That amount of firepower left the ship well defended, though as I did a flyby I noticed a couple of the laser batteries were not tracking that well and at least one froze in the middle as it followed my flight.

Coming over the top, I rolled the Headhunter and chopped the throttle back. I keyed the corem unit. "This is Headhunter 079 requesting permission to board and land."

"079, this is Errant Venture control. Please state the nature of your business."

I rolled my eyes. "You tell Booster Terrik that he lets me park this fighter on his ship, or he's going to be down more than just three turbolaser batteries."

Silence reigned on the corem channel for a moment, then the controller's voice returned with a degree of weariness edging into it. "079, you are clear to land in docking slot 1127. Make sure your weapons are powered down."

"What?"

"That is the message, 079."

"I copy." I brought the Headhunter in toward the egress bay and powered up the repulsorlift coils. I throttled back to ten percent of thrust, and slowly worked the fighter into the docking bay. Slot 1127 was back against a bulkhead and would force me to take a long walk around the bay itself to reach Booster's office. If he knew I'd broken my leg, I'd be parking back in the garbage hold and hiking even further.

As I closed in on my parking place, the only unusual thing I noticed was that no other ships were parked near me, and the few people on the ground were scurrying away. I ignored them-no one wanted to be caught in the backwash from engine thrust. I concentrated on setting the ship down easily, which I did-giving Booster no reason to complain about my scratching his precious deck. I quickly went through an engine lockdown and provided a security pa.s.scode for engine restart. It wouldn't stop anyone from stealing the ship, but it might slow them down.

I smiled and keyed in a message on the ignition screen. "This Headhunter is the property of Mara Jade." Anyone nuts enough to steal it now deserves what he gets.

I popped the c.o.c.kpit hatch, which is when I noticed some-thing rather out of the ordinary. Booster's security detail wore Imperial style uniforms, but they had light green torsos on the tunics and bright yellow sleeves, bright yellow trousers and green caps with yellow b.u.t.tons. The effect was a touch unsettling, especially with such a crowd of them around ship.

Their blasters, which were nowhere near as colorful as their uniforms, all pointed in my direction.

A Weequay whose face looked as if it were made of flaking ceramics motioned for me to come out of the Headhunter. As I stood and my lightsaber came into view, half the guards crouched while the others moved behind convenient cover. I looked around at the dozen of them and shook my head. "No trouble, no trouble."

For the first time I really wished I had skill in the area of Jedi levitation because trying to get out of a fighter that had me a good three meters off the deck while my hands were in the air was not an easy thing to do. I would have just jumped out, but my left leg still wasn't one hundred percent, and I didn't want to be limping around on the Errant Venture. What I ended up doing was sitting on the side of the c.o.c.kpit and sliding down toward the floor, catching my weight mostly on my right leg.

The Weequay jabbed me in the back with a truncheon which, 1 imagined, could deliver a nasty jolt to me if he only pushed the red b.u.t.ton near his thumb. "Boss Booster wants you."

"Good, I want to see him, too."

"Surrender lightsaber."

I turned slowly on my heels and faced him, setting myself.

"Not going to happen, quark-for-brains."

He poked me with the truncheon again and hit the b.u.t.ton. I felt the tingle of the electricity, but just absorbed it. I smiled as I did so.

"Power cells are dead. Really. I don't feel a thing."

The Weequay hit the b.u.t.ton again, but my smile did not fade. I bled the energy off into the decking, which raised the fur on the head of a pa.s.sing Bothan, but none of the guards seemed to notice. The Weequay looked at the stun baton as if it had betrayed him, then pressed his free hand against the tip and hit the b.u.t.ton.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed the truncheon from the air before it could hit the floor, and looked past the Weequay's twitching form. I reversed the baton and offered the handle to another of the guards. "Clearly, it's defective.

Now if you will take me to Booster . . ."

I turned back to head toward his office, when I discovered my quarry had come to me. This wouldn't have been a bad thing, but the flesh of Booster's face was as red as his artificial left eye. He grabbed big handfuls of my green flight-suit, hoisted me up off the deck and slammed me into a bulk-head.

"Where's my daughter?" His short, bristly white hair and the goatee he'd taken to wearing made him look more like me than I even wanted to think about. "What have you done with Mirax.

I groaned, less from the impact than the sheer fury in his words. "Let me explain."

He jammed me into the wall again. "You think you're that persuasive, CorSec?"

Booster released me and I fell to the floor. He looked at his guards and shook his head. "Fyg and Kruqr, escort him to my office. Now."

Another Weequay and a fairly scrawny human grabbed my arms, jerked me to my feet and Rybet-marched me off to the wardroom that Booster used as his docking bay office. It felt odd for me to be conducted to his office in the same manner I'd hauled so many prisoners along in my day. I knew that even without using any Jedi techniques I could break their grips and get rid of them. Because of the unseemliness of being hustled along that way I almost did make a break.

