"Not a problem," Jade a.s.sured him. "Let's take a look."

Marcross's chest plate expanded slightly as he took a deep breath. "Turn right at the next corner."

His directions led them off the main road and into a slightly marshy area crisscrossed by meandering creeks. The streets turned narrow and winding as they threaded their way through and between the creeks, and LaRone noticed that most of the houses were built up as much as a meter above ground level. Apparently flooding was a constant concern here.

"There," Marcross said, pointing ahead. "Where the wall bows out a little and almost touches the edge of the street."

LaRone took his foot off the accelerator, letting the speeder truck coast as he peered ahead at the spot framed in his headlights.

"Not very secure," Quiller commented doubtfully. "If your enemies were smart enough to surround the grounds, you'd walk right into their arms."

"There's supposed to be a heavy long-range fighter prepped and hidden in that house over there," Marcross said, pointing to a dilapidated house on the far side of the street from the wall. "There's also supposed to be a force-field tunnel you can activate that'll give you safe pa.s.sage between the wall and the house. I never saw that work, though."

"What are we going to do about a pa.s.skey?" Grave asked.

"We don't need one," Jade said. "We're not going in that way. Keep driving, LaRone-I'll tell you where to stop."

"If we're not going to use it, why did you want me to show it to you?"

Marcross demanded as LaRone continued on past the secret door.

"Watch your tone, stormtrooper," Jade warned. "We're not going in that way because it'll be the entrance of choice for the conspirators, and I don't want us b.u.mping into them until we're ready. There-that section between the two trees. Pull over there."

LaRone brought the speeder truck to a halt. "Everyone out," Jade ordered, pushing up her own swing-wing door. "Give me a perimeter."

She strode over to the wall, lightsaber in hand. LaRone had formed the others into a standard, outward-facing guard-box formation by the time Bright.w.a.ter glided his speeder bike back around and came to a halt beside them. "What are we doing?" he asked.

"Fm not sure," LaRone admitted, watching Jade out of the corner of his eye. She was leaning against the wall, her hands and one ear pressed against the cold stone. Slowly, methodically, she moved herself in a grid search pattern along and down the surface. "We're going in, but I'm not sure exactly how."

"Quietly and without casualties," Jade said, stepping away from the wall.

"Ever hear of cryseefa gas?"

"It's an acidic poison," Bright.w.a.ter said. "Highly corrosive and lethal to most oxygen-breathing species."

"Very good." Jade tapped a section of wall. "There's a canister of compressed cryseefa buried in the wall right here. And here-" She indicated another spot. "-and here, and here."

"Ready to kill anyone who tries to punch through the wall," LaRone murmured, a shiver of disgust running through him.

"Along with everyone for fifty meters around him," Jade said. "A simple but very undiscriminating weapon."

"And you can tell where the canisters are?" Grave asked.

"Walls like this collect a lot of sun heat during the day," Jade explained, unlimbering her lightsaber. With a sizzling snap-hiss, the brilliant magenta blade burst into existence. "Stone and metal make different contraction sounds as they cool down. You might want to step back for this."

None of the stormtroopers moved. Lifting the lightsaber horizontally, Jade pushed the blade's tip gently into the stone. For a few seconds she continued to force it straight in, then shifted to a sideways motion, carefully carving out a circle. She finished the circle and shut down the lightsaber. "Do you want us to get that out?" LaRone asked.

"No need." Lifting a hand toward it, Jade inhaled slowly.

And with a m.u.f.fled grinding sound of stone on stone, the cylindrical plug she'd carved worked its way out of the wall. Marcross stepped forward and caught the plug as it came free. Nodding her thanks, Jade reactivated her lightsaber and set to work on the next canister.

Five minutes later there were six stone cylinders lying on the ground beside the wall. "Is that all?" LaRone murmured.

"All we need to worry about," Jade said, turning to face them.

"Understand me now. When we step inside this wall, we'll be in enemy territory. If you can get through without killing any of the guards, fine. But if you have to kill, you kill without hesitation."

"Understood," LaRone said for all of them.

