"I prefer a woman's hair to be down," the Commodore said. "You sound quite attractive. Are you?"

Mara looked at Bobbler, who merely shrugged. "Various acquaintances have said so on occasion," she said.

"Good," the Commodore said. "Please don't dismiss me as an eccentric or, worse, insane. What I am doing ft. here is silencing all my other senses, the better to hear your voice and judge your honesty. Does that worry you?"

"Not really," Mara said, not entirely candidly. Some members of the Emperor's court had experimented with similar sense-deadening tricks for the same purpose, and a few of them had gotten quite adept at it.

Depending on the Commodore's skill, he might even be able to sniff out the lies of a trained Imperial agent.

Or, at least, those of a normal Imperial agent. For Mara, there were tricks of equal subtlety she could use against him. Reaching out with the Force, she began to gently stir the water.

"So: to business," the Commodore said. "I understand you like to hijack ships."

"We don't necessarily like it," Mara said. "But yes, it is our job."

The Commodore's mouth hardened. "I understand you like to hijack my ships."

"My apologies," Mara said, starting to stir some of the water in the other direction. The gentle ripples took on an equally gentle Crosshatch appearance as the new pattern collided with the old. "In my defense, let me remind you that it wasn't yet your ship when we started our operation.

Certainly if we'd known the BloodScars were interested, we'd have kept our hands off." "What were you planning to do with the cargo?" "Sell it, of course," Mara said, letting her eyes drift. There were a handful of louvered vents s.p.a.ced around the room where the walls and ceiling intersected. Stretching out again, she opened two of the louvers a little farther than the others. "We ourselves certainly have no use for AT-STs." I "Who was your buyer?"

"We didn't have one yet," Mara said. A light breeze drifted across her face; hastily she closed the vents down a bit. The idea was to add a little distraction to the Commodore's other senses, but at a low-enough level that even he wouldn't be aware of it. "But we would probably have tried the Hutts first."

"A highly valuable cargo," the Commodore said. "Yet Shakko allowed you to simply fly away with it?"

Mara shrugged. "The Happer's Way was flyable; the Cavalcade wasn't.

Shakko and I discussed the situation and decided you'd probably prefer having a freighter and cargo to having the cargo alone."

"Yet Shakko allowed you to simply fly away with it?" the Commodore repeated.

Mara suppressed a grimace. Either he'd heard something in her voice just then, or else the distractions were starting to get to him and he wanted a second take on her answer. "He did put Tannis aboard to make sure we behaved ourselves," she reminded him.

"As if Tannis could have stopped you," the Commodore said contemptuously.

"Well . . . probably not," Mara conceded. "Still, we did deliver it intact."

"Wise of you," the Commodore said. "Did Shakko happen to mention that the cargo is not mine, but belongs to our patron?"

"Yes, we discussed that aspect," Mara confirmed, feeling her heartbeat pick up a little. Patron. Now if she could just get him to mention a name... "We concluded that-"

"You're lying."

Mara froze. Had he sensed the sudden heightened interest beneath the words? "I'm not lying," she protested, trying to buy a little time. The four nearest bodyguards would have to be taken out first, and she'd have to make sure to get hold of at least one blaster in the process.

"You are," the Commodore shot back. "Shakko would never have mentioned our patron."

And with that, Mara felt her tension wash away. So he hadn't heard anything incriminating but was simply using supposition and logic against her. "Well, he did," she insisted. "He told us someone named Caaldra was waiting for the goods."

"Caaldra?" Abruptly, the Commodore laughed, the suspicion vanishing even as the movement sent small waves through the water. "Oh, no, no. Caaldra isn't our patron. He merely works for him."

"Oh," Mara said, putting a little chagrinned embarra.s.sment into her voice. As a general rule, whenever an opponent found a way to feel superior to her, in even the smallest way, she'd found it wise to nurture that misconception. "Well, the way Shakko talked, he sure sounded like a patron."

"I'm sure he did," the Commodore said, the brief flicker of humor gone.

"Tell me how you hijacked the freighter."

"It wasn't difficult," Mara said. "We overpowered the crew-"

"How did you overpower them?" the Commodore cut in. "Which rooms and stations did you take first? Which of you did which job? I want details.".

Were Brock and Gilling being separately asked the same questions so that the three sets of answers could be compared? Probably. Fortunately, Mara had antic.i.p.ated this one. "I'm sorry," she said. "Those details are what give us our edge in this business. We don't reveal them to anyone."

"Even if I order all of you killed as a consequence?"

"If you order us killed, then we die," Mara countered. "But that would end any chance of our organizations ever working together, which would mean you'd continue to waste your victims' ships instead of capturing them intact."

She raised her eyes to the four sweating men standing at the far end of the pool. "And trying to kill us would also cost you more of your men than I think you really want to lose," she added. "Is that a threat?"

Mara shook her head. "Merely stating a fact."

