"You miss the point, friend Car'das," Thra.s.s said grimly. "Weren't you listening to my brother? It would be better for Outbound Flight to be destroyed than to let any single family claim it."

Car'das felt a sudden tightening in his throat. "Wait a second," he protested. "I was just going to try to lock Outbound Flight down so that the Aristocra's people couldn't get aboard without blasting their way in.

I didn't sign up for a suicide mission."

"Courage, Car'das," Thra.s.s a.s.sured him. "Neither did I. I a.s.sume we can set this vessel's course to intersect the local sun, then escape in the shuttle we arrived in?"

Car'das thought it over. It should be possible, he decided, provided at least one of the Dreadnaughts' drives was still operable and the control cables to it were intact. "I think so."

"Then let us do it," Thra.s.s said. "Your people built this vessel. Tell me what to do."

The turbolift shaft was reasonably clear, and the car reached D-4 with only a few b.u.mps and sc.r.a.pes. The Dreadnaught itself didn't seem too badly damaged, either.

Except, of course, for all the bodies.

The medical droids had already started clearing them away, probably taking them all to one of the medical labs where, according to the droids' now outdated programming, living beings would be waiting to give orders on how to proceed.

But there was no one to receive the corpses. Lorana stretched out with the Force and worked with the ship's comm system, hoping against all her fears that someone might have miraculously survived the cataclysm that had overtaken Outbound Flight.

But no one answered either call. D-4, it seemed, was dead. Of defenders and attackers alike; and that Lorana found both curious and ominous.

Surely the Chiss hadn't gone to all the effort to destroy Outbound Flight simply to abandon it. But then where were they?

She spent only a little time on D-4 before continuing on.

The turbolift to D-3 was inoperable, implying damage to the cars or the pylon or both, so she headed instead to D-5. There she picked her way through the same debris and bodies and received the same negative results to her efforts at communication. D-6, the next ship on her grisly tour, was much the same.

Still, all three ships seemed to be mostly airtight again, with adequate light and heat and gravitation. The service droids had used the past few hours well. If the Chiss truly had abandoned Outbound Flight, she and the others might be able to make it at least partially operational again.

She was in the turbolift heading for D-1 when her senses caught the faint whisper of nearby life.

She pressed her head against the wall of the car, stretching out with the Force as best her own injuries and lingering horror would allow. There were definitely living beings out there. Alien beings, and not very many of them. But at least there was someone.

And she and her turbolift car were headed straight toward them.

Stepping away from the wall, she got a grip on her lightsaber. Whether by design or simple blind luck, Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo had made good on his threat to destroy Outbound Flight. And he had, moreover, destroyed it out from under Jorus C'baoth and the rest of the Jedi.

It was time to see how well the Chiss would do in a face-to-face confrontation.

The turbolift car came up short at the D-1 end of the pylon, blocked by a maze of support girders that had broken loose during the battle. Using the Force to augment her efforts, she pried open the car door and climbed through the twisted metal to the entrance door.

The turbolift pylons connected at the base of each of the Dreadnaughts, serving only Decks 1 and 2. The bridge was another four decks up, and under the circ.u.mstances it didn't seem like a good idea to trust the Dreadnaught's own internal turbolift system. Making her way to the nearest stairway, she headed up.

The door opened in front of him, and with a not-very-gentle nudge at the small of his back the pair of yellow-clad Chiss gestured Doriana forward.

He found himself on a command bridge similar to the one aboard the Springhawk, only bigger and crewed exclusively by Chiss in the same yellow uniforms as his escort. It made Mitth'raw'nuruodo's black uniform stand out that much more in contrast as he stood in the center of the room before a Chiss in a gray-and-yellow robe. Behind Mitth'raw'nuruodo, a female Chiss dressed all in white stood at stiff attention.

The robed Chiss eyed Doriana as his escort again nudged him forward. He spat something in the Chiss language-" 'So this is your collaborator,' "

Mitth'raw'nuruodo translated.

"Hardly," Doriana said, loading his voice with as much dignity and disdain as he could, just in case the robed Chiss was able to pick up on verbal cues. He had no idea of the details, but it was obvious that there was some kind of power struggle going on here.

And Kinman Doriana, a.s.sistant to Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, was quite familiar with power struggles. "I'm an amba.s.sador of a vast a.s.sembly of star systems called the Galactic Republic," he intoned. "I came here on a mission of goodwill and exploration."