A minute later, Jade had carved an opening through the safe parts of the wall big enough for them to get through. On the far side, LaRone could see some of the garden areas Marcross had described earlier. "Commander?"

Jade invited as she closed down her Lightsaber. "Deploy your troopers."

LaRone nodded acknowledgment. "Bright.w.a.ter, you'll swing around toward the main gate," he ordered. "I want to know what their security looks like, including how many men they'll have available to draw on when the balloon goes up. Grave, Quiller: you're on flank. Marcross, you're on point. You'll lead Jade to your best choice of entrance and get her inside. I'll take rear guard. We close up as soon as Marcross gets us in and re-form to quiet incursion. Grave, give Bright.w.a.ter a hand with his speeder bike."

Bright.w.a.ter waddled his speeder bike to the wall, and together he and Grave maneuvered it through the opening. The scout trooper got on and took off with a subdued whine, heading to the left and the cover of the garden foliage. Grave and Quiller went next, branching to right and left, with Marcross behind them. LaRone took a step forward- "A moment, Commander," Jade murmured, putting a hand on his arm.

"Sensible policy dictates that the second in command knows what the mission is."

"Yes, ma'am," LaRone said, feeling his heartbeat starting to pick up.

"Our target is Governor Ch.o.a.rd," she said. "He's committed high treason, both in conspiring with pirates against Imperial shipping, and in sending the Reprisal to try to kill me on Gepparin. Those crimes have earned him the death penalty."

"Understood," LaRone said, a strange sense of unreality sifting into him like fine desert sand. It was one thing to sit out in s.p.a.ce or at a pirate nest and talk about judgment and duty and principle. It was quite another to stand outside the palace of an Imperial governor and contemplate his execution in cold blood.

"Then let's do it," Jade said. Shifting her lightsaber to her left hand and drawing her blaster with her right, she slipped through the opening.

To defend the Empire and its citizens ... Making sure the safety on his E-11 was off, LaRone climbed through behind her.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

GOVERNOR Ch.o.a.rD APPARENTLY LIKED HIS GAR-dens rough and primitive. Once they were through the wall and past a narrow brook that ran along the estate's inner edge, they hit a wide patch of trees, closely s.p.a.ced bushes, and reedy plants growing out of a ground cover composed mainly of flagstones interspersed with flakes of dead bark.

Oddly enough, for the first few minutes it seemed as if the enemy had completely missed their arrival. Mara saw and heard no one as they slipped through the trees and could sense no suddenly heightened alertness anywhere around them.

The patch of forest ran for about thirty meters, then abruptly gave way to a wide, gra.s.sy area, across which they could see a double row of comfortable outdoor chairs set up near the wall of the palace itself.

"That's the game field," Marcross said, pointing to the field. "That door behind the seats leads into a kitchen adjunct where refreshments can be set out for the players and spectators." "What's past the adjunct?"

"The main kitchen," Marcross said. "From there you can go to the first-floor private dining area, the formal dining room, or the main ballroom."

"Stairs?"

"Closest set is behind the kitchen, off the service corridor," Marcross said. "There's a set of turbolifts there, too."

Mara pursed her lips thoughtfully. It all looked very straightforward, as it was no doubt meant to. But as usual, looks were deceiving. The palace's stylishly crenellated walls had been combined with careful placement of decorative colored lighting to create deeply shadowed indentations at regular intervals along the walls. Most of those nooks probably sheltered sentries-human, animal, or droid-with their eyes and other senses trained on the wide lawn she and the stormtroopers would have to cross.

But Mara still had a few tricks up her sleeve. A couple of minutes to surrept.i.tiously move a small canister into place upwind, and an oddly persistent mist would begin drifting across the critical lines of sight.

LaRone muttered something under his breath and sidled closer to her.

"Bright.w.a.ter's in sight of the main entrance," he reported. "There are nearly fifty civilian landspeeders near there."

Mara frowned. An emergency meeting of Ch.o.a.rd's fellow conspirators?

"Could they be advisers in for a meeting?"

