"Tell them I've located Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan," Disra said.

"And that I have her trapped."

He had the satisfaction of seeing the woman's dulled eyes actually widen.

"One moment," she said, her voice suddenly brisk and professional. "Let me transfer you directly to Lord Vader's command ship."

Chapter Fifteen.

MARA HAD EXPECTED THE BloodScars' EVENING meal to be bland and simple, a step or two above ships' rations but no higher. To her surprise, it turned our to be a small feast more along the lines of a Harvest Day banquet. Apparently one of the Commodore's men fancied himself a gourmet chef.

The reason for the pirates to expend such effort grew clear the minute the Commodore dug into the first course. The harsh lines in his face began to smooth out, the glistening look of madness in his eyes faded away, and by the time the second course arrived he seemed almost normal.

Mara sat at the middle of the Commodore's table, wedged in between one of his lieutenants and one of the visiting ship captains. Vinis, his chin bruising up nicely where Mara had hit him, stood silently behind her as her private server and, no doubt, less-than-private watchdog. Brock and Gilling had been put at two of the other tables, with server/guards of their own standing at the ready. Tannis was at a fourth table, and while he appeared to be joining in the general conversation around him, Mara could tell that a lot of his attention was on her. Caaldra, to her mild surprise, was absent.

There was no interrogation during the meal; clearly, the Commodore loved his food too much to mix it with business. Whether through direct order or merely instinctive caution, the pirates seated around Mara were careful not to talk about their current plans, the BloodScars' ship strength, or anything else related to the organization. The result was a dinner conversation made up almost entirely of chitchat, the sort Mara had heard at formal and informal dinners all across the galaxy. It made for an interesting contrast with the pirates' casually blistering language.

After dinner the Commodore Jed Mara and the two ISB men to a small conference room, and the negotiations began in earnest.

Mara could remember the first time she'd done something like this, discussing matters that weren't real with someone who was firmly convinced they were. In those early days the procedure had felt eerie and surrealistic, almost as if Mara herself were the one with the warped sense of reality. Now it was simply one more tool in her a.r.s.enal.

"We would want a seventy-thirty split, the seventy going to us," Mara said. "All you need to do is tell us which ship or kind of ship you want, and we'll do the rest,"

"And what would you get out of the arrangement that would make it worth our taking thirty percent?'' the Commodore asked.

"Protection from rival groups or the authorities, for one thing," Mara said. "Safe places to bring the ships once we have them. You might occasionally provide extra personnel if we needed it."

"Sounds to me more like a sixty-forty split, with the sixty going to us,"

the Commodore suggested.

"That seems a little steep, considering that we're doing all the work."

"Not when you consider the fact that you'd have the BloodScars and our patron as allies." The Commodore's eyes glittered. "And not as enemies."

"Point," Mara conceded. "Unfortunately, I'm not authorized to go that far outside my chief's parameters. Would it be possible for me to use your HoloNet link to discuss it with him?"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Brock shift in his seat. But the Commodore merely smiled. "Tomorrow will be soon enough for that," he said. "I always like to give future allies the chance to sleep on such things. You will stay the night, of course?"

"We would be honored," Mara said. "But we don't wish to be a burden. If you'd prefer, we could sleep aboard the Happer's Way."

"I wouldn't think of it," the Commodore said firmly. "Vinis will show you to your quarters."

The room Vinis took her to was on the top floor of one of the three-story sections of the complex. It had a single window looking out on the mining complex in the distance; a scattering of old building rubble on the ground directly below the window would discourage any attempt to climb down.

Fortunately, that wasn't the direction Mara was planning to go.

She waited three hours, until all the window lights she could see had gone out and all sounds of life on her floor had ceased. All sounds, that is, except for the occasional shuffling of the guards the Commodore had stationed outside her door.