He studied the robed Chiss carefully as Mitth'raw'nuruodo translated. But the other merely smiled cynically and spoke again. " 'You came to bring chaos and war to this region of s.p.a.ce,' " Mitth'raw'nuruodo translated. "

'You have brought alien weapons that you intended to use against the Chiss Ascendancy.' "

The robed Chiss straightened slightly as Mitth'raw'nuruodo finished and spoke again. " 'But you have failed. Those weapons are now the property of the Fifth Ruling Family. I, Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano, hereby take possession.' "

Doriana nodded to himself. So it was Outbound Flight and its technology that was at issue here. And he knew enough about internecine conflict to know that letting one Chiss group have sole possession of it would probably create terrible conflict with the other groups, up to and possibly including civil war.

Which would, of course, be precisely the situation Darth Sidious would want to see here. A Chiss Ascendancy entangled with its own internal problems couldn't pose a threat to the Sith Lord's plans for the Republic and the New Order he planned to create. Standing here in the middle of Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano's people, all Doriana had to do was confirm the Fifth Family's claim and he would help put the Chiss on that long and bitter road.

But as he opened his mouth to speak, he looked at Mitth'raw'nuruodo.

The commander was looking back at him, his face expressionless, his glowing eyes focused unblinkingly on him.

Doriana had already reluctantly concluded that Mitth'raw'nuruodo would have to be killed. But if that death came at the height of a controversy over the disposition of Outbound Flight . . . "I'm sorry, Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano, but Outbound Flight is not yours to take possession of," he said instead. "As a duly appointed representative of the Republic that sent the project on its journey, I claim full salvage rights."

Chaf'orm'bintrano seemed taken aback as Mitth'raw'nuruodo finished the translation. He bit something out" 'Ridiculous,' " Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. " 'An aggressor has no rights.' "

"I deny your claim that either I or Outbound Flight have behaved aggressively toward your people," Doriana countered. "And I demand a full hearing and judgment before any Chiss steps aboard Outbound Flight."

Mitth'raw'nuruodo translated. Chaf'orm'bintrano's eyes narrowed, his glare shifting to the white-clad female. He said something; she replied, and the argument was on.

Doriana looked sideways at Mitth'raw'nuruodo. His face was still expressionless, but as his own eyes shifted to meet Doriana's his lip seemed to twitch upward in a microscopic smile of approval.

Just what the commander would do with the mess that had now been stirred up Doriana didn't know. But to his mild surprise, he discovered he was rather looking forward to finding out.

It had taken longer than Car'das had expected to get Outbound Flight prepped for flight. But at last they were ready. "Okay, get to the helm,"

he told Thra.s.s, glancing out the canopy at the Chiss ships still hovering in the near distance. Why they hadn't already sent over a boarding party he couldn't guess. Apparently, Thrawn and Ar'alani had found a way to stall them.

"Ready," Thra.s.s called.

Stepping to the navigation console, Car'das gave it one final check.

Course set and locked in, ready to take Outbound Flight on its final voyage. Crossing to the engineering console, he settled his fingers on the power-feed controls "Watch out!" Thra.s.s snapped.

Car'das spun around, expecting to see a whole squad of yellow-suited Chiss charging in on them.

But to his astonishment, he found himself facing a lone female human. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Thra.s.s s.n.a.t.c.h a weapon out of concealment in his robe. In reply, the woman produced a short metal cylinder And a green lightsaber blade blazed into existence.

"No!" he barked, waving a hand frantically at Thra.s.s.

But it was too late. The other's weapon hissed out a blue bolt, which the woman sent ricocheting harmlessly into the ceiling. "I said stop,"

Car'das called again. "She's a Jedi."

To his relief, Thra.s.s didn't fire again. "What do you want?" the Chiss demanded instead, keeping his weapon aimed.

"He wants to know what you want," Car'das said, translating the Cheunh for her.

Her eyes flicked to him. "He doesn't speak Basic?"

"No, no one here does except Thrawn," Car'das said. "But he knows some Sy Bisti, if that helps."

"It does." She looked back at Thra.s.s. "Who are you?" she asked, switching to that language.

"I am Syndic Mitth'ras'safis of the Eighth Ruling Family of the Chiss Ascendancy," Thra.s.s identified himself "And I'm Jorj Car'das," Car'das added. "Mostly an innocent bystander to all of this."

"Mostly?"

"I got here through a hyperdrive malfunction," he said. "Who are you?"

"Lorana Jinzler," she said. Lowering her lightsaber, but leaving it ignited, she crossed the threshold and continued on into the bridge, limping noticeably. Her eyes flicked across the dead bodies, and an edge of fresh pain crossed her face. "Who else is aboard?"