I didn't because I realized there was no purpose to my doing so. Yes, I might feel embarra.s.sed at being manhandled so, but what difference did it make? Was my pride worth injuring someone? No. They were conducting me to where I wanted to go anyway. What they or anyone else thought of me was really immaterial.

I smiled. Some of that Jedi training got through.

Reverting to type, I studied my surroundings. The docking bay had plenty of room for ships and approached capacity. The old TIE fighter launch racks still had a few TIEs in them, but many of them were missing parts.

Other smaller ships had been fitted with unusual suspension collars that allowed them to hang from the racks as well. In that way Booster was able to fit a lot more ships into his hold.

The vast majority of ships in the docking bay were freighters, though few were as big as Mirax's Pulsar Skate or the Millennium Falcon. Most ships of that size couldn't afford docking s.p.a.ce on the Errant Venture anyway.

The ships present were those of smugglers who dealt in rare, exotic and high priced items, or the idle rich who found slumming on the Errant Venture something of a thrill. Most of the ships bringing goods for trade and transshipment on the Errant Venture just offloaded their items into one of the supply holds and left a crewman or agent on board the EV to handle the transactions.

Booster's people brought me to his office, tossed me inside, then shut the hatch. I had to hit a glowpanel switch, and when I did, I shuddered.

Clutter filled the room-cracked duraplast boxes leaking streaky red, viscous fluids, piles of datacards leaning precariously one against another, chairs filled with cast-off clothing and in the corner stood a deactivated 3PO droid festooned with a dozen gunbelts complete with blasters. Booster's desk dominated the room and appeared neat in comparison to the rest of it. The single layer of datacards, datapads, wires and odds and ends had been cleared back from a small cube projecting various holographs of Mirax.

I shifted stuff from the chair in front of the desk to the floor and sat, watching the ever-changing display. Though Booster would deny having a single sentimental bone in his body, his projector cube had arranged the images by chronology and subject. They flashed up every ten seconds or so. The display might follow a theme, like images of Mirax working on the Skate, then move along through her life, forward or back, until it shot off again on a themed tangent. It wove a web of her life-a web in which I felt fully ensnared.

In watching the display I realized the detachment I had felt before, when she vanished, had finally faded. The "flash-blindness" Luke had diagnosed had lifted, and I might have noticed it sooner, but on Yavin 4 I had so little to remind me of her. It was probably just as well that the detachment existed while I started my training because I would have gotten nowhere while distracted.

Now, though, watching her images, the full weight of her disappearance crashed in on me. I had felt her presence that night in the grotto, and Exar Kun had showed her to me, but I knew I could not trust what I had seen through his power. The fact that I had sensed her when Luke took us on a sojourn through the universe helped sustain me, but now I realized just how alone I felt.

And how alone she must be feeling. She was out there, somewhere, waiting for me to find her, to help her, and I had done nothing. I sighed.

Perhaps Booster should have smacked me against the wall even harder.

The hatch to the office slid open and Booster stalked in. He looked hard at me, then sat down at his desk. Fire burned in his brown eye just as brightly as in the electronic one. He watched me, then his head slowly nodded as he pressed his hands flat against the top of his desk.

Like a mute referee, Mirax danced from image to image be-tween us.

"It is for her sake that I don't just twist your head off, Cor-Sec." He kept his voice low and barely under control. "She's been missing for how long?"

I swallowed hard. "Ten weeks."

"Ten weeks!" His right fist hammered the desk, making the holocube bounce and the datacards ripple like loose tiles in a groundquake. He caught himself and slowly opened his hand. "Ten weeks, and you didn't come to me and tell me."

I calmed myself, just barely bringing my racing heart under control. My mouth felt dry and tasted like I'd been licking a bantha. "One, I knew then and know now your daughter is alive. In consulting with a variety of people it was determined that keeping knowledge of her disappearance quiet would be the best course."

Booster arched a pale eyebrow. "'It was determined?' By whom? What coward decided I shouldn't know my little girl was missing?"

I raised my chin. "I made that decision, Booster."

"Did you, CorSec, did you now?" Booster sat back. "Not your General Cracken? Not your Luke Skywalker? Not Wedge? You made it?"

I nodded. "I weighed their opinions. I went over the scenarios they suggested and how best to handle the situation, then I made the decision."

"So then you take full responsibility for it?" I could hear in his voice that he was setting a trap for me. "You take full responsibility for whatever happens to her?"

"I do."

Booster hesitated, then smiled coldly. "I think you'll find you don't much care for the consequences of your actions."

Something struck me as odd about Booster at that point. He'd managed to fix blame fully and squarely on me, which meant he should have been venting all of his anger and frustration on me, but he wasn't. He'd identified me as a target and had me dead to rights, and he held back.

Why?