Like most of Mara's civilian outfits, her green jumpsuit had been designed for double duty. Taking it off, she reversed it to its night-fighter gray-black side and put it back on. The decorative comb that the pirates had been so suspicious of earlier was next; disa.s.sembling it like the wirework puzzle that it was, she rea.s.sembled it into a pair of palm grippers. Opening the window, she eased herself out into the cold night air and started to climb.

It was one of the trickier ascents she'd ever had to deal with. The wall was reasonably smooth, with no decorative facings or texturing that could be exploited. Fortunately, there'd been enough erosion over the years to create small cracks she could get the grippers into. Still, she was just as glad she didn't have very far to go.

She paused at roof level, stretching out with her senses for any guards or other watchers the Commodore might have stationed up there. But there was no one. Rolling over onto the roof and pocketing the grippers, she headed silently across the building to the spot where she'd hidden her lightsaber. To find that it was gone.

She moved back and forth along the rain catcher, her pulse thudding in her throat, wondering if she could have gotten herself turned around somehow. But no. This was the place, all right-she could see the marks in the dust where she'd lowered the weapon into concealment. Someone had found and removed it.

Which meant they were on to her.

She dropped into a low crouch, forcing calmness into herself as she tried to think. All right. The Commodore knew now that one of his visitors was more than he or she seemed. But would he necessarily zero in on Mara for that role?

For that matter, would he necessarily zero in on any of them? With the big recruitment drive Caaldra was orchestrating, the BloodScars had probably hosted dozens of visitors over the past few weeks. Couldn't it as easily have been one of them who'd stashed the weapon for future use?

That might explain why she and the others had been invited to dinner instead of to a fully equipped interrogation cell.

But it was still hardly a license to linger. She had to get to the command center and try to dig out the name of the Commodore's mysterious patron, then collect Brock and Gilling and get the blazes off this rock.

There was an unlocked access stairway near the center of the roof. Mara slipped inside and headed down. The stairway itself was deserted, as were the hallways she moved down, as was the connecting pa.s.sageway to the next building over, where the command center was located. The only minds she could sense anywhere around her carried the distinctive vagueness of deep sleep. Whatever the Commodore was up to, he was playing it very cool.

She was on her final approach to the command center door when she finally sensed human presence ahead. She pressed herself into the side of an equipment rack that had been parked at the side of the hallway and stretched out to the Force. There were two, she decided, both of them fully awake and fully alert. Far more alert, in fact, than the usual night watch crew. Perhaps this was where the Commodore had decided to make his move.

If so, hesitation wouldn't gain Mara anything. Looking quickly over the equipment rack for impromptu weapons, she unfastened a pair of fist-sized power couplings and got one in each hand. Stepping to the door, she keyed the release, and as the door slid open she ducked inside and to the right.

The lights were on low, standard procedure for nighttime operations.

There were a dozen consoles arranged in rows, each with one or two chairs in front of it. At the far side of the room, through a wide transparisteel viewport, she could see the starlit mining complex stretching across the landscape.

All the chairs were empty. So, apparently, was the room.

But she had sensed someone in here, hadn't she? She frowned, stretching out to the Force to check the next room over. The moment of inattention nearly cost her, her life. There was a flicker of warning, and even as she threw herself toward the center of the room, a blaster bolt blazed from her left and shattered a piece of the wall where she'd been crouching. She caught a glimpse of a face peering around the side of one of the consoles and hurled one of her power couplings toward it.

Her a.s.sailant tried to duck back, but he was a shade too slow. The coupling bounced hard off his forehead, and with a snarled curse the face disappeared.

A curse delivered by a familiar voice. "Brock?" Mara called, pausing midway through her escape roll.

Once again, the momentary hesitation nearly proved fatal. From her right a second blaster spat fire, and a flash of pain lanced across her shoulder. "Don't shoot- it's me.'" she snapped, clamping down on the pain as she dived toward the nearest console. Her words were punctuated by another shot, this one going wide as she hit the console chest first and rolled over the top. Two more blaster bolts sizzled through the air from opposite sides of the room, both of them missing, as she landed behind the console.

