"The data's already in the system," Mara said. "But at the moment it's in one of my private files, isolated from everything else, with a thirty-day release timer on it. That means that anytime in the next thirty days I can go in and erase it, and no one will ever even know it was there."

"So what we're talking about here is sort of like a blanket pardon?"

"Basically," Mara said. "Interested?"

The tip of Tannis's tongue slipped across the center of his upper lip.

"What do I have to do?"

"We're taking the Happer's Way to your base," Mara told him. "After suffering damage to his hyperdrive and comm system in the battle, your friend Captain Shakko decided to send you home with the prize while he and the rest of the crew stayed behind to make repairs."

"And where did you come from?"

"My men and I were hijackers who'd sneaked aboard the Happer's Way" Mara said. "We were making our move when you showed up, which is why you were able co capture the ship without having to first blast it into a worthless hulk. We'd heard about the BloodScars and made a deal with Shakko for you to take us to the Commodore to discuss our joining up."

"What if he asks what group you're with?" Tannis asked. "He knows a lot about the people in this sector." "Trust me," Mara said. "I'll make it work." Tannis grimaced. "You're asking me to betray my comrades."

"You're a pirate," Mara countered. "Your comrades are acquaintances of convenience, any of whom would stab you in the back for an extra ten percent."

She gave that a moment to sink in before continuing. "As it happens, though, you're not really going to betray them. You're a local problem, to be dealt with by the local authorities. The only person I'm interested in right now is whoever it is who's currently pulling your strings."

Tannis frowned. "You mean Caaldra?"

"I mean the one behind Caaldra," Mara said. "Impressive though he might look, he's only a high-priced errand boy. I want access to the Commodore's records so I can find out who's making the decisions, who's giving the orders-" She paused, just briefly. "-and who's handing out the money."

Once again Tannis's face gave nothing away, but the sudden emotional ripple showed Mara she'd hit the target directly on the crossmark. Tannis might be a few steps down the chain of command, but he knew how to follow a money trail.

So she'd been right. At least some of the money from Glovstoak's artworks had apparently found its way to the BloodScars.

"What happens if the Commodore tumbles to you?" Tannis asked.

"You'll try very hard not to let that happen."

"And if you krong up and end up getting yourself killed?"

"You'll try even harder not to let that happen. Are you in?"

Tannis snorted. "Do I have a choice?"

"Sure-you can start your sentence today," Mara said.

"No thanks," he said, and in his eyes and altered tone, Mara knew he'd suddenly realized that he had a third option: to betray her to the rest of the BloodScars and use his thirty-day grace period to find a place to hide. "I'm in."

"Good," Mara said, stepping over to stand in front of him. "And just so we're clear what exactly it is you're agreeing to-" Dropping her gaze to his binders, she reached out with the Force and unfastened them, letting them drop clattering to the deck.

For a handful of heartbeats Tannis stared down at them, the muscles in his neck suddenly taut. Then, slowly, he lifted his eyes to hers again.

And whatever thoughts he might have had about betrayal were suddenly gone. "Vader," he whispered. "You're like Vader."

"Only better," she said coolly, a part of her mind wondering what Vader would do if he ever heard her talk that way. But what the Sith Lord didn't know wouldn't hurt him. "We have a deal?"

Tannis swallowed hard. "Yes," he managed. "Absolutely."

"Good," she said, taking a step back and stretching out again, this time to call the binders to her hand. Tannis followed them with his eyes the entire way. "I'll have a guard take you to your ship to pick out some clothing and anything else you want to take with you. Then you'll report to the Happer's Way for an equipment orientation. I'll make sure there's enough bacta in the medical capsule to get that leg of yours back in shape before we arrive at your base."

"Right." Slowly, Tannis stood up, his eyes still on the binders. He looked back up at Mara, and managed a taut smile. "Welcome to the BloodScars, Emperor's Hand. You're going to love it." "Thank you," Mara said. "I'd better."

Captain Ozzel leaned back in his chair, staring at his computer display with a bitter sense of defeat. All of it- all the work, all the sweat, all the struggling-gone. The admiral's bars. Gone.

Across the office, the door slid open and Colonel Somoril stepped in.

"They've just made the jump to light-speed," he told Ozzel.

"It doesn't matter," Ozzel muttered, gesturing to the display. "We're finished."

"What in s.p.a.ce are you talking about?" Somoril demanded, stepping to the desk and swiveling the display around to face him.