"Of course," the Commodore said, his voice darkening. "Facts. Truth, in neatly packaged form. Perhaps I should give your neatly packaged body to my patron. It was his cargo you stole, after all." He raised his voice.

"What do you think, Caaldra? Would he like a pretty young ship thief to play with?"

"I'm sure he'd find her fascinating," a familiar voice said from the right side of the room.

Mara turned her head. The five robed men sitting there had thrown off the towels that had been hiding their faces. The one in the middle was Caaldra, flanked by two large men she didn't recognize. At Caaldra's far right, staring at her from a taut and heat-reddened face, was Tannis.

"Who are you?" Mara asked.

"Why, this is Caaldra," the Commodore said as Caaldra and two of the men came toward the pool. "The man your stolen cargo belongs to . .. and the man who came here to warn us about you, Celina Ship Thief." He paused dramatically, and something in the half of his face Mara could see warned her that he was suddenly listening very hard. "Or should I say, Celina Imperial Agent?"

Silently, without any obvious orders, the four men at the head of the pool drew their blasters. With a supreme effort, Mara kept her face expressionless as she looked again at Tannis's pinched expression. So all her instincts not to mention her threats and bribes, had been for nothing. Tannis had betrayed her. "Oh, so now I'm an Imperial agent?" she retorted, putting some contempt into her voice. There was certainly no point in making this easy for them. "How very convenient. For someone."

"What are you talking about?" the Commodore demanded.

"I'm talking about how convenient it is that there's a stranger in town whom your friend can point fingers at." She eyed Caaldra as he came to a stop a couple of meters from her. "Let me guess. Things aren't going too well at his end?"

Caaldra's face hardened. "Nice try, Imperial, but you're wasting your time," he growled. "The Commodore knows who I am."

"I never said he didn't," Mara countered, intrigued by the intensity of his retort. Did that mean things really weren't going well for him and his patron? "I'm just pointing out that shifting blame is a time-honored way of trying to wriggle out of trouble."

She had hoped to goad him into continuing his rant and perhaps saying something useful. But the moment had pa.s.sed, and he was back on balance.

"Sounds just like what you're trying to do right now," he countered calmly.

"I'm just trying to keep the Commodore from making a mistake that will cost him potential allies, and possibly cost me my life," Mara said. "So let's stop the posturing and snarl-words and figure out how I can prove who I am."

'You could tell us exactly how you gained possession of the Happer's Way, as the Commodore asked," Caaldra said. "Or you could take me to your alleged base to talk to your alleged chief."

"Not until we have a deal," Mara said firmly, part of her wondering why she was still playing this game. Tannis's betrayal made the whole thing rather ridiculous.

And then, suddenly, it struck her. Caaldra and the Commodore both had referred to her as simply an Imperial agent.

But Tannis knew that her actual t.i.tle was Emperor's Hand.

She looked again at Tannis, realizing now that the tension in his face was not due to betrayal, but to the knowledge that his head was on the execution block right beside Mara's.

And with that, she suddenly had her way out.

"Look, you can just ask Tannis," she offered, gesturing toward him. "He was there-he saw how the Happer's Way's defenses crumbled practically before their attack got going. Ask him how an Imperial agent could possibly have known you were going to hit that particular freighter." She looked back at Caaldra. "Unless you're also suggesting Shakko or one of his men leaked that information."

Caaldra glared at her. But he clearly had no answer.

"Tannis?" the Commodore invited.

Tannis shot Mara a hooded look, and it didn't require the Force to recognize that he was in a quiet panic at the thought of trying to lie to the Commodore, especially here in his private truth-detection chamber.

But there was, in fact, no need to worry. Mara was back on balance, and with balance came control of the situation. Reaching out with the Force, she gave a slight tap to one of the bodyguards' blasters, knocking the weapon from his hand.

He tried to get it back. He really did. But the heat in the room had left both his hands and the blaster itself sweaty, and there had been no hint of anything beforehand to warn his reflexes, and there simply wasn't enough time. The weapon slipped through his desperate attempts to grab it, bounced with an echoing clank off the tiled floor, and landed with a resounding splash in the pool.

Mara half expected the Commodore to bellow with surprise or anger. But he didn't make a sound as he bounced across the fresh wave pattern, the echoes fading away. In some ways, Mara thought, his lack of reaction was more unnerving than any outburst would have been.

Certainly the offender seemed to think so. He froze, his face going pale behind the sheen of sweat. The Commodore let the silence drag out another five or six seconds, then took a careful breath. "You may retrieve your weapon, Nirsh," he said, his voice almost calm.

Nirsh's face went a little paler. "Yes, sir," he said, dropping down on his knees and burying his right arm up to the shoulder into the pool. A little scrabbling around, and he pulled out the dripping blaster. "And you will now put yourself on report," the Commodore said. "Tannis?"

"Yes, sir?" Tannis said. His expression hadn't changed, but Mara could sense the relief behind his eyes. "Oh-yes, sir. I don't really know how they did it, sir. But she's right. They were putting up a real good fight- had already blown a nasty line across the comm antenna, in fact- when suddenly they just stopped."