And found herself crouching in the middle of a group of three dead bodies lying on the floor where they'd been dragged and dropped. The pirates, undoubtedly, who'd been unlucky enough to pull nighttime watch duty.

"I said hold your fire," she called again, twisting her neck to peer over her shoulder at her wound. It didn't look too bad. "Are you deaf?"

"No, we heard you just fine," Gilling said. "Why don't you come out and make this easy on yourself?"

"What do you think you're doing?" Mara demanded. "I'm an Imperial officer." "No, you're an arrogant little girl who knows more than is good for her," Brock said. "Sorry, kid, but we have our orders. Orders from a real Imperial officer."

"What officer?" Mara asked. "Captain Ozzel?" "That idiot?" Gilling scoffed. "Hardly."

"Shut up, Gilling," Brock said. "He's right, you know. You're just prolonging the agony."

"That's okay-I didn't have anything else planned for the evening," Mara told him, pressing her back against the console and looking around.

Besides the chairs and consoles, the room didn't offer anything in the way of cover, and aside from her remaining power coupling, the only available throwing weapons were the chairs themselves. Not a good situation. "What exactly do I know that has Colonel Somoril so hot and bothered?"

She sensed the subtle change in their emotions. "You're a cute one, I'll give you that," Brock said. From the sound of his voice, Mara could tell he was starting to move around the left side of the room toward her position. "Just out of curiosity, did you already know about the deserters, or is that what you were looking for in the Reprisal's computer?"

Mara frowned. Deserters? "I don't know anything about any deserters," she said. "And I wouldn't care if I did. That's for the Fleet to deal with, not someone like me."

"No, of course not," Brock said, heavily sarcastic. "The Emperor doesn't care if a few stormtroopers run away from their posts. Not a bit."

"Stormtroopers?" Mara said, listening hard. This was an old, old trick: one half of a flanking duo babbled nonstop in order to cover up any sounds while the other half of the team snuck up on the victim.

Generally speaking, though, the talker wasn't supposed to pepper his diversion with genuinely useful information. Either Brock was simply stupid-not impossible with an ISB man-or else he and Gilling were very sure of themselves. "This isn't going to work, you know," Mara called, stretching out to the Force and getting a grip on one of the chairs near where she estimated Gilling was about to make his dramatically lethal appearance. "Even together you two can't take me." "Oh, I think we can,"

Brock said. "If not, there'll be others along to finish the job. Probably any minute now, actually."

And then, beneath the chatter, she caught the subtle sound of the room door sliding open.

Brock was still blathering away when the room erupted into a thunderstorm of blasterfire.

Mara crouched low behind the console, squinting against the smoke and flying splinters of ceramic and metal as the barrage continued, cutting into Brock's and Gilling's positions as it first demolished their cover and then demolished them. She heard a wordless shout over the noise, and the a.s.sault cut off as abruptly as it had begun. "Come out, Celina," the Commodore's voice said coldly into the silence. "Hands open and empty."

"All right," Mara called back. "Don't shoot. I've got a deal to offer you." Setting the power coupling on the floor beside her, her senses and mind alert, she lifted her open hands into view over the top of the console. No one tried to shoot them off. Keeping them visible, she stood up and turned around.

There were a dozen pirates crowded into the back part of the room, all of them hastily dressed, all of them with blasters pointed at Mara. Vinis and Waggral were among them, their fingers especially tight on their triggers. The Commodore stood in the center of the group, his blaster still holstered, his arms folded across his chest. Beside Waggral at the group's far left end stood a grim-faced Tannis, his blaster also pointed at Mara. "Another deal?" the Commodore asked mildly.

"A real one this time," Mara said. "I came here for some information.

That's all, just a little information. You let me have that, and I'll leave peaceably."

"What makes you think you'll be leaving at all?" the Commodore countered.

"Peaceably or otherwise?"

"Because it would be in your best interests," Mara said. "I have powerful friends."