"Our clever little Emperor's Hand found her way into the ship's computer," Ozzel said bitterly. "She accessed the personnel files, the bridge log, and the flight log."

Somoril's face had gone stiff, his eyes darting back and forth as he skimmed the file on the display. Ozzel watched; then, to the captain's amazement, he saw some of the other's tension drain away. "Fine," Somoril said, sitting down. "So she knows the Gillia left a couple of weeks ago.

So what? As far as she knows, that could have been a perfectly legitimate ISB operation."

"Oh, really?" Ozzel snarled. "You really think she maneuvered herself aboard this ship and into the computer without already knowing what she was looking for?"

Somoril lifted his eyebrows 'She maneuvered her self aboard? Including setting up a pirate attack on an Imperial-chartered freighter? "

"Special Imperial agents don't bother with anything as trivial as pirates," Ozzel shot back. "And the Emperor's Hand certainly doesn't. If she happened to foil a pirate attack, it was purely incidental to her main mission."

Somoril shook his head. "I'm not convinced."

"Then be convinced," Ozzel said acidly, keying for a new file. "I pulled up these items from planetary news services. We have two separate reports of Imperial stormtroopers in action."

Somoril's eyes narrowed. "What sort of action?" "The first wasn't too bad," Ozzel said. "All they did was engage and destroy a swoop gang who were hara.s.sing a group of farmers. But the second action ended up tearing down a city's entire patroller structure." "They took over a city?"

"No, apparently just reinstated the last group who'd been in charge,"

Ozzel said. "I haven't been able to get any more details. Not that it matters. The point is that our Emperor's Hand now knows where those storm-troopers came from."

"If she's made the connection," Somoril said. "She may not have. More to the point, even if she has, it won't matter if she's never able to tell anyone else."

Ozzel stared at him, something unpleasant starting to gnaw at his gut.

"What exactly are you suggesting?"

"I'm saying that she sent no transmissions from the Reprisal, and that she won't be sending any from the Happer's Way," Somoril said. "Brock and Gilling will make sure of that. That just leaves the transmitters at her destination point." He paused. "Which, from our track of their departure vector, is almost certainly the mining operation on Gepparin."

"You tracked them?"

"How else would we know where to find her?" Somoril replied reasonably.

"So now, Captain, you have a decision to make."

"You realize what you're suggesting," Ozzel said, his voice sounding strange in his ears. "You're talking about killing an Imperial agent. A woman who gets her orders from Palpatine himself."

"A girl who gets those orders," Somoril corrected. "She's barely had time to finish her training, let alone build up any real field experience."

"She's an Imperial agent."

"Stop saying that," Somoril growled. "This is a dangerous life she's chosen for herself. Agents in the field die all the time."

"So why didn't you deal with her when she was here?" Ozzel demanded.

"What, in front of potentially hundreds of witnesses?" Somoril countered contemptuously. "Besides, at the time I didn't know how close to the trail she was sniffing. Now we do."

Ozzel exhaled noisily. But the colonel was right. Terribly, horribly right. "How do you propose we proceed?"

"As I said, an agent's life is dangerous," Somoril said. "You never know when you might get caught up at the wrong end of a military action." He lifted his eyebrows. "The sort of action that might occur if a patrolling Star Destroyer happened on data pointing to a suspected pirate nest."

For a long minute the two men gazed across the desk at each other. Then, slowly, Ozzel reached to his intercom. "This is the captain," he announced grimly. "Set course for the Gepparin system. Get us under way as soon as the hyperdrive's up to full power."

He got an acknowledgment and keyed off. "I presume you've also calculated how far behind her we'll be?"

"No more than a few hours," Somoril a.s.sured him. "Brock and Gilling can easily keep her away from any HoloNet transmitters that long." He stood up. "With your permission, Captain, I'll go see if I can search out any further details on what our five deserters have been doing."

He gave a slight bow and turned to the door. "What would you have done if I'd said no?" Ozzel called after him.

Somoril didn't turn around. "I'd have sent one of my own ships to deal with her," he said. "And I would have had utter contempt for you for the rest of your days."

Ozzel snorted. "Don't you mean for the rest of your days?"

"Not at all," Somoril said quietly. "I have the feeling your life would have ended up being significantly shorter than mine."

Chapter Eleven.