LaRone relayed the question. "The speeders are all too expensive for even high-ranking civil servants," he said. "More likely Ch.o.a.rd's invited the city's upper-cla.s.s citizens to a dinner or party."

"That could be awkward," Mara said, peering again at the kitchen's lighted windows. If Ch.o.a.rd was feeding a roomful of guests, the kitchen might not be a good place to break in after all. "Marcross, what's above the kitchen?"

"Directly above it is a storage area," Marcross said. "Tables and extra chairs. Flanking the storage room are meeting rooms that open into the reception area outside the main ballroom-"

Suddenly, without warning, a huge dark ma.s.s of vines rose silently from the garden floor behind them.

There was a single startled curse as the four storm-troopers spun around, their blasters tracking toward the apparition. "No!" Mara barked.

But the warning came too late. Even as she ignited her Lightsaber, four blaster bolts lanced out, striking the creature dead center. With a crackling roar, the whole ma.s.s burst into flame.

And with that, the stealthy part of their incursion came to an end.

"Inside," Mara snapped, closing down her lightsaber and bursting out from the bushes onto the exposed gra.s.sland.

"What the h.e.l.l was that?" LaRone demanded as he caught up with her.

"Nouland flare," Mara ground out. Shadowy figures were starting to emerge from the concealed guard nooks, the firelight flickering off their blaster rifles as they moved to cut off the intruders. "They're used some places to smoke out intruders." LaRone snorted. "Quite literally, I see."

"Exactly," Mara agreed tightly. "Nonsentient, not really dangerous, but big and scary and very flammable. Must have been installed sometime after Marcross stopped coming here."

The closest pair of sentries opened fire, their shots sizzling through the air past Mara's head. LaRone sent a precise pair of shots in return, and one of the sentries flopped to the ground and lay still. Quiller, on LaRone's other side, fired a single shot that took out the other of the pair. "What's the new plan?" he called.

"Same as the old one," Mara told him, slowing her pace enough to let them catch up. "Give me a wedge."

The four stormtroopers moved around in front of her, LaRone and Marcross taking dual point, Quiller and Grave a little behind and outboard from them. Mara set herself in the center of the formation, carefully and systematically targeting the scattered pairs of guards converging on them. The air was filling with blaster bolts now as more of their opponents reached optimum firing range, and Mara heard one of the stormtroopers grunt as a shot found a way through his armor. They were halfway to the kitchen door now, the bolts starting to sizzle ever closer.

And then fifty meters away around a corner of the building two pairs of swoops appeared. Driving hard toward the intruders, apparently with little or no regard for the guards between them and their targets, they opened fire with underslung blaster cannons.

"Keep going!" Mara snapped, jamming her blaster back into its holster and igniting her lightsaber.

"Jade-" LaRone began.

"That's an order," Mara cut him off. Stepping out of the relative protection of their moving screen, she turned to face the incoming swoops.

To her surprise and chagrin, they ignored her completely. Instead they deliberately curved to stay on an intercept course with the stormtroopers.

Swallowing a curse, Mara s.n.a.t.c.hed out her blaster again. Those cannons would make short work of even stormtrooper armor once they got close enough, and Mara had no intention of letting that happen. Thumbing the blaster's setting to full auto to open the valve between the gas chamber and conversion enabler, she hurled it in a high arc toward the approaching swoops. Midway through its flight she stretched out with the Force and caught it in a firm grip, tweaked its trajectory, and guided it to a spot just in front of the lead swoop and directly into the blaster cannon's line of fire.

The resulting explosion, as such things went, was fairly tame. The cannon's next shot shattered the blaster's gas chamber housing, blowing the rest of the weapon apart and igniting a brief fireball as the remnants of the shot then activated the expanding gas.

But if the explosion itself wasn't particularly impressive, its precise placement more than made up the difference. The force of the blast slammed into the swoop's nose, causing the vehicle to rear up and back like a crazed animal.

The rider, the bulk of his attention on the stormtroopers, didn't have a chance. For that first crucial second the swoop thrashed wildly beneath him as he fought to bring it back under control. It slammed sideways against his partner, and now there were two out-of-control swoops flailing across the yard.

