So what was the truth? Were he and Qennto and Marls just p.a.w.ns in some sort of political game? And if so, what was the game?

Maris, Car'das knew, trusted Thrawn's honor. Qennto just as strongly distrusted his alienness and the fact that he was a military officer.

Car'das himself no longer knew what to think.

But one thing he knew. Things were heating up out here, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that the Bargain Hunter's crew had overstayed their welcome. Somehow they had to find a way out.

And they had to find it soon.

The first Uliar knew of the trouble was when he rounded the corner to find the other two members of his watch shift standing outside the monitor room door. "What's going on?" he asked as he came up to them.

"Got a special tour going on," Sivv, the senior officer, told him.

"Ma'Ning and some sprouts."

"Some what?"

"Some of his junior Jedi," Algrann said scornfully. "They swept in ten minutes before Gra.s.sling's shift ended and threw everyone out."

"And we're not allowed in?" Uliar asked, not believing it.

Sivv shrugged. "He told Gra.s.sling he'd let him know when they could come back in," he said. "I haven't actually asked myself."

Uliar glowered at the door. Jedi. Again. "Mind if I try?"

Sivv waved a hand. "Help yourself."

Stepping to the door, Uliar slapped the release. It slid open, and he stepped inside.

Jedi Master Ma'Ning was standing to the side of the main board, in the middle of a discussion about how the monitors and control systems worked.

His eyes turned questioningly to Uliar as he came in, but he didn't miss a beat of his lecture. Seated at the board itself were four children, the two shortest having to kneel on the seats in order to see.

It was like a scene out of a second-tier cla.s.sroom, except that this wasn't a scribble board or even a training mock-up. This was the real, actual control system for one of the reactors that kept power flowing to Dreadnaught-4.

Ma'Ning finished the sentence he'd been on and lifted his eyebrows toward Uliar. "Yes, Uliar?" he asked.

"No offense, Master Ma'Ning," Uliar said, coming closer to the others, "but what in blazes are you doing?"

The lines around Ma'Ning's eyes might have tightened a little. "I'm instructing the young Padawans in the basics of reactor operation."

Uliar took another look at the children. Ages five to eight, he guessed, all of them with the bright eyes and bouncy curiosity of children everywhere.

But there was something more there, he saw now. An underlying layer of seriousness that was definitely not characteristic of children that age.

Some Jedi thing? "Much as I appreciate their desire to learn, this is no place for children," he said. "And if I may say so, you're hardly the one to be instructing anyone in the subtleties of reactor operation."

"I'm simply giving them an overview," Ma'Ning a.s.sured him.

"You shouldn't be giving them anything," Uliar countered. "Where high-energy equipment is concerned, a little knowledge is worse than useless, and dangerous on top of it. Whose stupid idea was this, anyway?"

Ma'Ning's lips tightened slightly. "Master C'baoth has decided all Jedi and Padawans need to learn how to control Outbound Flight's critical systems."

Uliar stared at him. "You're joking."

"Not at all," Ma'Ning a.s.sured him. "Don't worry, we'll be out of your way in another half hour."

"You'll be out of our way a lot sooner than that," Uliar growled, reaching between two of the children to the comm control. "Bridge; Reactor Control Three. Commander Omano, please."

"One moment."

Uliar looked over at Ma'Ning, wondering if the other would try to stop this. But the Jedi was just standing there, his eyes lowered in a sort of half-meditation look.

"Commander Omano."

"Reactor Tech Four Uliar, Commander," Uliar identified himself "There are unauthorized personnel in our control room who refuse to leave."

Omano's sigh was a taint hiss in the comm speaker. "Jedi?"

Uliar had the sudden sense of the floor preparing to drop out from beneath him. "One of them is a Jedi, yes," he said carefully. "They're still not authorized to-"

"Unfortunately, they are," Omano cut him off "Master C'baoth has requested that his people be given full access to all areas and systems aboard Outbound Flight."

Even though he'd suspected what was coming, the words were still like a cold-water slap across the face. "With all due respect, Commander, that's both absurd and dangerous," Uliar said. "Having children in the-"

"You have your orders, Tech Uliar," Omano again cut him off. "If you don't like it, you're welcome to take it up with Master C'baoth. Omano out." There was a click, and the comm went dead.

Uliar looked up to find Ma'Ning's eyes on him. "Fine," he said, meeting the Jedi's gaze head-on. If they thought he was going to bow and sc.r.a.pe just because they wore those affected peasant robes and carried lightsabers, they had an extra bonus think coming. "Where do I find Master C'baoth?"

"He's down in the Jedi training center," Ma'Ning said. "Storage core, section one twenty-four."

Uliar stared at him. "Your school's in the storage core? What's wrong with the Dreadnaughts?"

Ma'Ning's lip twitched. "Master C'baoth thought it would be best if we were as far away from distractions as possible."

Distractions like parents and family and normal people? Probably. Deep inside him, Uliar's annoyance was starting to turn into a genuine simmering anger. "Fine," he said. "I'll be back."

"Well?" Algrann asked when he emerged into the corridor.

"Omano's knuckled under," Uliar told him tartly. "I'm going to go talk to the Big Clouf himself and see if I can talk some sense into him."

"Captain Pakmillu?"

"Pakmillu doesn't seem to be running the show anymore," Uliar growled.

"I'm going to see C'baoth. Either of you want to come along?"

They exchanged glances, and Uliar could almost see them shrinking back behind their faces. "We'd better stay here," Sivv answered. "Whenever Ma'Ning finishes, we are supposed to be on duty."

"Sure," Uliar said, feeling his lip twist with contempt. Why did everyone go instantly spineless whenever jedi were involved? "See you later."