Chivkyrie's ship, by prearrangement, was already waiting when Leia's courier ship dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce over the uninhabited rendezvous planet. Two other vessels were also in sight, running in parallel orbits: the two Rebellion leaders who had come to argue against whatever this plan was Chivkyrie had come up with. Gazing out her viewport, taking deep, steadying breaths the way her father had taught her, Leia watched as her pilot eased them alongside Chivkyrie's ship. It's just another negotiation, she told herself firmly. Like hundreds she'd partic.i.p.ated in during her career.

But there was something ominous about this one, an odd uneasiness that refused to go away. Distantly, she wished Luke was with her. Or even Han.

She hadn't had much occasion to deal with Adarians when she was in the Imperial Senate-their interests and those of Alderaan had seldom coincided. But since joining the Rebellion she'd been forced by necessity to learn more about their customs and psychology. Living through a war, her father had once said, forced one to learn geography. Partic.i.p.ating in a war, Leia had discovered, forced one to learn people.

The welcoming ritual aboard Chivkyrie's ship was short but densely layered with history and custom and significance, and Leia was exceedingly glad she'd made a point of studying the ceremony ahead of time. She made it through with only a few small errors, all of them due to the fact that her human vocal apparatus couldn't quite hit some of the Adarese words.

"You grace my ship and my company with your courtesy," Chivkyrie said when the ceremony was over, his Adarian mouth mangling the Basic words almost as badly as Leia had done with his language. "Allow me to present the other leaders who seek your wisdom." He gestured to a Mungra with piercing orange eyes standing to his left. "This is Ydor Vokkoli, leader of the Freedonna Kaisu."

"Leader Vokkoli," Leia said, nodding a greeting to him. Mungras were one of the two species native to Shelsha sector, a people who had already created a realm of a dozen interstellar colonies when the Great Exploration of the galaxy had begun millennia ago.

"Princess Organa," Vokkoli said, bowing his s.h.a.ggy maned head in return.

"And this is Thillis Slanni of the Shining Hope," Chivkyrie continued, gesturing to a tall Ishi Tib to his right.

[Though I am not the leader, but merely the director of planning,] Slanni corrected in the complex series of squeals, honks, and beak-clicks that made up the Tibranese language.

"I understand," Leia said, nodding. "The organizational skill of your people is well known. I'm pleased to have both you and Leader Vokkoli here to help guide my decision."

"A decision that may mean life or death for us all," Vokkoli rumbled.

So much for small talk. "Then let's sit down and discuss it," Leia said.

"Leader Chivkyrie, if you'll show us the way?"

The conference room was down the corridor from the entryway and featured the stepped floor and multilevel tiered conference table typical of Adarian design. Chivkyrie escorted Leia to the highest part of the table, then took a seat at the next level down. Vokkoli took the chair opposite him, at the same table level, while Slanni sat one level below Vokkoli on his side.

It was an odd setup, Leia had often thought, and in long meetings tended to give the partic.i.p.ants vertigo and stiff necks. Still, she had to admit that it made it abundantly clear where everyone stood on the issue at hand.

"First of all," she said after Chivkyrie's servants had laid out drinks and plates of nibblings on each of the occupied tiers, "I need to know from you, Leader Chivkyrie, the details of this plan you're proposing."

"It is simplicity itself," Chivkyrie said. "I do not understand how anyone cannot see the vast potential for benefit-"

"We'll discuss the benefits in a moment," Leia interrupted him smoothly.

"First, I need to know about the plan itself."

Chivkyrie looked across the table at his fellow Rebels, the light peeking through the aeration hole in his elongated skull as he did so. "I propose to bring Shelsha sector to the side of the Rebellion." He looked at Leia.

"The entire sector."

"Interesting," Leia said, keeping her diplomat's face firmly in place.

"How exactly would this be achieved?"

"That is the most delicious part of the plan," Chivkyrie said. "We-the Rebel Alliance-would need do very little. It is Governor Ch.o.a.rd himself who has proposed this."

"He's said as much to you?" Leia asked.

"Not the governor personally," Chivkyrie said "But I've spoken at length with his a.s.sistant, Chief Administrator Vilim Disra. He a.s.sures me Governor Ch.o.a.rd has r already set in motion a plan for Shelsha to withdraw from the Empire and declare its independence."

[Which is not the same as stating Shelkonwa will, in fact, join the Rebellion as an active member,] Slanni pointed out.

"Chief Administrator Disra has a.s.sured me that will be the next step,"

Chivkyrie said. "Governor Ch.o.a.rd has become increasingly appalled by the horrors of Imperial Center's rule, and understands that joining the Rebellion is the only answer."