Vision of the future

'Right,' Mara said, igniting her own lightsaber. Luke's lightsaber slashed and died; Mara's followed similarly—

And that, she realized, was that. They'd had the conversation she'd known was coming, and had been dreading, since he first arrived here. And while he'd obviously not exactly been thrilled by the realization of how badly he'd wrecked the past few years, he'd taken the news better than she'd expected him to.

The question now was what he would do with this newfound knowledge. Whether he would take it solidly to heart and commit to what he now knew was right, or whether the lure of power and quick solutions would eventually drag him back to the easy path. The dark path. She would just have to wait and see.

CHAPTER

16

From behind him came the sound of an opening door, and Han turned his head to see Lando step into the Lady Luck's bridge. 'Okay, it's done,' the other announced, his tone tense and decidedly grumpy. 'Everything's been shut down to standby. Engines, sensors, computer system—the works.' He crossed the bridge and dropped into the pilot's seat beside Han. 'And I'd like to go on record right now as saying I hate this.'

'I'm not exactly happy about it myself,' Han had to admit. 'But this is the way it has to be.' Lando snorted. 'Says a self-admitted Imperial clone TIE pilot,' he added accusingly. 'You know, Han, I've done some crazy things in my time, but this one takes the prize.' Han grimaced, gazing out at the stars. It was crazy, all right. Somewhere out there, a hyperspace microjump away, was an Imperial Ubiqtorate contact station, with all the security and firepower and just plain nastiness that that implied.

And here they were, probably well within its defensive perimeter, sitting around like a belly-up gornt with their systems cranked way back to keep from being too visible to any auto-rovers the station might have out wandering the area. Waiting for an Imperial clone to come back and tell them where in the shrunken Empire the capital of Bastion was located. 'Leia said he was all right,' he told Lando.

'She said he was sincere and not planning to betray you,' Lando corrected darkly. 'She didn't say he was a competent enough liar to pull this whole thing off. Especially not in front of some congenitally suspicious Ubiqtorate agent.'

Han eyed him. 'You don't like clones, do you?'

Lando snorted again. 'No, I don't,' he said flatly. 'Palpatine may have talked about alien species as being subhuman, but clones are really down there.'

For a minute the bridge was silent. Han gazed out at the stars some more, rubbing his fingertips over his blaster grip and trying not to let Lando's nervousness get to him. Leia had agreed to let him come out here, after all, and Leia was a Jedi. Surely she'd have seen or felt or guessed if something bad was going to happen. Wouldn't she?

'Tell me about this Baron Fel,' Lando said suddenly. 'I mean the original one. What was he like?' Han shrugged. 'Typical Corellian, I suppose. Well, no, actually he wasn't. He was a farm boy, for one thing, who got bribed with an academy appointment to stop him testifying in a legal action against some big agro-combine official's son. We were at Carida together for a while, though I didn't hang around with him much. He was an honorable sort, I suppose— even a little stiff-necked about it sometimes—and a pretty fair pilot.'

'As good as you?' Lando asked.

Han smiled tightly. 'Better,' he said, a little surprised he was actually admitting that out loud. 'At least, with something the size of a TIE fighter.'

'So how did he wind up getting cloned?' Lando asked. 'As I remember the history, he quit the Empire, joined Rogue Squadron, then got recaptured. So the question is, why would anyone clone a guy who'd already turned once? I don't care how good a pilot he was.'

'Leia and I asked Carib the same question on Pakrik Minor,' Han said. 'He told us he didn't know, that it wasn't part of the flash-learning they'd been given in the cloning tanks.' Lando grunted. 'Look. They would have had to hold him for three or four years, minimum, before Thrawn got his cloning tanks up and running. Right?'

'They didn't need all of him,' Han murmured. 'C'baoth cloned Luke from the hand he lost at Bespin, remember?'

'Yes, but Luke's hand was one of Palpatine's trophies,' Lando pointed out. 'Why would anyone bother keeping parts of Fel in storage? No one even knew Palpatine had all those cloning tanks hidden away, let alone that Thrawn would show up and get them running again.'

'Point,' Han conceded. 'So they probably kept him alive somewhere.'

'Right,' Lando said. 'The question is where?'

'I don't know,' Han said. 'No one ever found records about him at any of the Imperial prisons or penal colonies we liberated. With his connections to Rogue Squadron, we would have heard if they had.'