The second pair, coming up behind them, swerved hard to get out of the way. They were curving around to bring themselves back on track when Grave and his T-28 nailed them both. Two shots later he had taken out the two flailing ones, as well.

"You coming?" LaRone called back to Mara. "On my way," Mara said. She paused first to deflect a pair of blaster bolts, then sprinted after the stormtroopers. They had reached the door, and LaRone was blasting away at a surprisingly stubborn door lock, when she caught up with them.

"Get back," she ordered, quickly ending the lock's resistance with a slash of her lightsaber. "You four get inside," she went on as she pulled the door open. Beyond it, she caught a glimpse of kitchen equipment and frantically retreating kitchen staff but-as yet-no blasters. "Anything from Bright.w.a.ter?"

"He's got the gate personnel pinned down, including most of their vehicles," LaRone told her. "He apologizes for the swoops-no idea where they came from."

"Just tell him to watch himself," Mara said, looking back at the converging guards. "Get inside-I'll take rear guard. Seal the door behind you if you can."

"What? But-"

"You have your orders, Commander," Mara said sharply. "If I don't make it, carry out the mission." "Yes, ma'am," LaRone said, this time with the proper professional tone. "Good luck." With a final salvo at the approaching guards, he and the other stormtroopers slipped inside and closed the door behind them. Mara put her back to the door and for a few seconds continued to deflect the incoming blaster bolts. But her opponents were getting closer, the decreasing distance sharpening their aim, and she knew that within seconds even the camouflaging effects of her cloak and combat suit and a Force-driven defense would be unable to handle all of them.

She gave it two more seconds anyway, stretching her margin to the limit to give the stormtroopers more time to seal the door. Then, pushing off the wall for extra momentum, she sprinted outward toward the forest strip and the perimeter wall beyond.

She got two steps before the guards reacted to the move, and managed three more before the blaster bolts were once again tracking toward her.

She took two more steps and then jammed her feet into the ground, spinning around as she brought herself to an abrupt halt. Bending her knees, lightsaber at the ready, she stretched to the Force for strength and jumped.

For a second she soared above the fury of the blaster-fire as the guards once again tried to react to her unexpected tactic. She was above second-floor height now, nearly to third, the wall rushing up toward her as she hit the top of her arc and started back down again. As she reached the wall she slashed her lightsaber in a wide ring in front of her, cutting a circle through the stone. Tucking her knees to her chest, she slammed feetfirst into the center of the circle.

With a thunderous crash of breaking stone, the section of wail collapsed inward. The impact robbed Mara of her forward momentum, and for a heart-stopping second she teetered on the edge of the hole, fighting for balance. Then her free hand found a grip on the edge, and as the blaster bolts belatedly began to stab at her again, she pulled herself inside to safety.

She had ended up in the storage room Marcross had mentioned, empty except for two carts loaded with round fold-leg tables and three dollies stacked halfway to the low ceiling with ornate, high-backed chairs. A single door was visible at the far end. Closing down her lightsaber, she headed toward it.

She was halfway there when the hint of an odd smell twitched at her nose.

Still moving, she started into her sensory enhancement techniques.

There was a sudden, loud splash at her feet. She looked down, rapidly cutting back on the enhancement to find that her last step had landed her in a pool of liquid. So far the pool was only a few millimeters deep, but as the edge flowed past her feet she could see it was getting deeper.

And that single enhanced sniff had left no doubt as to what the liquid was.

One of the two table carts was a couple of meters to her left. Instantly she leapt sideways up onto it, nearly braining herself against the ceiling as she did so. The tables rattled together as she hit them, and she had to grab a pair of the edges to keep from sliding off.

"Imperial agent? Celina, or whatever your real name is?"

Mara looked up, her eyes probing the darkened room. The voice had been m.u.f.fled, which meant he was outside the door. Considering the liquid rapidly filling the room, she reflected grimly, outside was a very smart place for him to be. "I'm here, Caaldra," she called back. The edge of the pool had made it nearly to the back wall now, leaving her stranded in the middle of the room. "Better give maintenance a call-you've got a serious leak in here."