out on our grand entrance.'

Nalgol turned to gaze out at the blackness again. 'We won't miss it,' he promised softly. 'Not a chance.'

CHAPTER

2

From somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind came an insistent warbling; and with a jolt, Luke Skywalker snapped out of his Jedi hibernation trance. 'Okay, Artoo,' he told the droid as he rolled out of his bunk, and took a moment to reorient himself. Right; he was aboard Mara Jade's ship, the Jade's Fire, heading toward the Nirauan system. The system where Mara herself had disappeared nearly two weeks ago. 'Okay, I'm awake,' he added, flexing his fingers and toes and working moisture back into his mouth. 'We almost there?'

The droid twittered an affirmative as Luke snagged his boots, a twitter that was echoed from the direction of the cockpit. The echo was Mara's Veeone pilot droid, who had been flying the Fire ever since Luke and Artoo had come aboard at the Duroon rendezvous point, and who up till now had refused to let either of them anywhere near the ship's controls.

An overprotectiveness that was about to come to an end. 'Artoo, go back to the docking port and make sure the X-wing's ready to fly,' he instructed the little droid as he headed toward the cockpit. 'I'm going to take us in.'

A minute later he was seated in the Fire's pilot's seat, reviewing the layout of the controls and displays one last time. The Veeone droid, perhaps recognizing Luke's expression as one he'd seen often enough on Mara's face, had decided not to argue the point. 'Get ready,' Luke told the droid, resting his hands on the controls. The counter ran to zero, and Luke pushed the hyperdrive lever forward. The starlines flared and shrank back down into stars, and they were there. The Veeone whistled softly. 'That's the place,' Luke confirmed, gazing out at the distant sun, its tiny red disk looking cold and aloof. The planet Nirauan itself was nowhere to be seen. 'We're looking for the second planet,' he told the droid. 'Can you get me a reading on it?' The Veeone twittered an affirmative, and the nav displays came to life. 'I see it.' Luke nodded, checking the reading. It was a pretty fair distance away.

Which was by deliberate design, of course. The Fire had impressive shields and armament, but charging to the rescue with quad lasers blazing would be unlikely to do Mara any good, no matter what the situation she was in. Stealth and secrecy were the plan, and that meant leaving the Fire hidden out here while he and Artoo sneaked in in their X-wing.

He keyed the comm unit to the docking bay. 'Artoo? Is everything ready?' There was a confirming warble. 'Good,' Luke said, looking back at the nav display. They were, he estimated, a good seven hours away from the planet by the X-wing's sublight drive. A long time to sit in a cramped cockpit worrying about Mara, besides giving whoever was down there a straight vector back to the Fire.

Fortunately, there was another way. 'Start calculating our two jumps,' he instructed Artoo, keying on the Fire's automatic weapons systems. 'No more than five minutes each way—we don't want to take any more time with this than we have to.'

Artoo twittered an acknowledgment, and got to work. 'Now, you're clear on what you're supposed to do?' Luke asked the Veeone as he keyed the drive to low power and started the Fire moving. There was a convenient clump of small asteroids drifting through in the darkness just ahead that would make a perfect hiding place. 'I'm going to put the ship in with those rocks; and then you're going to sit there and pretend to be one of them. Okay?'

The droid gurgled reluctant agreement. 'All right,' Luke said, easing the ship up into the asteroids. One of them, about shockball size, bounced lightly against the hull, and he winced in reaction. The Fire was Mara's most prized possession, and she was more protective of it than even the Veeone was. If he dented the hull, or even just scratched the paint, he would never hear the end of it from her. He finished his maneuvering with exaggerated care, and managed to get it into position without any further collisions. 'Okay, that's it,' he said, unstrapping and keying control back to the Veeone.

'You've got the code I gave you—we'll transmit that on our way back so you'll know it's us. Anyone else... well, don't let the ship shoot at them unless you're fired on first. Not until we have some idea what's going on down there.'

Two minutes later, keeping a wary eye out for the floating rock pile outside, he eased the X-wing out of the Fire's docking bay and headed into deep space. Artoo had the course already plotted in, and with a burst of starlines they were off.

Luke had told him to keep it under five minutes, and the droid had taken him at his word. Two minutes after heading out, following Artoo's instructions, he dropped the X-wing back out of hyperspace, turned it around, and headed back in. Two minutes after that, they were there. Artoo whistled softly. 'That's the place, all right,' Luke confirmed, gazing out at the dark planet hanging in space in front of them. 'Just like the pictures the Starry Ice brought back.' And Mara was down there somewhere. Stranded, maybe injured, maybe a prisoner. Or maybe dead.

Pushing that thought firmly away from his mind, Luke stretched out to the Force. Mara?