He took a turbolift down to Dreadnaught-4's lowest level, then made his way forward until he reached one of the ma.s.sive pylons that attached the Dreadnaughts to the storage core beneath them. Four of the six turbolift cars that ran through the pylon were off somewhere else, but the other two were waiting, and a few minutes later he arrived in the storage core.

The core was arranged in a series of large rooms, each nearly filled with stacks of crates held in place by multiple wrappings of crash webbing. A relatively narrow section at the front of each room was empty, providing a walkway and work area for sorting the crates. At each end of the walkway were a pair of doors leading into the rooms forward and aft of it: one of the doors person-sized, the other the much larger access panel required for transfer carts.

The turbolift let him out in section 120, Uliar saw from the small plaque attached to the crash webbing. Ma'Ning had said the Jedi school was in 124, and he headed aft.

Neither of the doors into 124 was marked with any special notice of its new cla.s.sroom status. Steeling himself, trying not to think about all the legends about Jedi power, he walked up to the smaller door and touched the control.

Nothing happened. He tried again; still nothing. He moved to the larger cargo door, only to find that it, too, was sealed. Stepping back to the smaller door, he curled his right hand into a fist and pounded gently on the metal.

There was no answer. He knocked again, gradually increasing the volume level. Were they all out making nuisances of themselves?

"What do you want?"

He jumped, turning to a comm display that had been set up to his left just inside the cargo netting. C'baoth's face was framed there, glowering at him. "I need to talk to you about your students and their teachers,"

Uliar said, feeling his resolve starting to erode beneath that intimidating gaze. "They're in a reactor control and monitor room where they have no business-"

"Thank you for your interest," C'baoth interrupted. "But there's no need for concern."

"Excuse me, Master C'baoth, but there's every need for concern," Uliar insisted. "Some of those systems are very delicate. It took me four years to learn how to handle them properly."

"Your ways are not the Jedi ways," C'baoth pointed out.

"That's a nice slogan," Uliar growled. His anger, which had faded somewhat during the trip down here, was starting to bubble again. "But devotion to plat.i.tudes is no subst.i.tute for tech school."

C'baoth's dark look went a little darker. "Your lack of faith is both thoughtless and insulting," he said. "You will go now, and you will not return."

"Not until those children are out of my reactor room," Uliar said doggedly.

"I said go," C'baoth repeated.

And suddenly an invisible hand was pressing against Uliar's chest, pushing him inexorably away from the locked door and back toward the other end of the section. "Wait!" Uliar protested, batting uselessly at the pressure against his chest. He'd never realized Jedi could do this through a comm display, without actually being there in person. "What about the children?"

C'baoth didn't answer, his image following Uliar with his eves until he was nearly to the far door. Then, simultaneously, the display image and the pressure on Uliar's chest vanished.

For a long minute Uliar stood where he was, his heart pounding with tension and dissipating adrenaline, trying to decide whether he should go back across the room and try again. But there was obviously no point in doing so. Taking a deep breath, he turned and made his way back up to Dreadnaught-4 and the reactor room.

Ma'Ning and the children were gone when he arrived, and Sivv and Algrann were at their stations. "Well?" Sivv asked as Uliar silently took his scat.

"He told me to go away and mind my own business," Uliar told him.

"This is our business."

"Don't tell me," Uliar said tartly. "Go tell him."

"Maybe we should talk to Pakmillu," Algrann suggested hesitantly.

"What for?" Uliar growled. "Looks to me like the Jedi are the ones running the show now."

Algrann cursed under his breath. "Terrific. We leave a tyranny run by bureaucrats and corrupt politicians, only to end up in one run by Jedi."

"It's not a tyranny," Sivv disagreed.

"No," Algrann said tightly. "Not yet."

18.

Outbound Flight," Qennto repeated, frowning off into s.p.a.ce as he slowly shook his head. "Nope. Never heard of it."

"Me, neither," Maris seconded. "And you say this Kav and Stratis want to destroy it?"

"Kav and whoever," Car'das said. "Thrawn thinks Stratis is an alias."

"Fine; Kav and Master No One," Qennto said impatiently. "So why do they want to destroy it?"

Car'das shrugged. "Stratis spun a big loop pastry about how dangerous the Jedi are and how they want to take over and make everyone to do things their way. But that has to be a lie."

"Not necessarily," Qennto said. "A lot of people out there are starting to wonder about the Jedi."

"They're certainly helping to prop up the Coruscant bureaucracy," Maris pointed out. "Anyone who wants genuine government reform will have to persuade the Jedi to change sides."

"Or else kill them," Qennto said.

Maris shivered. "I can't believe it would ever come to that."

"Well, Stratis sure wasn't talking about persuasion," Car'das said. "What about these Dreadnaughts? You ever hear of them?"

"Yeah, they're Rendili StarDrive's latest gift to the militarily obsessed," Qennto said. "Six hundred meters long, with heavy shields and a whole bunch of upgraded turbolaser cannons, most of them cl.u.s.tered in four midline bubbles where they can deliver a terrific broadside volley.

Normal crew runs around sixteen thousand, with room for another two or three thousand troops. I hear the Corporate Sector's been buying them up like Transland Day souvenirs, and some of the bigger Core Worlds aren't far behind."

"Has Coruscant been doing any of the buying?" Maris asked.

Qennto shrugged. "There's been talk lately about the Republic finally getting its own army and a genuine battle fleet. But they've been talking that way for years, and nothing's ever come of it."

"So with six Dreadnaughts, we're talking up to a hundred thousand people aboard Outbound Flight?" Car'das asked.

"Probably no more than half that," Qennto said. "A lot of the standard jobs would be duplicated among the ships. Besides that, you want to build in extra elbow room on a long-term colony ship."

"That's still a lot of people to kill if all they want is to get at a few Jedi," Maris pointed out.