"Or maybe they just decided to let you live so they could find this base," Caaldra suggested darkly.

"Why bother?" Mara countered. "Any Imperial agent worth the t.i.tle would know how to pull a data dump from the nav computer of a wrecked ship."

She raised her eyebrows. "And an Imperial agent wouldn't have come here alone. He'd have brought a stormtrooper legion and some serious air support."

"Maybe they got lost along the way," Caaldra shot back.

"Careless of them," Mara said sarcastically. "When they catch up, do let me know." She turned back to the Commodore. "So are you interested in working with us, Commodore, or aren't you?"

For a moment, he didn't reply. Then, carefully, he paddled his way to the edge of the pool and got a hand on it, letting his legs dip down out of sight into the water. "You intrigue me, Celina Ship Thief," he said. "We will speak again after the evening meal."

He pulled off his half mask and blinked up at her. "Your acquaintances are quite correct," he said, running his eyes up and down her body. "You are, indeed, attractive."

"Thank you, Commodore," Mara said, her mouth going a little dry. Now, as she gazed for the first time into his eyes, she realized that he hadn't been entirely correct earlier when explaining about his pool.

The Commodore might not be eccentric. But he was most certainly insane.

Chapter Fourteen.

ACCORDING TO THE TRAVEL DATA CARD LEIA HAD brought along, Makrin City billed itself as the Second City of Spires. It was an obvious allusion to one of Imperial Center's former t.i.tles in the days when it was known as Coruscant, before the Republic had gradually built up the planet to the point that most of the old spires had been either obscured by taller buildings or quietly torn down. Leia had seen pictures of what Imperial Center had looked like back then, and Makrin City was definitely a poor-waifs version of the ancient grandeur.

"You will enjoy my home, I think," Chivkyrie commented as his pilot settled the ship onto the approach path to the city's main s.p.a.ceport. "It is large and well appointed. Of course," he added with sudden uncertainty, "it has not been furnished with humans in mind."

"That's all right," Leia said. "Actually, I don't think staying in your home would be the best idea."

[I agree with Princess Leia,] Slanni said. [If Governor Ch.o.a.rd plans treachery, we do not wish him to know where precisely to find us.) "He does not plan treachery," Chivkyrie insisted. "I trust him with my life."

"Perhaps we do not yet trust him with ours," Vokkoli said. "That is, after all, part of what we have come here to establish."

"Your fears are misplaced," Chivkyrie said crossly. "But if Princess Leia so desires, we will find a different habitation for you."

"Thank you," Leia said, feeling a flicker of relief. "I suggest a quiet hotel that caters to multiple species, where a human, a Mungra, and an Ishi Tib wouldn't be too noticeable." She tapped a key on her datapad and offered it to him. "This one, perhaps."

Chivkyrie recoiled in obvious horror. "This place is unfit for even fifth-tier Adarians," he objected. "If you insist on a hotel, let me select a place more suitable for first- and second-tier guests such as yourselves."

[I believe the lower-tier status of the establishment was purposeful in Princess Leia's mind,] Slanni suggested.

"Director Slanni is correct," Leia confirmed, hoping all these shocks weren't coming too fast for Chivkyrie to handle. "Knowing that a proper second-tier Adarian such as yourself is our host, a searcher would naturally begin with the finest accommodations."

"Which is therefore where we would prefer not to be," Vokkoli said.

Chivkyrie sighed. "Though it pains me to do so in this instance, I must accede to my guests' wishes," he said. "Very well. I will instruct my servants to make the arrangements."

"That won't be necessary," Leia said, striving for patience. What part of secretive did Chivkyrie not understand? "We'll get a transport at the s.p.a.ceport and just go there."

"But-"

"It would honor us greatly for you to allow this," Leia said.

Chivkyrie looked like he'd just eaten a bad gruffle, but he reluctantly nodded. "Very well," he said again. "Then I shall take a room there with you, as well. It would be a breach of honor for me to live more highly than guests of a higher tier." He nodded to Slanni. "Or even those one tier lower."

"We appreciate your willingness to serve in this way," Leia said. "As soon as we're settled, you can call Chief Administrator Disra and set up a meeting."

The hotel Leia had chosen wasn't nearly as bad as Chivkyrie seemed to expect. It consisted of three tall buildings s.p.a.ced around a courtyard that, though small, nevertheless managed to include a pair of sculpted gardens within it. The rooms themselves were large and comfortably furnished.

Of course, there were no private health or full-spectrum food services in the rooms, and not even a single personal droid a.s.signed to each of them, deficiencies Chivkyrie pointed out with clear disapproval. But Leia and the others a.s.sured him they would manage.

When they had finished unpacking, they gathered in Leia's room, and Chivkyrie made the comlink call.

The conversation was short and veiled and included no names. "He will meet us in one hour at the northern edge of the flower market," Chivkyrie reported as he put the comlink away. "An air taxi can have us there in five minutes."