"At the moment, just us," Thra.s.s said. He hesitated, then slipped his weapon back into his tunic. "But a member of one of the ruling families is trying to claim Outbound Flight for himself. We're trying to prevent that."

Jinzler's eyes narrowed. "How?"

"We're going to have to scuttle it," Car'das said, watching her face carefully. Even with nothing left but torn and broken metal, there was an even chance she would be attached enough to the hulk to object violently to its destruction. People went all weird like that sometimes.

Sure enough, her eyes widened. "No," she insisted. "You can't."

"Look, I'm sorry," Car'das said as soothingly as he could. "But there's nothing left but dead metal and droids-"

"Never mind the dead metal," she snapped. "There are people still aboard."

Car'das felt his heart catch. No-that was impossible. A Jedi might possibly have survived Thrawn's attack, but surely no one else could have. "Who?" he asked. "How many?"

"Fifty-seven," Jinzler said. "Including children."

Car'das looked at Thra.s.s, seeing his own horror reflected in the other's face. "Where are they?" he asked. "Can we get them out of here?"

"In that shuttle?" Thra.s.s countered before Jinzler could answer. "No.

There isn't enough room for even ten."

"And it would take time to get them up here anyway," Jinzler said.

"They're still in the storage core."

Car'das grimaced. The storage core. Of course-the one area Thrawn's attack had ignored. "What do we do?"

"I don't understand the problem," Jinzler said, looking back and forth between them. "Why don't we just leave?"

"For starters, we can't fly Outbound Flight very far, not just the two of us," Car'das said. "Not even if we had time to get your people up here to help us."

Lorana looked around the bridge. "We won't need them," she said, her voice tight but firm. "I can fly Outbound Flight."

"By yourself?" Thra.s.s asked in clear disbelief. "One single person?"

"One single Jedi," Jinzler corrected him. "Master C'baoth insisted we all learn to handle all of the major systems. At least, under normal conditions."

"The conditions here are hardly normal," Car'das pointed out. "And it still leaves the question of where we go. We'll never make it back to the Republic, not with this much damage."

"We have to reach a Defense Fleet base, as my brother originally intended," Thra.s.s said.

"And then what happens to my people?" Jinzler asked. "Would they be prisoners of war? Captives held for study?"

"The Chiss aren't like that," Car'das insisted.

"But the end result might be the same," Thra.s.s conceded. "If the Fifth Ruling Family chooses to press its claim to Outbound Flight, even if we go to a military base they may demand that all aboard be placed in holding until the matter can be decided."

"A prison by any other name," Jinzler said grimly. "How long would this decision process take?"

Thra.s.s snorted. "With a prize such as Outbound Flight? It could be years."

"So we can forget going anywhere in Chiss s.p.a.ce," Car'das said. "Any idea what other habitable worlds there might be out here?"

"Even if I did, I would caution against anything nearby," Thra.s.s said.

"This region is dangerous, with pirates and privateers all around."

"Not to mention what's left of the Vagaari," Car'das agreed with a shiver. "Come on, Thra.s.s, think. There has to be something else we can do."

Thra.s.s gazed out at the Fifth Family ships. "There's one other possibility," he said slowly. "Within two days' flight is a star cl.u.s.ter that the Defense Fleet has begun to fortify as an emergency refuge. I've seen the data, and there are at least ten habitable worlds within it that haven't yet been explored."

"Kind of an out-of-the-way homestead," Car'das pointed out doubtfully.

"And still in Chiss s.p.a.ce," Jinzler added.

"But it's a place where vessels of the Fifth Family wouldn't accidentally discover you," Thra.s.s said. "Only Defense Fleet personnel go inside, and only to specific systems as they work on the fortifications."

"So what's the catch?" Car'das asked.

Thra.s.s made a face. "The catch is that I don't have the safe access routes into the cl.u.s.ter," he said. "Are your navigational systems capable of finding such routes on their own?"

"Probably not," Jinzler said. "But I might be able to. There are Jedi navigational techniques that should be good enough to take us through even a star cl.u.s.ter."

"So what happens if she can?" Car'das asked Thra.s.s. "They set up shop and wait for all this to blow over?"

"Or I return after they're hidden and negotiate in secret with the Council of Families for their safe pa.s.sage home," Thra.s.s said.

"Even if such negotiations take a few months, the survivors will at least have a habitable world to live on." He looked at Jinzler. "There are other hypercapable vessels aboard that I could use, are there not?"