Then the answer slammed into me and I leaned forward. "I accept the consequences of my actions, and you want to know why? Because Mirax is my wife. Our vows make her life and happiness and safety my responsibility, and I've done what I could to acquit that responsibility. I would have liked nothing better than to have headed out after her immediately, but there was nowhere to go, nothing to do. General Cracken and his people were stymied, as was I. All I knew was that your daugh-er lived, and as long as she lived, I could take the necessary steps to save her."

Booster's expression hardened against the challenge in my words. "You may think of her as your wife, but she's my daughter, my flesh and blood, which makes me just as responsible for her as you are, CorSec. Don't try to steal that part of my life the way your father stole five years from me. If you do, you'll regret it."

"Maybe, but not in the way you think I will." I narrowed my eyes. "And as for your responsibility for Mirax, I just remembered something. In the past ten weeks, you've never tried to get a message to me asking after Mirax. You never even got a message to Wedge about her."

I stood and leaned forward on his desk. "All the concern you've showed for her has been from my ship to this office. And that tells me one thing, Booster: you knew! You knew all along that she was working for Cracken to track the Invids, didn't you? She probably worked from here, using the Errant Venture as her base of operations."

Booster laughed slowly. "I can see the Horn blood runs strong in those veins. Very good."

His casual admission stunned me. He'd grabbed me, slammed me up against a bulkhead and all but accused me of having abandoned his daughter to whatever fate her enemies had in mind for her. Part of me wanted to reach across the desk and throttle him, while yet another part wanted to feed my anger through the Force and slam him up against the wall.

Neither of those parts won in the war for control. "Were you just beating up on me for fun?"

Booster shook his head solemnly. "When I realized Mirax was missing and heard you were off playing Jedi games, I was mad enough to come here to Yavin and beat you to within a micron of your life. A great chunk of me still is, but I respect your father enough to think you wouldn't abandon Mirax. Just now, in bracing you like this, I gave you a chance to put the blame for your actions on others. You didn't. Got to admire a man who accepts responsibility even when it might hurt."

I straightened up, crossing my arms over my chest. "And your reason for this little test?"

"I didn't know how much your time down there changed you. I wanted to make sure you could still do what has to be done to save Mirax."

"What?"

"You don't remember Corellian Jedi Knights, but I do. A bit.

I wasn't sure a Jedi would care for my daughter anymore."

I stared at him in disbelief. "What gets taught at the academy doesn't make students less human."

"Tell that to the people of Carida."

Echoes of their death agony pounded through me. "You have a point."

Booster nodded. "How did you know I was testing you?"

"Att.i.tude and what I sensed about you. Smug satisfaction." I shrugged.

"You also mentioned General Cracken and you couldn't have known why I'd be talking to him unless you knew Mirax was working with him. Since I didn't know that, and since she'd not confided in Wedge, I a.s.sumed she confided in you. You must have blistered Cracken's ears when you found out she was gone."

Booster smiled like wampa scenting tauntaun. "Told him I'd found a cache of guns to put on this monster before I went hunting for Mirax myself."

A fully armed Errant Venture was one of General Cracken's recurring nightmares, especially with Booster at the helm.

"Get anything useful from him'?"

"Not much." Booster scowled. "I know the galaxy is a big place, but she can't have vanished so completely."

"She hasn't."

"What do you mean'?"

"A woman named Mara Jade . . ."

"Karrde's confederate?"

I nodded and sat back down. "The same. She said she had inquiries from a rare properties dealer on Nal Hutta about a deal for an item that he'd been holding for Mirax. Mirax had bought an option on purchasing the item and she was supposed to pick it up within days of when she disappeared.

Sounds to me like a legitimate deal she would have set up to bolster her cover when seeking the Invids."

Booster smiled. "A number of the invid crews ship out of Nal Hutta, or used to, anyway. Lots have been moving in the last two months."

"Because Mirax's presence was proof positive that the New Republic was looking in that area."

The older man stroked his goatee. "It's as good a place as any to start.

We'll be on our way within the hour."

"No."

Booster frowned at me. "No? We have the first lead that's come up and you don't want to follow it up?"

"I want to follow it up, yes, and follow up the more important clue." I laced my fingers together and pressed the index fingers against my moustache. "Mirax is detected on Nal Hutta, captured and the Invid crews there scatter. This firmly establishes a link between her capture and the Invids; and it also suggests she's being held to forestall my doing anything rash."

"You won't be doing it, I will."

I shook my head adamantly. "Booster, we won't find Mirax until we find the Invidious, and you're not going to have any more luck at finding it than the New Republic has. Tavira's got people who can use the Force.

They will know when you're coming and they'll leave or, worse yet, they'll use their fully armed Impstar to blast the Venture to sc.r.a.p."

Booster pounded his fist in his open hand. "She's my daughter, CorSec, I have to do something!"

"I know that. She's my wife, and I have to do something, too.

I have to act, but not before I'm ready." I leaned forward. "Meet me halfway, Booster. If you don't, she'll die, and neither one of us will be happy for the rest of our lives. In your case that won't be long because I'll kill you."