The Commodore sniffed, his eyes flicking momentarily to Brock's charred body. "They weren't all that powerful."

"They weren't exactly friends, either," Mara said. "It was them trying to kill me that I presume woke all of you up. I was referring to other friends."

The Commodore pursed his lips, measuring her with his gaze. "What exactly is this information you want?"

"You mentioned a patron earlier," Mara said. "I want his name."

She reached out with the Force, knowing the question would automatically bring the name to the Commodore's mind and hoping to pluck it from his thoughts. But his mind was too dark, swirling with too much anger and hatred and insanity, and she got nothing.

"You're a brazen one, I'll give you that," the Commodore commented, his calm voice a stark contrast with the agitation of his mind. "At any rate, your deal is far too one-sided."

"I can fix that," Mara offered. "Just tell me what you want in return. If it's in my power to get it for you-and I have far more power than you think-I will."

The Commodore's smile vanished. "I'm sure you will," he a.s.sured her.

"Because what I want is you. Dead." He unfolded his arms and lifted a finger toward the ceiling.

"Wait a minute," Tannis put in, his voice tight. "Sir- Commodore-she's not going to do us any good dead."

The Commodore looked at him, his finger still pointed toward the ceiling.

"You think she'll do us some good alive, Master Tannis?" he asked. "You who brought her among us in the first place?"

Tannis winced. "I admit she fooled me," he said. "But she fooled Captain Shakko, too. We could at least--"

"If Captain Shakko was indeed fooled," the Commodore retorted. "If Captain Shakko is even still alive." Abruptly, his face contorted into something nonhuman. "Only he isn't, is he? He's dead, like the rest of your crew."

"No, of course not," Tannis protested, his face going a little paler. "I mean, as far as I know they're all fine. But if we hold her for ransom, we might at least get some money out of her."

"An interesting idea." The Commodore looked back at Mara, his face smoothing back to almost sane. "Well, spy? Are you worth ransoming?"

"There are people who would pay to have me back," Mara agreed. Stretching out with the Force, she lifted the power coupling by her feet to the top of the console, holding it just out of the pirates' sight. "I can give you a couple of HoloNet connections you can call."

"I'm sure you could." The Commodore nodded toward Tannis. "What about him?"

"What about him?" Mara countered. This was an old trick, too. "He's been a useful tool. Not quite as gullible as Shakko, but adequate for our needs."

"As I thought," the Commodore said. "Waggral, kill him."

Without hesitation, Waggral reached over and grabbed the muzzle of Tannis's blaster, twisting the weapon our of his grip. "Wait a minute,"

Tannis said, his voice cracking with tension. "Commodore-"

His protest was cut off as Waggral slammed the blaster grip across his face, staggering him backward. Flipping the weapon around, Waggral brought both it and his own blaster up to point at Tannis's face.

Lifting the power coupling the last two centimeters, Mara sent it burning across the room to slam into the side of Waggral's head. Before anyone could react, she stretched out to the blasters in his suddenly limp hands, swung them around toward the row of pirates, and opened fire.

The man standing next to Waggral caught the full brunt of that first salvo, collapsing to the floor without even a gurgle. An instant later the rest of the neat line disintegrated as the pirates dived for cover, all eyes and blasters swiveling automatically toward this new and unexpected threat.

All eyes, that is, except those of the Commodore. "Not him, you fools!"

he shouted over the noise, his glare burning into Mara as he grabbed for his own blaster. "Her! She's a Jedi!"

There was no way the pirates could grasp such a concept, Mara knew, not with the Jedi long gone, certainly not in the heat of battle. But the more important military concept of instant obedience they clearly did understand. Even as their faces clouded over in bewilderment, they abandoned their counterattack on Waggral and swung their blasters back toward Mara.

Taking a step away from her console, she picked up one of the chairs with the Force and hurled it at a pair of pirates who'd been careless enough to stand too close together. They crashed to the floor, and Mara sent another chair flying into a different part of the group.